question In the era of SEO, how you justify the premium price for domains.

[Heisenberg.d]

Now a days you don't always need a .com domain to stay at the top of search result, since SEO
plays a important role to improve ranking.

What are your views on that matter?

 

[smartwebby]

Except most premium names are keyword based and those simply are terrible for branding for the most part. When was the last time you've seen a Coffee Shop in real life just called Coffee Shop?

That's a perfect example for what we are talking about. You are seeing this from the wrong end.

Suppose a new company or a struggling one which has world class coffee but is struggling to compete with Starbucks or Coffee Day or similar.... Imagine if they strategically bought CoffeeShop.com, created a kickass brand, website and app and gave great memorable service at their newly branded shiny outlets... don't you think with the perfect strategy they can get a big pie off starbucks and their likes??? That's not to even mention the millions who will enter "coffee shop" in search engines Marketing would be a walk in the park... Coffee Shop? CoffeeShop hehe. Brands just grow on people (facebook for example). What seems weird now becomes a part of you with popularity. We are talking about getting an edge when you startup or rebrand.

I haven't looked it up but I am pretty sure one of the giants must be owning this domain name and the likes of Coffee.com. Its called taking out the competition even before its born!

best,
Anita

 

[creataweb]

That's a perfect example for what we are talking about. You are seeing this from the wrong end.

Suppose a new company or a struggling one which has world class coffee but is struggling to compete with Starbucks or Coffee Day or similar.... Imagine if they strategically bought CoffeeShop.com, created a kickass brand, website and app and gave great memorable service at their newly branded shiny outlets... don't you think with the perfect strategy they can get a big pie off starbucks and their likes??? That's not to even mention the millions who will enter "coffee shop" in search engines Marketing would be a walk in the park... Coffee Shop? CoffeeShop hehe. Brands just grow on people (facebook for example). What seems weird now becomes a part of you with popularity. We are talking about getting an edge when you startup or rebrand.

I haven't looked it up but I am pretty sure one of the giants must be owning this domain name and the likes of Coffee.com. Its called taking out the competition even before its born!

best,
Anita

And you can forward the generic domain to your business domain.

 

[MrConor]

King Com

 

[korganian]

My reply is "How can you justify using a poor quality domain name when you are charging your client thousands of dollars to build them a website and thousands more for SEO and then they have to spend thousands more on an ongoing basis for advertising. An intelligent long term outlook shows that a great domain name is the best investment for your business, because all the money you spent on everything else goes toward promoting your brand, which is represented by your domain name.

 

[BrandMart]

SEO doesn't relate to a domain name. SEO is more related to the content the website (with a domain) has. Domain can be premium or just a handreg. Content is what drives SEO. Domains are what drive people.

A domain (bbc.com) is easy to remember. On the other hand (britishbroadcastingcorporation.com) might rank well in SEO terms but not easy to remember.

SEO and domains are 2 different aspects.

 

[CrazyTech]

If it was just about SEO, then people wouldn't bother with branding, marketing, sales, etc...or even a product.

A good domain is still a good domain. A great one a great domain. There are more aspects of a business than just having good SEO.

 

[garptrader]

When a domain investor reaches out to an end user who does their inquiry have to be filtered through (via either contact form or the request gets sent to IT)?

 

[Heisenberg.d]

Let's discuss one possible scenario.-

I'm selling domain "CoffeeShop.com", and the person whom i am selling currently having some brandable name, Let's say "Heisenberg.com".

Point 1 :- "Now the buyer is arguing that he can easily market himself by spending money into SEO. Why should i buy a domain name worth in 5 digits?"

Point 2: "A buyer can't relate Heisneberg.com with a coffee shop but again some names like "Starbucks" are doing great without having a coffee related domain name, and they are now big brands. They also started from nothing."

Now i'm not saying that statement is completely logical, but still he has a point. Although, this might be not a good example but We have more live examples like this. and at some point of time we might fall into same argument while selling domains.

How you going to respond to this?

 

[BrandMart]

Let's discuss one possible scenario.-

I'm selling domain "CoffeeShop.com", and the person whom i am selling currently having some brandable name, Let's say "Heisenberg.com".

Point 1 :- "Now the buyer is arguing that he can easily market himself by spending money into SEO. Why should i buy a domain name worth in 5 digits?"

Point 2: "A buyer can't relate Heisneberg.com with a coffee shop but again some names like "Starbucks" are doing great without having a coffee related domain name, and they are now big brands. They also started from nothing."

Now i'm not saying that statement is completely logical, but still he has a point. Although, this might be not a good example but We have more live examples like this. and at some point of time we might fall into same argument while selling domains.

How you going to respond to this?

It's easy.
Divide your customers into 2 segments.
1. Do they want a generic domain name that can later rank with SEO and marketing and may not have actual shop / workplace.
2. Will they use the domain to get business along side a shop / workplace? If yes, Coffeeshop will sound more generic and often bland. Since there might be 100 coffeeshops around the corner, but only a couple or maybe just one 'Heisenberg'!

Unique names share your view in real life. Hence Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger king, Microsoft etc.
Keyword domain names (Coffee shop), may still fetch some value, but are pretty bland at times.

Both sites may use SEO / online marketing to get more organic visitors / customers. Coffeeshop.com can rank a bit better than 'Heisenberg.com' but 'Heisenberg.com' may have the upper edge of branding and unique name, which may get more returning visitors.

As said before. SEO is just one of the factors in ranking. People have to like your website name for it to get popular too.

So, Heisenberg.com should fetch more value as compared to Coffeeshop.com when sold to a buyer.

 

[Heisenberg.d]

It's easy.
Divide your customers into 2 segments.
1. Do they want a generic domain name that can later rank with SEO and marketing and may not have actual shop / workplace.
2. Will they use the domain to get business along side a shop / workplace? If yes, Coffeeshop will sound more generic and often bland. Since there might be 100 coffeeshops around the corner, but only a couple or maybe just one 'Heisenberg'!

Unique names share your view in real life. Hence Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger king, Microsoft etc.
Keyword domain names (Coffee shop), may still fetch some value, but are pretty bland at times.

Both sites may use SEO / online marketing to get more organic visitors / customers. Coffeeshop.com can rank a bit better than 'Heisenberg.com' but 'Heisenberg.com' may have the upper edge of branding and unique name, which may get more returning visitors.

As said before. SEO is just one of the factors in ranking. People have to like your website name for it to get popular too.

So, Heisenberg.com should fetch more value as compared to Coffeeshop.com when sold to a buyer.

So, it can be good marketing strategy for a "startup brand" or "Not so popular brand", to invest into generic names like "Coffeeshop.Com" along with his brandable name, because it might attract more traffic to that website.

Also that "brandable" name might lose value over time. For Ex. Heisenberg.com company fell into major controversy, and now people lost faith on the name and company.
While "Coffeeshop.com" can still be useful to re-spawn in other ways, you just can't hate "Coffee shop" keyword because company did bad to you, but it can be a case with specific brand names.

How SEO ranking goes for "Generic Name" vs "Specific Name"? Generic name have any advantage over specific name while ranking?

Please advice if i'm wrong.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Let's discuss one possible scenario.-

I'm selling domain "CoffeeShop.com", and the person whom i am selling currently having some brandable name, Let's say "Heisenberg.com".

This is a good theoretical case study. Sure, the term "coffee shop" will have many thousands of monthly enquiries, but this is of no help assisting visitors to your coffee shop called CoffeeShop (unless you have become one of the world's best coffee shops and have moved up the search rankings on merit).

People very often use search to locate a business they have already heard of or has been recommended.

So the point I'm trying to make relates to word of mouth. If there is a great new coffee shop in town called CoffeeShop and you recommend it to a friend, they will have great trouble finding it through search.

But if you say there's a great new coffee shop called Heisenberg, that will be much easier to search for.

It shouldn't be hard to get "Heisenberg coffee shop" onto page one of a search engine.
It would be very hard to get your "CoffeeShop coffee shop" onto page one, well unless you include the extension, in which case you might just as well type the domain in straight up.

To me, this angle is more important than the "radio test" which you often hear people talking about.

You can ring someone up and say let's meet at Heisenberg - no problem. You have to explain yourself if you say let's meet at CoffeeShop at least in the early, critical stages.

Curiously, CoffeeShop.com could be extremely valuable in a different use case. For example, it could be "branded" and be an excellent name for a competitor to FaceBook and social media, so this is a very tricky subject!

 

[smartwebby]

Let's discuss one possible scenario.-

I'm selling domain "CoffeeShop.com", and the person whom i am selling currently having some brandable name, Let's say "Heisenberg.com".

Point 1 :- "Now the buyer is arguing that he can easily market himself by spending money into SEO. Why should i buy a domain name worth in 5 digits?"

Point 2: "A buyer can't relate Heisneberg.com with a coffee shop but again some names like "Starbucks" are doing great without having a coffee related domain name, and they are now big brands. They also started from nothing."

Now i'm not saying that statement is completely logical, but still he has a point. Although, this might be not a good example but We have more live examples like this. and at some point of time we might fall into same argument while selling domains.

How you going to respond to this?

Excellent question. You respond by saying its a "Category Killer" brand name that can easily go places because it will be easy to market and it has an existing user base (via searches). You tell them that the domain will pay itself off by decreasing the marketing cost and being able to compete at the highest rung. For example when facebook came out there were other brandable ones like Orkut, etc. which are nonexistent now. The user retention power of a generic name that grows on you is often underestimated. So in our example people will move from searching for "coffee shop" to just "coffeeshop" eventually... see the difference? It becomes a brand. Similar to BestBuy, BookMyTrip, etc. The name can give you only so much of a push... the company's product should be the one doing all the talking finally.

 

[mr-x]

Now a days you don't always need a .com domain to stay at the top of search result, since SEO
plays a important role to improve ranking.

What are your views on that matter?

Some domains are not only a brand, but have a substantial amount of type-in traffic, i,.e. cars.com. There are a dozen good reasons to own a premium domain, including independence from SEO.

 

[mr-x]

[Point 1 :- "Now the buyer is arguing that he can easily market himself by spending money into SEO. Why should i buy a domain name worth in 5 digits?"

SEO is a moving target and on-going cost as is digital advertising.

A premium 5 or 6 figure name is a one time cost that will appreciate in value. Premium domains lend authority and will improve the ROI of SEO and digital advertising.

Point 2: "A buyer can't relate Heisneberg.com with a coffee shop but again some names like "Starbucks" are doing great without having a coffee related domain name, and they are now big brands. They also started from nothing."

Starbucks created the boutique coffee shop trend. They had little or no competition but currently spend millions on advertising.

The best premium domain can lower the cost of entering a competitive vertical because it has authority, is easy to remember and informs the consumer.

 

[mr-x]

People who refuse to spend $10K on a premium domain and settle for a variation, i.e. widgetking.com, or widgets.net will donate a significant % of their advertising budget driving traffic to widgets.com.

 

[VaibhavA]

https://www.domainsherpa.com/domains-seo-marketing/

Moz owner's point of view. Must watch.