SEO: How I Chose the Domain for my New Blog

I’m working on a new blog offering Google SEO & AdWords tips and thought it would be interesting to tell you about the process I went through over the last three weeks trying to come up with a good domain.

I would be the first to admit that coming up with a good domain is actually something I’ve always struggled with. Many of my domain choices have been rather poor. So this time around I thought I would put a lot of effort into coming up with a really good domain.

TrafficBlogger.com

Two blogs I admire are ProBlogger.net and CopyBlogger.com, so the first domain I thought of was TrafficBlogger.com. The domain was registered so I inquired about it and the owner asked for $500. I offered $400 and he accepted. We agreed on using Escrow.com to ensure I get the domain and he gets his money.

In the midst of this I discovered that trafficblogr.com was available so I registered it, but I still felt trafficblogger.com would be a better domain.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Escrow.com doesn’t allow PayPal payments unless both the buyer and seller live in the United States. I live in Australia. They do accept credit cards but I need to fax over my credit card and some personal ID. Someone stole $9000 from my credit card a few years ago, so I now don’t give out personal details if I can help it.

I explained this to the domain owner, and suggested we use Sedo.com instead. Sedo doesn’t have such issues. But then he didn’t respond to my emails. I thought that something was wrong and sensed that he probably wanted more money.

While I was waiting for a reply, I visited trafficblogger.com and noticed that it was now hosted by Sedo.com. I clicked through to the Sedo sales page for the domain and entered a bid of $1. It responded with, “Unfortunately, your offer is too low and cannot be accepted. Please submit an offer above the seller’s minimum bid threshold of 4000 $US.”

$4000!

I was happy to pay $400, even as much as $1000 which was my initial estimate, but ten times what we agreed! No thank you.

Somewhere along the line the domain owner decided the domain was worth ten times the agreed price. I don’t think he realizes how niche the domain is. It would only be of interest to someone creating a blog on traffic, and there aren’t that many people who would pursue such a niche. Well, I wish him every success in getting that price.

After this I decided to look at some related domains. I inquired about TrafficTips.com but the owner wanted $7000, later reduced to $6300. I also inquired about FreeTrafficTips.com and the owner wanted $6000 for it. I wouldn’t pay $6000 for FreeTrafficTips.com when the much shorter TrafficTips.com was available for $6300.

I rather like TrafficTips.com and although I told the owner I would pass, I kept the option open. As a domain it tells people a lot about what the site is about which always helps to increase the click through rates in pay per click ads.

I still felt TrafficBlogger.com was more brandable. But when I mentioned those two domains to a friend of mine, he thought TrafficTips.com was better than TrafficBlogger.com. As a result, doubt entered into my mind.

MikesTrafficTips.com

As an alternative to spending $6300 on TrafficTips.com, I came up with MikesTrafficTips.com. The domain was available so I registered it. It’s similar to my Mikes-Marketing-Tools.com domain. The problem was that it’s a bit long and isn’t so easily brandable.

Anyway I decided to look at some other options. The following domains are registered so I contacted the owners of some of the domains.

• TrafficAddict.com: ‘Addict’ has negative connotations so I decided against it.
• TrafficBlog.com: The owner wanted $1500 but I decided it wasn’t a domain I could build a brand around.
• TrafficCoach.com: I didn’t want to brand myself as a coach so didn’t pursue this one.
• TrafficExpert.com: I contacted but no reply so left it at that.
• TrafficFanatic.com: For sale at $2380
• TrafficGuru.com: I contacted but no reply.
• Trafficologist.com: I contacted but no reply.
• TrafficTipster.com: This was and still is available but decided I didn’t like domain that much after all.

As I went though dozens of domain ideas it occurred to me just how many variations of a domain are registered - most of them by domain speculators looking to make a big fat profit reselling a domain they registered for around eight bucks.

So I got more creative and came up with TrafficBerry.com and TrafficBerries.com: I was thinking along the lines of strawberry and blueberry. I even came up with this tagline, ‘Fruity bite-size Google SEO & AdWords traffic tips’. I quickly discarded those domains.

TrafficVitamin.com

I’ve been taking vitamins these days and one day while I was staring at the bottle of vitamins on my desk and trying to come up with domain ideas, TrafficVitamin.com popped into my head. I also thought of TrafficSupplement.com. At first I loved TrafficVitamin.com.

I came up with the tagline of, ‘Daily chewable Google SEO & AdWords traffic tips’.

I even came up with this about page description based on the vitamin packaging.

What is Traffic Vitamin?
A natural source of quality Google SEO and AdWords traffic tips.

Traffic Vitamin helps to:
- increase traffic flow to all areas of your website
- increase subscribers, leads, sales and profits

How to use:
- Adults: Take one traffic vitamin daily with other marketing activities, or as professionally prescribed.
- Not suitable for children under 15 years.
- Keep out of reach of competitors.
- Do not use if traffic vitamin has been tampered with.
- Traffic vitamins should not replace a balanced marketing diet.
- Store in a secure directory on your hard drive / Store in a secure folder with your marketing plan.
- Active ingredients: Natural vitamin T. No added hype, artificial tactics, strategies, or sweeteners.

I thought it was a rather clever and cheeky idea. But then I would, wouldn’t I?

I quickly registered those domains, including the plural versions. However, after a couple of days, the domains began to lose their appeal. TrafficVitamin.com just doesn’t sound right.

Brandable Domains

Next, I thought of making up some brandable domains. Web 2.0 start-ups often have unusual domain names so I checked out the TechCrunch company index for some inspiration.

I thought of making up short 5 to 6 letter domains. I didn’t bother with 3 or 4 letter domains - they are all registered. And ones that are for sale would cost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.

I came up with domains like parblo.com, pomaki.com, pamoki.com, and a few others that I can’t remember now. They don’t mean anything, at least not to me. But are short and easily brandable. But I felt a domain needed to be brandable, but also give some hint as to what the site is about. It’s very hard to build a completely meaningless word into a brand. It takes a lot of money and effort. I read somewhere that it costs $150 million to build a brand off-line. It probably a lot less online, but still doesn’t come cheap.

I also came up with JungleApple.com and JungleOrange.com but quickly decided against using them.

TrafficBite.com

So I stuck with the keyword ‘traffic’ and came up with TrafficBite.com. This domain is nice and short and was and still is available. I quite like this domain. I even came up with a tagline of ‘Daily bite-size Google SEO & AdWords traffic tips’.

Marketing - Not Traffic

After thinking about it for a few days I decided I should switch strategies and register a domain that targeted the keyword ‘marketing’, instead of ‘traffic’.

Why?

Because marketing is a much more popular search term. You don’t have to have the word ‘marketing’ in the domain to get top rankings for the search query ‘marketing’, but it certainly helps.

According to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, there are 2.74 million global monthly searches for, ‘marketing’, and 30.4 million searches for all ‘marketing’ related searches. While ‘traffic’ receives just 450,000 global monthly searches, and 11.1 million searches related to ‘traffic’.

The problem is that lot of people searching for ‘traffic’ are actually searching for traffic reports and the like (the vehicle kind), not web traffic. So the number of potential visitors is actually a lot lower than what is reported by Google. Whereas the majority of people who searches for ‘marketing’ are all potential visitors. So it makes sense to target ‘marketing’ instead of ‘traffic’.

I know that with enough inbound links, it is possible to get a top ranking in Google for a single word query such as, ‘marketing’. After all, I have a webpage that ranks #17 for the search query, ‘AdWords’.

MarketingMunch.com

This morning I was playing around with ideas and discovered that MarketingMunch.com was available! It’s similar to TechCrunch. I like the fact that both words start with the letter ‘M’ which makes it easier to remember. It’s also easy to spell. Having said that I accidentally typed in ‘mumch’ a couple of times, so I registered MarketingMumch.com as well.

The meaning is good too. Munch is to chew, or a snack, which plays well with the bite-size marketing tips concept.

So it pretty much ticks all the boxes. So I made a quick executive decision to use MarketingMunch.com as the domain for my new blog. I also registered MarketingMunch.net, MarketingMunch.org, and Marketing-Munch.com to cover the bases.

Potential Trademark Issue

One thing I thought about after I registered those domains was that some people might forget what the domain was and try MunchMarketing.com, instead of MarketingMunch.com. So I entered the domain only to find it was registered. Not only that, but it’s being used by a Canadian company, Munch Marketing Inc., selling table top advertising.

I conducted a trademark search in the Canadian trade-marks database and ‘Munch Marketing’ was indeed registered. It is advertised as ‘Advertising the wares and services of others by means of placing advertisements on table tops in food courts and pedestrian walkway retail corridors.’ Well, that’s not something my new site is remotely about.

It also has a disclaimer that says, ‘The right to the exclusive use of MARKETING is disclaimed apart from the trade-mark.’

I also searched the US trademark database, but ‘Munch Marketing’ was not in the database.

Add to the fact that there are dozens of trademarks in both Canada and the United states that include the word, ‘Munch’, and that I am using ‘Marketing Munch’ as opposed to ‘Munch Marketing’, I am pretty sure there isn’t a case for trademark infringement with ‘MarketingMunch.com’, at least I hope not.

Summary

I think I have finally found the domain for my new blog. It is easy(ish) to remember, easy to spell and brandable. It’s taken weeks of brainstorming and I’ve only wasted aout $35 registering domains I no longer wish to use. But that’s better than not registering a domain only to find someone else has registered it while I was thinking about it. Anyway, I hope my story helps you come up with a great domain for your next website.

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