YOU SNOOZE -- YOU LOSE,
by Patrick Anderson - Author of
Right On The Money
The word is out... for the past two weeks the experts have been
taking advantage of a change in Domain Name regulations that allows
up to 67 characters in domain names.
Since 1993, Network Solutions has registered more than 3.4 million
domain names -- all limited to 26 characters. Now that their
exclusive government contract is ending, competitors have tossed
this artificial limit and are allowing longer names.
I did some digging into the original name space RFC to assure myself
that the longer names were valid. To quote the RFC, "The labels must
follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must start with a
letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior characters
only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are also some restrictions
on the length. Labels must be 63 characters or less." See:
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1035.txt
With this in mind, my advice is to keep your domain name to 63
characters for maximum compatibility.
WHY ARE LONGER DOMAIN NAMES IMPORTANT?
"As we've frequently reported in our SE Book & Newsletter, placing
keywords right in your domain name can give your site a major boost
on search engines. We've also reported that some engines (like
Infoseek & Excite) are no longer accepting sub-directory pages. This
is one of the reasons the smart marketing pros have been buying
keyword-phrase domain names. They use them as doorway pages to boost
traffic to their sites." says Stephen Mahaney, author of The Unfair
Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.
Michael Campbell points out, in Nothing But 'Net, "The reason we
want keywords in the domain name is that search engines often get
'tuned' to find, and give better positioning to, domains with
keywords in them."
He goes on to mention examples like phone-phones.com and
mobile-cellular.com, then notes that "After some experimentation the
hyphenated domains did slightly better in search results than the
non hyphenated ones. The hyphen seems to act as a delimiter."
I just talked to Marlon Sanders, author of The Amazing Formula that
Sells Products Like Crazy, who told me "I just registered seven
domain names today. This blows my mind! My competitors are going to
freak out when they see some of the domain names I snagged... Plus
I grabbed a number of primo words for the search engines. You should
do the same thing immediately."
Declan Dunn, author of Winning the Affiliate Game, sent out a memo
to his affiliates advising "To get on top of the search engines, one
of the critical keys is a good domain name LOADED with keywords."
Declan gives several examples such as:
CellPhone-CellularAccessories-CellularBatteries.com and
Internet-Hosting-Services-Email-Marketing-Search-Engines.com
Declan goes on to say "this news is spreading among WebMasters,
SearchEngine Meisters, Internet marketers, and big corporations.
Don't wait."
Corey Rudl, President of The Internet Marketing Center, also told
his readers of the news, saying "When I say this is time sensitive,
I AM VERY SERIOUS. If you do not jump on the bandwagon now, and if
you even wait a few weeks... you are going to lose out. All of the
".com" domain names that are in demand over 26 characters are going
to be registered. (And trust me, there are a lot!)"
John Audette's I-Search Discussion List, included a new post by the
search engine expert, Webmaster T, who explained "Having a domain
name with keywords in it is very important as it seems almost all
engines are parsing URLs. Not only is the domain name important but
also the directory and file names are definitely important."
I have been registering hyphenated domains for our clients over the
past year. It works. The past two weeks we have been quietly grabbing
several VERY HOT, very long, hyphenated domain names.
If you don't want to get left behind, get your keyword stuffed long
domain name right away!
Here's an excerpt from Stephen Mahaney's Unfair Advantage Newsletter:
(reprinted with permission)
Flash Alert - too important to wait till January...
There's a buying frenzy going on! And, if we waited for the January
issue of Search Engine News to tell you about it you'd have reason to
think that we waited too long. The change means that you (or anyone)
can now register long (KEYWORD RICH) domain names like...
Lowest-Travel-Fares-On-The-Internet.COM
LowestTravelFaresOnTheInternet.COM
Pokemon-Toys-For-Kids.COM
PokemonToysForKids.COM
Discount-Digital-Cameras.COM
DiscountDigitalCameras.COM
Lowest-Auto-Car-Prices.COM
LowestAutoCarPrices.COM
Wholesale-Computer-Hardware.COM
WholesaleComputerHardware.COM
Search-Engine-Placement-Services.COM
SearchEnginePlacementServices.COM
Football-Baseball-Basketball-Hockey.COM
FootballBaseballBasketballHockey.COM
Web-Marketing-Consultants.COM
WebMarketingConsultants.COM
Christmas-Shopping-With-Santa.COM
ChristmasShoppingWithSanta.COM
These are exactly the types of domain names that search engines like
and, as of yesterday, they were all available -- both WITH and
WITHOUT the dashes! (FYI, search engines like the dashes slightly
better while people prefer the domains without. When in doubt, take
both).
Anyway, this change is HUGE. It represents both a marketing
opportunity and a search engine placement opportunity not unlike
the days when the web was new. It means that strategic KEYWORD
PHRASES that were previously too long can now be registered. AND,
they can be placed directly in the path of the search engines.
There you have it... the biggest news to hit the web in a long
time...
.