10 Tips for TLD Buying and Domain Name Selection

If you are going to be any kind of Internet entrepreneur, your are going to want a nice portfolio of TLDs (top-level-domains). Since smart domains selection is important to the success of your projects, you always want to be thinking about which domains you may want to acquire.

I usually think “top ten tips lists” are lame, but there just happens to be 10 tips so:

Here is SEO Black Hat’s Top 10 Tips for TLD Buying and Domain Name Selection:

1. Buy your domains from different registrars with different names and contact info. If the search engines don’t already look at who the registered owners of domains are, they soon will. It’s probable that if you become known as a Search Engine Spammer, Google/ Yahoo/ MSN will just decide that every domain owned by:

Yourname
123 address street
Hometown, wherever

will be automatically sandboxed and have to prove it’s not a spam site. To avoid this, register some domains under your friends names, your family’s names, some in Trusts, some anonymously . . . etc. Do this with as many different addresses and names as you can. I would add fake names to that list, but that has become a crime (link please?).

As a futther benefit, when you interlink your sites they will appear as though they are from different publishers. Having the same contact name or address might cause the search engines to consider them all to be the same publisher and therefor assign less value or “throw” to these links.

2. After you buy a domain, immediately put up a park page with keywords and some inbound links. Even if you don’t intend to use the domain for several months, aged domains have more value and legitimacy to search engines. You want a portfolio of domain names that is aged like fine wine. This way, when you start new projects, it will seem like the sites have been up for months or years and have just gained popularity and content.

3. Don’t buy all your domains on the same day. This could be another red flag.

4. When selecting domains, www.keyword-keyword.com or searchphrase.com is a good place to start. Having Keywords separated by dashes in your main URL will definitely help your SERPS. For legit sites, you don’t want the dashes because no one will remember to type them, but for black hat SEO– you’re rarely going to get type-in traffic anyway. It’s all about the SERPs.

5. The .com domain is best. Well actually a .edu is better but they’re tough to get. There have been rumors that the extensions other than .net, .com or .org (like .cc or .info) have less weight with search engines. While I don’t know if .cc or .info (for example) get weighted less, I am confident that .edu and .gov get weighted more. If by some miracle you figure out how to pick up a .edu or .gov domain – please let me know! <shameless>If you are a site admin at a .edu or a .gov site, I could use a link. . . . or 10. Color on top of same color picture works nicely and is undetectable except by human review of the code. </shameless>

6. If you can pick up a good domain name for relatively cheap, do it. Good domains are short (few characters) and/or have keyword relevance. Just as there is a finite supply of beach front real estate, there is a finite supply of good domain names. As the market expands and we have more domain name buyers, this better “real estate” will dramatically increase in value. Some of our friends own parked domains (no website) that are worth $200,000 or more.

7. Look to buy expiring domains. Look for ones that are either short, have good names, have keywords, or have many backlinks. I use various tools for expiring domains and domain selection and will post about them in the near future.

8. For superb domain names, consider buying the domain for 5 or even 10 years. It’s less than $100 and will give your site more legitimacy to the search engines. If they get sandboxed, you can just take down your spam site, transfer the domain to one of your friends/aliases and put up some 5 page business card site. That should get it out of the sand box in 3-9 months.

9. Be careful when buying domains that appear to have a certain Page Rank. As we have discussed, PR can be faked. Check the backlinks and see if they are both real and coming from legit sites.

10. Buy good domains from people who are parking them. If you want a domain that’s already taken but not really being used, you can use the whois domain explorer to find out the contact info.
From there, you should make a phone call to see if they will sell the domain.
Do not say “I have this client who really wants that domain.”
It’s much better to act like some college kid who just wants it for a project or some housewife who thought it would be a neat present for her husband’s birthday.
Play to their emotions, and try to get a good deal.
Do not offer a price; find out what they think it is worth first. If you say $400 when in there head they thought it was worth $100, you probably will end up paying $600 or not getting the domain at all.

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