Aaron Wall's case against exact match domains

[jwm]

Interesting read whether you agree with him or not

http://www.seobook.com/category-killer-domain-names

 

[JMOT]

Hmm thats more a compelling argument to show how Google is out to bone everyone not paying them for traffic. IMHO that article does nothing to take away from exact match domains.

 

[Blossom]

I agree that that exact match names can be overpriced...but that's set by market demand anyway.

I can't take that post seriously when a) I get a completely different set of results for the search "pool tables" on google.com (I know the US set up is currently quite different to ours, but the first two results I get both have "pooltables" in the name).

And b) the article makes no mention or comparison of the different SEO tactics used by the top results anyway. Pooltables.com has 500 fewer backlinks than olhausenbilliards.com for a start.

 

[retired_member13]

It's an interesting read, but I agree with the above comments, and it reads more like a case against the value of organic search in general.

In addition, I'd hardly expect SEOs to be publicly promoting exact match domains anyway given what their business actually is and who they make their money off, a bit like the old one about not expecting a turkey to vote for Christmas.

 

[rob]

Articles on there are always linkbait x is dead etc.

Seomoz is now a multi million dollar vc backed company with products to sell.

 

[jwm]

It's an interesting read, but I agree with the above comments, and it reads more like a case against the value of organic search in general.

In addition, I'd hardly expect SEOs to be publicly promoting exact match domains anyway given what their business actually is and who they make their money off, a bit like the old one about not expecting a turkey to vote for Christmas.

Ty, I agree with you I think it also reads like a case against organic seo. Which is interesting given it is a seo writing it.

Articles on there are always linkbait x is dead etc.

Seomoz is now a multi million dollar vc backed company with products to sell.

Rob - Aaron is seobook not seomoz

 

[Blossom]

I read an interesting post a while back on SEOmoz about how Rand is $500,000 in debt from starting up the company. Seems like it would have been reasonably easy to avoid that much debt from starting up an internet company without a physical product....

Dr Pete writes primarily for SEOmoz...the SEOBook post is by him.

 

[retired_member13]

Ty, I agree with you I think it also reads like a case against organic seo. Which is interesting given it is a seo writing it.

Maybe Search Engine Promotion is the new SEO? ie it's possible that this line of thinking will move them and others towards selling an approach that is tailored towards promoting websites via search engines through all channels, rather than optimising websites to appear within organic search results? I can imagine that getting control of a company's bottom line online spend would be a far more profitable activity for them, but they need to build up a head of steam first....

 

[rob]

Rob - Aaron is seobook not seomoz

Whoops!

I think that is a great example why a memorable domain is important

 

[Edwin]

Here's what I posted over in the comments...

SEO is only part of the story

Aaron, you're missing the big picture here. Most companies of any real size will be doing paid advertising in tandem with their SEO efforts. And that's an area where exact-match domains have played and will continue to play a key role, since the right exact-match domain will generate a higher CTR (and correspondingly more traffic/a lower CPC) than "branded" alternatives, assuming we're not talking about a case where there's a clear "household name" company in the mix.

I covered this in my case study, where I pitted "electric bicycles" against 2 branded alternatives, and managed to generate a near-doubling of CTR for the same ads, bids, keywords, etc. In other words, the ONLY difference was the domain name. http://www.memorabledomains.co.uk/ppc-generic-domains.html

This is down to the fact that Google will bold the URL if it is an exact match to the search in question, so you've got one ad where the URL is lit up like a christmas tree and therefore stands out from the crowd. At the same time, there's a psychologically compelling "click" of recognition when people see and take note of the URL, since it matches their train of thought at the time they conducted that search.

Because the CTR improvements have literally nothing to do with Google's algorithm, they're not going to go away - if anything, the owners of exact-match domains are having a field day right now as Google is experimenting with adding the domain name at the end of the ad title, and also moving the URL up to be the second line of the ad (thus bringing the highlighted text into even more prominence).

So any company spending a reasonable amount on PPC should sit down and do a bit of math, and see what this kind of CTR improvement might mean to their ad budget, sales, ROI and bottom line.

And that's before we even start to consider the roughly 90% of advertising that takes place offline, where an exact match domain can really help because it makes the URL to be visited (when such a call to action is desired) much, much easier to remember. Instead of forcing somebody who is being bombarded with marketing messages and who has an extremely limited attention span to 1) learn what your company does and 2) remember a contrived URL, they instead only have to remember a URL that fits into their existing thought pattern. A frictionless process, that again will pay huge dividends in terms of ROI.

Beyond that, there's also the "credibility boost" which, while unquantifiable, is nevertheless very real. If you're competing against 100 other companies to sell a particular product/service, the fact that you have THE domain name that EXACTLY describes that product/service helps to make you look like the leading player in the market rather than just another also-ran.

So even if there was literally ZERO SEO benefit to be wrung out of an exact match domain (which will never be the case, since the credibility factor alone makes it easier to build links, for example) there is still massive value in securing the right domain name for companies savvy enough to look beyond the very narrow issue of Google's possible dialling-down of some nebulous "SEO boost" given to exact match domains.

Oh, and then there's Bing - but I think I've made my point!

One more thought...

Sorry, forgot to add: the more Google makes it hard for companies to get traffic organically, the more important it becomes for them to seek out an edge - any edge - in the paid PPC advertising race.

So as Google clutters the results with maps, photos, images, in-house results from group companies, places, etc. etc. merchants are going to HAVE to turn to PPC to replace the lost traffic (Google's plan all along, of course - it's as clear as daylight) and the one un-replicable edge they can secure for themselves is the exact-match domain for their main keyphrase, since all other aspects of the PPC process (keywords being bid on, landing pages, ads, budgets, bids etc.) can be replicated by competitors, but the exact match bonus - the one Google really CAN'T take away - will accrue to them and them alone.

 

[damion]

Well said Edwin!

 

[julian]

Interesting read..

based on that article Edwin you must be quaking in your boots with 5000+ keyword domains..

You say that companies and users will always value the credibility of having the generic domain e.g. 'electricbikes.co.uk' etc but i'm not sure your just convincing yourself that is the case because after all thats the core of your portfolio.

I believe brands are what people remember most int he end and except for a handful e.g. your diy.com's etc most companies are happy with their company/brand name, and judging by the way g's going theres no point in them investing in a keyword domain to try and seo it when you need to bang it on adwords to get a click anyway..?

Just about every product has a brand that sells it in this case Halfords.

to quote you:

"roughly 90% of advertising that takes place offline, where an exact match domain can really help because it makes the URL to be visited (when such a call to action is desired) much, much easier to remember. "

your saying that bloggs will remember electricbikes.co.uk over wowbikes.com an hour later - you and I might appreciate a generic but i'm not totally convinced punters will.

And why has hardly anyone turned one of these cat definer mega domain into a real brand e.g. why didn't oceanfinance.co.uk buy loans.co.uk - perhaps because its not memorable enough - its not a brand - it just gets lost in the detritus of serp results?

I do see that value in EMD's (vomits in bin) but I think brandale domains will be the future as its the only way to stand out.

One final thing (this is not a personal attack on you at all Edwin and I know you will probably refute everything i've said) your company 'memorable domains' an ironic name because how many are really memorable to the average human being?: e.g. 125CCMotorcycles.co.uk, TempAgencies.co.uk, AvalancheTransceivers.co.uk, Emulsifier.co.uk, InternationalParcelDeliveries.co.uk,
TemperatureControlledTransport.co.uk


..it seems all for serps.

Obviously you have some great names - now blow me apart
!! :shock:

 

[Edwin]

Think "niche dominance".

Let's choose one example that you've highlighted, AvalancheTransceivers.co.uk.

Now, there are at least 11 advertisers competing on Adwords to get traffic for that keyphrase. I say "at least" because Google no longer lets you dig beyond page 1 of the list of advertisers to see how many companies are advertising against a given phrase - the top 11 is all we ever get to see. And there are quite a number of different manufacturers, fielding a wide range of models of varying degrees of sophistication.

Avalanche transceivers retail in the £150 to £300 range, more for very complex models. Some companies also rent them out from £40.

How much is it worth one of the companies fighting tooth and nail in the PPC battle to be able to "light up" the URL www.[strong]avalanchetransceivers[/strong].co.uk in their ad when a search is conducted for "avalanche transceivers" and so increase their CTR, reduce their CPC and boost the traffic they receive from their ads? Do I know the answer? No. Is there a precise answer? No. Is it evident from the number of manufacturers, the number of advertisers and the average cost of a single device that there is a real, palpable value? Yes, yes and YES.

How about tradeshows? The British Ski + Board show attracts 20,000 people ( http://www.globalsnowshows.co.uk/ ) - what's the value of being able to put AvalancheTransceivers.co.uk on press releases? Posters? Banners? Business cards?

Again, how many more transceivers would you have to sell a month, a year, a decade, in order to justify a modest one-time £x,xxx expenditure on securing this domain name?

This is the key part: I am not expecting EVERYONE to remember an exact match domain name more readily (most are never going to be exposed to it in any case), I am only expecting EVERYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN THE TOPIC to do so. The latter group may be far far smaller than the former group, but it's that latter group that the companies serving that particular niche or market really care about.

 

[Edwin]

I believe brands are what people remember most int he end and except for a handful e.g. your diy.com's etc most companies are happy with their company/brand name, and judging by the way g's going theres no point in them investing in a keyword domain to try and seo it when you need to bang it on adwords to get a click anyway..?

And when they do "bang it on adwords" (because it's either that or get less and less traffic because Google's hogging most of the organic serps for itself) then why wouldn't they want the CTR boost (and hence cost savings) that would come from using the appropriate exact-match domain in their Adwords ads? This boost effect is demonstrably real.

 

[johnnyboy]

Think "niche dominance".

The problem with this is that many companies will minimise business risk by diversifying their product portfolio, so if one market goes sour, then they can turn and focus their efforts on another product. If that product doesn't do well either, they can again focus on yet another product. However, it is impractical for a company to own every exact match domain related to the products they sell, build a site on each and optimise every one of them. Which is where brand names come in.

 

[dougs]

credability

We have a few nice generics that we have turned into doing £100's million in sales, notably:

www.carrentals.co.uk
www.discountvouchers.co.uk

The power these sort of names have in opening commercial doors is huge. We are only a few people but people and companies believe on first impressions that we are large. Sometimes that makes the difference to getting a deal.

We have others we just have never got round to properly developing

Doug

 

[disruptive]

I'm old fashioned here and I'm not even going to talk about adwords/seo or anything about driving traffic, but the value of an effective brand.

A descriptive domain such as carrentals.co.uk, signals a number of things:

Quality that is easily discernible. They do what they say they do. So if I am looking for a wood floor, then buying from a domain including woodflooring gives me confidence that this is the companies focus rather than just a sideline and that ultimately for me (the consumer) by spending time and money on this brand they have confidence in their offering.

Not every business can afford to build up a household name such as Amazon or ebay, and hence they require a product descriptive domain. One might as well as go for a descriptive domain if the business is selling a particular product where the brand is less important. In the above example I'm fairly agnostic about the manufacturer of the wood floor and I certainly don't expect to be buying wood floors every five minutes. But knowing the company has been competitive a got a competitive domain signals "seriousness" to me.

There is another perhaps more subtle signal. Consumers are aware of URL's even in the case where browsers are attempting to reduce their influence. When making purchases, consumers like to check their money is not going to a phishing site or a spam site and this is where a decent domain comes in handy. Again at this stage anything that can help consumers be confident in the company offering such as a domain that resonates with the underlying offering helps. Got to ask why a fly-by-nite company would use a decent competitive domain such as cars.co.uk?

Lets face it, receiving email from [email protected] gives much more credence than a) fictional brand i.e. abcd.com or b) carrentals-uk.ltd.uk for the simple fact it signals longevity in the market place. CarRentals would have been an early domain to be snapped up, so the company in charge: was either an early adopter of new technology or had the cash to spend on purchasing the name because they were serious about the business. You might be thinking that consumers don't even think about this kind of thing, but I say you are wrong to treat them so - consumers see the value of smart brands and advertising everywhere.

In summary I think there will always be a market for descriptive, memorable and brandable domains because it does have an impact on businesses in a variety of ways that go beyond just the case of getting 'footfall'.

Some of my best sales have been to companies looking to make an entry into an overcrowded market and having that descriptive product based domain vertical ensure that the prospective customer believes that they have the longevity in that market. Some of my buyers have been multi-billion dollar organisations who understand the value of good old fashioned simplicity and branding.

 

[julian]

not sure I quite agree..

firstly: "I'm old fashioned here and I'm not even going to talk about adwords/seo or anything about driving traffic, but the value of an effective brand."

carrentals/co/uk <- its not a brand - it's a means to an end - 'avis, hertz, thrifty - that is a real brand.. they have trust and credibility

..if it was: asapcarreantals.co.uk top instead, would it make any real difference?

I seriously doubt that consumers think so long and hard about a companies business domain - but we as domainers desperately want to believe that they care so much - so I believe this hyped up 'exact match' domain market is something that mostly exists inside domainers heads who have convinced themselves and thus placed an intrinsic value based on an their own emotional responses (just like LLL.co.uk values which only exist inside, and are mostly driven by this forum). It's like a virus that spreads from domainer to domainer - and i'm the antibiotic sweethearts bringing you out of your comas

I agree with you that having the generic is good - it's a nice asset but 'EMD' (vomits again) value seo benfits aside, you are basically saying (to use your example) that FantasticWoodFlooring.com is going to significantly lower my expectation as joe bloggs the user on the companies ability to do that service, based on the fact they don't have woodflooring.co.uk - thus i'm not going to investigate their service?

I'm old fashioned here and I'm not even going to talk about adwords/seo or anything about driving traffic, but the value of an effective brand.

A descriptive domain such as carrentals.co.uk, signals a number of things:

Quality that is easily discernible. They do what they say they do. So if I am looking for a wood floor, then buying from a domain including woodflooring gives me confidence that this is the companies focus rather than just a sideline and that ultimately for me (the consumer) by spending time and money on this brand they have confidence in their offering.

Not every business can afford to build up a household name such as Amazon or ebay, and hence they require a product descriptive domain. One might as well as go for a descriptive domain if the business is selling a particular product where the brand is less important. In the above example I'm fairly agnostic about the manufacturer of the wood floor and I certainly don't expect to be buying wood floors every five minutes. But knowing the company has been competitive a got a competitive domain signals "seriousness" to me.

There is another perhaps more subtle signal. Consumers are aware of URL's even in the case where browsers are attempting to reduce their influence. When making purchases, consumers like to check their money is not going to a phishing site or a spam site and this is where a decent domain comes in handy. Again at this stage anything that can help consumers be confident in the company offering such as a domain that resonates with the underlying offering helps. Got to ask why a fly-by-nite company would use a decent competitive domain such as cars.co.uk?

Lets face it, receiving email from [email protected] gives much more credence than a) fictional brand i.e. abcd.com or b) carrentals-uk.ltd.uk for the simple fact it signals longevity in the market place. CarRentals would have been an early domain to be snapped up, so the company in charge: was either an early adopter of new technology or had the cash to spend on purchasing the name because they were serious about the business. You might be thinking that consumers don't even think about this kind of thing, but I say you are wrong to treat them so - consumers see the value of smart brands and advertising everywhere.

In summary I think there will always be a market for descriptive, memorable and brandable domains because it does have an impact on businesses in a variety of ways that go beyond just the case of getting 'footfall'.

Some of my best sales have been to companies looking to make an entry into an overcrowded market and having that descriptive product based domain vertical ensure that the prospective customer believes that they have the longevity in that market. Some of my buyers have been multi-billion dollar organisations who understand the value of good old fashioned simplicity and branding.

 

[thecat]

Do people care on first visit?

The confidence comes once you are on the site. So a keyword domain that's well branded will be fine. Then people may remember it or not. Doing what it says it does on the tin will get punters into the store but not necessarily convert them.

 

[disruptive]

Avis and other car rental companies have built up their brands around their names and we all know and love/hate them, so it makes an easy choice when choosing a car company to trust...but imagine a new entrant to this market with perhaps limited funds without the huge time window these incumbents have spent on brand building...how do they do it?

I am suggesting that a company can build a better trusting relationship with the consumer with a good URL, and a URL that is descriptive and neater than joescarrentalsonline.co.uk, because this fledgling company has taken the time and money to invest in their shop front and part of that is the URL which is easy to remember/recall and speak about and for other consumers to perhaps find direct.

There is a bigger pattern out there and that is one of "debranding", i.e. for the retailer, its not so much about building another amazon, more about shifting stocks of electric-bikes as one vertical for example and thats where having a direct sales channel dedicated to one vertical comes in handy. After all, how many of us buy branded insurance specifically? We just care about a decent end product, but the end products are largely just a commodity and market differentiation is the little.

There are a multitude of business models out there and I'm saying there is one for descriptive URL's and it fits in the marketeer's toolkit alongside the choice of having a non descriptive brand such as Avis. Sure there are domainers with a vested interest in selling descriptive domains of course, and for some organisations they can take one of these domains and build it into a formidable sales platform.