Domain Names – What's the right price?

Old Math 2
Photo by catatronic
I have been working with a company on their website redesign and mentioned that as long as they were going for a complete overhaul of the site would they consider a new domain name.

The old name was truly terrible on so many levels. The domain they had been using for over 6 years only took into account some of what the company was about, the name was too long and had only 1 keyword in the name but worse, the domain name was not a .com.

I use several  research tools to find domain names and hit upon several nice potential names including SEO factors, branding and other forms of measurement.  The domain I really liked was already taken but parked, so I new right away there was a good chance the owner would be willing and ready to sell.  This particular domain name was an “exact match” to their most important keyword phrase The domain name was originally registered in the early 2000’s and  had a clear history.

All they needed to do was pay $17,800 for the domain name. I wasn’t surprised when they got back to me, “we can’t afford $17,800 for a domain name”. “Are you sure?” I asked.

What is the domain name really worth to them

I explained that this particular exact match name generated approximately 1,780,000 searches per month according to a Google search. And upon further investigation into the PPC ads on this exact phrase we knew that a number one organic search engine ranking could get them up to 45% of all of the clicks.  Even if we only had a number two or three ranking we could expect at least a 10 percent click through ratio.

Do the Math

$2.50 CPC times 18,000 clicks a 1 percent click through rate from 1.8 million searches equals $45,000.

In under 180 days the domain would virtually pay for itself!

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Having a domain name with the keywords in it does not guarantee you a top search engine ranking. Nothing does, but Google does favor exact match domain names.

In this case, using a 301 permanent redirect, we would be able to redirect a domain name with great history and a great number of quality links to this new domain name.  This new domain also has age, relevant, existing content and pages and links.

The value of acquiring a domain name that has a very popular keyword phrase in it (and a “.com” top-level domain) is that you may also see “type in” traffic. Some people, rather than search for a keyword, type a URL into their browser’s address bar. There are many domain name owners (called “domainers”) who base the value of a domain name off of this metric (type-in traffic), alone.

Domain Value Tips

Is there a keyword in it?
How many people search for that keyword on a regular basis?
Is it memorable?
What is the history of the domain name (number of on-topic links, level of traffic, TLD of the domain name)?
Does it have a hyphen or number in it? Domain names with hyphens and or numbers are less valuable, but may be a good option for SEO purposes because the main keyword may be in the domain name.

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