Today we’re going to talk about how to buy a good domain name.

So today we’re going to talk about purchasing domain names.

I have a lot of experience in this category. I have probably 50+ domains, maybe more. I use Godaddy for all my domains and I’ve done different transfers and whatnot out of namecheap and bought some other domains and different sites where you can buy domains but I’ve just found it easier to keep it all in one location.

That way if I have an issue I can call a corporate customer service 24/7.  They do a pretty good job over there and for the most part I can just keep track of the ones that I want to keep and want to let go and expire, all under one roof so I recommend if you get it into the online game and you’re new that you pick one and just go with it and put all your domains in there.

I’ve chosen GoDaddy you don’t have to choose GoDaddy but it’s the one that I use. They’ve been pretty good with me so far. So let’s talk about what makes a good domain name and why you want to pick certain you know classic pick certain keywords to make your actual domain name.

So for example you know if you wanted to do something in the marketing world and you wanted to include things like online and marketing in the domain name that would be considered like an exact match domain like EMD, exact match domain.

For example you know that one I’m sure is not available but maybe you could find a combination of marketing and then online if you wanted people to search for you know how do market online or how to market online. Those are good keyword search terms that people might actually search for.

So you can actually have a domain that would match those terms and then you could do the SEO around that on your pages and what not and you have a lot better chance of ranking have an exact match domain and the actual words in your blog and whatever your pages and whatnot so it just looks good in Google’s eyes.

It just really depends on what you’re going for if you’re going for like a type of site that people are going to want people to find via search then you might want to consider an EMD or something close. Even something like a “-” or something possibly like online-marketing or something like that.

I mean I’m just giving you an example for that. There’s obviously a million different combinations you could use but that is probably one of the things you want to consider.

Now if you’re doing something that is not going to be important that you rank, then you might want to consider something that is not an exact match domain or in many cases if you’re doing like a personal brand and you wanted to brand yourself as something like for example I own MarketingMeathead.com that is my Internet Marketing blogging. I’m building a little bit of a brand around it but I also own my own name BrianPfeiffer.com.

So I would highly recommend that if you haven’t purchased your own name.com yet and if it’s still available which it may or may not be, to go out and buy your own dot com.

And at the same time just a little other piece of advice, you should make sure that you go out and get your Instagram handle, in my case Brian Pfeiffer which I don’t have because somebody else grabbed it before me, your Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube just about every social media channel that exists these days whenever something new comes out that seems like its going to be a game changer you’re going to want to go in and try to get your name right away.

So that’s just some other piece of advice kind of off the subject a little bit but when you’re going to get a dot com, try to get your name. Luckily I was able to get BrianPfeiffer.com and I own that and of course marketingmeathead.com that’s a less popular type of name but it’s my brand!

It is kind of a cool like slangy type term Marketing Meathead, so it’s possible someone else could have snatched it but they didn’t get it so you know basically what you want to just do it based on what you’re trying to do.

If you’re set up like an e-commerce store and there’s certain things that you know you’re going to have on your store that people might search for.

You might want to include that kind of stuff in the domain name but you don’t want to make it like too many words like max like 3 words maybe 4 if it’s a smaller type of you know the smaller type of words but you want to keep the actual name fairly short. OK. I have a lot of experience buying these, I just got really lucky and I paid $5000 for a domain recently.

We just bought a domain called NewYearsEveparty.com.  New Year’s Eve party that’s four words but it’s a very good exact match domain name.

So when people search New Year’s Eve party you know that’s what they search for. That’s the name. So we own the Exact Match Domain that was worth $5000 to us.

The guy wanted like I think $12K or even $15K.

We were able to negotiate him down and we ended up walking away at the table with the domain name for $5K.  And that’s what we’re using this year for the new New Year’s Eve party.

So that’s just one example of a perfect domain and that’s actually more than three words. But in that case it’s actually a really good domain that people actually do search for. So I’m okay with a 4 word domain there. OK. But generally you want to keep it around three words.

Some of the places that you can go and get some ideas.

I personally like to use, GoDaddy and synonyms.

Say I have an idea in my head and I was looking for a domain the other day and I wanted something to kind of go with like marketing but at the same time be like you know like strong like strength like potentially something that I could use down the road for you know a brand for me be like man or men and women that you know portrays my lifestyle with the fitness, the working out the marketing on YouTube that kind of stuff.

I was kind of trying to come up with ideas and I went on Google and I just googled synonyms and I found marketingvitality.com.

Because I just googled strength, strong and I found the word vitality.

That was pretty good and then marketing vitality. It was available. So that was kind of one marketing strength was not available, marketing strong etc,. you know that all the ones that were like my first choices weren’t there or big money. But then marketing vitality was and I’m like thinking wow that’s pretty good. Vitality, I looked it up and you know it means you know the definition is strength and endurance and it kind of just basically is exactly what I was looking for.

So the problem is and I’ll give you guys some advice on this.

You know I had an idea in my head it was a Sunday I was thinking about it.  I saw somebody else’s promotion for a new info product and I was like oh you know maybe I can come out with something like that has to do with a working out fitness marketing owning companies.

And I’m like, that’s a great, it’s a great concept. Well I bought the name I went out and bought marketingvitality.com.

Who knows I might not even touch that for like a year or two.

OK. So good piece of advice is to go out and if you’ve got the idea in your head you go out there and see if the dot.com is available. And then before you go out and buy it you know sleep on it for a day or two and really think about if you’re actually going to be able to execute on using that domain because you know there’s a pretty good chance you’ve got ideas in your head and then you know after a couple of days you start thinking well yeah I’m not really going to get to that project maybe till next year or even the year after or maybe never get to it.

So you end up just wasting that money that sits there in your list of the other 50 domains that you have and you don’t even need or use. And you know it just becomes a good idea and that good idea may never materialize into anything and now you are paying for it.

Expensive Domains

This is the same for people that like you know if you find a domain that’s for example owned by somebody or owned by big domain-holders out there like huge domains as one and you know a lot of times I’ll go on to GoDaddy and I’ll search for a name and they come up and I’m like oh that’s available. $25,000 ?.

Or like or like even $50,000. I’m like I’m not paying 25-50 grand for a freakin domain.

So somebody owns that or GoDaddy owns that or somehow it’s in the backdoor that thing they’re valued at a 25k+. You’re obviously going to have to pay for that like to get that or figure out who owns it and negotiate it down.

Generally I’ve bought a couple really good domains over the years. In general I found these people especially if they’ve been sitting on them for a while they’re willing to negotiate for way less like 40-60% of what they are asking.

The New Year’s Eve example is perfect that the guy wanted I think like $12-15K.

He came back to us with $10K and we’re like nah we’re not paying a $10 grand for a domain and then you know we kind of went back and forth and eventually we came down to $5000,

We were ok with $5K for an exact match domain and we have the New Year’s contract for the next couple of years and more than likely if we do a good job and things go well we’ll get it beyond that because we’ve been doing Halloween at the same venue for now 4 years and we’re cool for $5K  to put the site up which is going to cost us another you know three grand roughly for that and SEO.

So we’re going to have probably $10 grand wrapped up in into this Web site domain before it’s all over but at the end of the day you know we have a nice exact match domain that we can really do some heavy SEO on and probably get it to rank really well probably not by this year just because it takes a lot of time.

This year we might rankings on some longer tail keywords, but by next year we’re going to be sitting pretty with that domain in on Chicago and potentially we could use that as like a domain in multiple cities and have you know the New Year’s Eve party in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and L.A.  So we have plans to even more with that domain down the road. And that’s kind of what we’re thinking of why it was worth the $5K for us.

So you’ll keep that in mind if that’s something that it’s like you know burning a hole in your eyes that you got to get this domain and you got this killer idea that’s going to happen.

It might be worth spending you know $5K, $10K, or 15 K on it and getting it because you know having that exact match domain or the name that kind of goes exactly with what your business is, that’s important.

Digital Marketer ran a story how when they first started out they didn’t own Digital Marketer but they had a good business going and the name just fit with what they were doing and they wanted it and they went out they phoned the owner and they paid a lot of money for, but they we able to get Digital Marketer. Now, that’s the name of their company Digital Marketer. So you know that’s just one example. And there’s hundreds of examples out there for that.

So let’s talk about some of the things you want to consider when you’re buying a domain.

You want to make sure the name is obviously easy to remember so people recognize it and then they’re like oh yeah you know that’s an easy name.

You don’t want to make it like hard to pronounce. You want to stay away from stuff like you know the “z” instead of “s” that instead of an “S” type thing it’s just kind of cheesy.

What’s popular nowadays you see a lot of the .IO domains.

Well if you look up what dot IO means that’s the British Indian Ocean territory. So that’s a popular ending for softwares and stuff right now but I think it’s kind of a fad.

I don’t really think that’s going to stick around that much. It’s been kind of popular in recent years that you know people put like you know like a different spelling like cars with a K or something like that I’m just giving you an example and they’re using that kind of like it’s kind of like a hipster trend right now or they’re coming up with a name that’s like just kind of weird and off the wall for their brand.

And honestly I don’t really think that’s going to be a long term fix for you know finding a name.

I think if you can find something that matches your brand with a dot com that’s like two or three words maybe even close to the exact match to one of the main keywords you’re going after.

That’s going to be your best bet.

I would stay away from the .net as well,  I’d pretty much only buy dot coms. I don’t think I bought a .net in five or ten years and I wouldn’t recommend a .net or a .io at all.

But you know if you’re in Canada or something .ca would make sense if you’re going to do a Canadian brand obviously because you’re in that country or you know in the U.K., I believe it .co.uk and that’s your .com.

If you’re doing that business in the U.K., well that’s fine but obviously if you’re going to be going international and going to be selling in the U.S. and other countries for that matter then .com is the one that’s most recognizable.

So if you can get the .com go for the .com, even if you have to put a hyphen in it to get your exact match names, it’s important.

Another thing you want to consider when you go buy the domain is think about you know possibly that this name could already be trademarked.

Okay. Go onto the USPTO and do a search real quick just to make sure that that name is not trademarked. OK. Because that name is trademarked and you go and start a business on that and you could be running into a whole host of problems down the road with a possible trademark infringement, lawsuits and cease and desist.

I’ve been down that road it’s not a good time. You definitely don’t want to go down that road.

Take a look at that domain and look at it you know typed and written down and just make sure like the combinations of words you use doesn’t like look weird.

Like potentially could put like two words together in the word the kind of form is in the middle is like an adult type of word and you wouldn’t want that.

Something else you want to consider so make sure before you go out and buy your domain kind of write it down type it out.

Just make sure when you look at it at first glance it doesn’t look like anything kind of weird.

One of the last thing to close it out here is you know basically there’s an opportunity sometimes to buy like expired domains.

So there’s a couple auction type houses out there.

Basically what happens when a domain goes into you know someone doesn’t renew it or whatever then they usually have like a month or so that they can pay a premium and renew it.

And if that passes and then it goes into like what’s an auction.

Auction sites snapnames and namejet  are the most popular.

I bought nightpubs.com from an auction for a great price.

I owned it for six or seven years and I haven’t gotten I got around to it but that’s one of those that I’m going to hang on to because potentially I will have an opportunity to build something out one day.

But once you buy expired domain.

Just make sure that you go in to either moz, ahrefs, or majestic and do a check to see if that domain was at one time like spammed.

It’s very possible that that domain was bought by someone they put a site up on it and back when Google’s algorithm was different you could run like a gazillion back links to it.

That is how Google worked back then, it doesn’t work like that now. But if that domain has a gazillion back links that are all spammy and a bunch of junk to it and you go and buy that domain and put it up, Google is going to immediately see all these garbage links going to and it’s going to you know you’re not going to rank.

You have no chance of ranking, it’s going to be banned or worse yet de-indexed!

So, make sure before you go out and spend any money for that matter, obviously want to do this if you buy like an expensive type domain like the $5000 like we just bought. You’d definitely want to run a check to make sure there’s not a bunch of spammy links going to it.

Happy Domaining!!