Part 2 of a series on SEO considerations when building a website from concept to completion.
If you took a handful of successful websites across a variety of markets, I’d bet that the one factor that they all share is one of choosing the right keywords. Whether you discover the your keywords by hook or by crook, once you’re ranking for them,  a simple equation begins to work in your favour; the right keywords = the right website traffic. It makes sense to find, and target, these keywords from the start and, as we discussed last time, if possible reflect them within your domain name.
Over the next two posts I’m going to be outlining a couple of quick and free keyword tricks to help you find the right opportunities for your website. These are of course totally by ‘hook’ methods, if anyone out there does have any tips that work by ‘crook’, I’d love to know ;-)
How to use keyword research to discover keyword rich domains.
There are many pro keyword tools out there on the market, some of these really are excellent and I use two in particular myself. However, if you’re not obsessing about keywords on a daily basis, these tools prove expensive. So, if you are running one or two company/personal websites, you need to find another way of researching your keywords effectively. Whatever your wish maybe the web usually provides and who better to help us with this task than Google? The very people we want to seduce with our new website.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool is perhaps the place I visit most often online. Officially, this tool is there to entice you into spending your hard earned pennies on Google Sponsored Ads, which when used properly can a highly lucrative advertising medium – more on this in a later post. Unofficially, Google’s Keyword Tool is where those of us with ambitions to crash the top ten organic rankings can quickly find the right keywords to get excited about.
From this webpage, Google will tell us approximately how many times any keyword we type into their search box was searched for across the previous month. If that wasn’t enough of a freebie, this tool will also tell us about a number of permutations of your original keyword that people search for, along with search numbers for last month.
Let’s apply this fine free tool from Google and find a domain for our new website:
  1. Open Google’s Keyword Tool.
  2. Make sure your regional settings read “English, United Kingdom” (see below) – unless you are targeting another part of the world and hence this should be set to your target region.
  3. Type in your ‘wish-word’ ie the keyword you believe you would like to rank no1 for oneday. I’ll stick with ‘buy shoes’ from the last post by way of example.
  4. Type in the captcha and click ‘Get Keywords Ideas’ (click the image below to enlarge).
  5. Unless you’ve been making words up, you should now be presented with a good page full of keywords.
  6. Let’s filter them so they are easier for us to assess. First, pull down on ‘match type’ (see below) and set to ‘exact’. You should now see the search volume figures beside all of your keywords drop in dramatic fashion! Exact match means that Google gives us figures for people typing in the ‘exact’ keywords we queried, ie ‘buy shoes’ and not ’shoes buy’ or ’shoes to buy’ etc. Only ever buy a keyword rich domain based on ‘exact’ match figures, they will give you far more realistic web traffic expectations.
  7. Next, click on ‘Local Search Volume’. This will rank the keywords in order of search number. ‘Local’ refers to the UK here. Click below to increase image size.
  8. Open up a second browser window, pressing ‘Ctrl & T’ together is a nice shortcut for doing this quickly. Browse to your favourite domain retailer and check the keywords as domain names in order of search volume eg ‘buyshoes.co.uk’, ‘buyshoesonline.co.uk’ etc. It’ good to use a domain reseller that quickly shows you a number of domain options for a given search, 123-Reg has a nice, easy screen for checking options. By typing a co.uk domain into their search box, 123-Reg will let you know instantly whether or not the .com, .net and other versions of your domain are available as well as your co.uk.
  9. Everybody has different ideas as to which version of a domain you should buy or avoid. If you work mainly in UK markets, as I do, then the .co.uk is definitely your preferred choice – Google tends to rank .co.uk domains higher for searches made from the UK. I also always buy the .com version if it’s available too.
  10. Often things are quite this easy, in which case I apply the following rules, which have worked for me so far (geared towards UK markets);
    - search for yourkeyphrase.co.uk domains first
    - if this has already gone, and your keyword has no more than two, occasionally three, words in total, search for your keyphrase hyphenated, eg keyword-keyword.co.uk
    - if both natural and hyphenated co.uk domains have gone, or your keyphrase is more than three words, search for .org.uk versions of your domain. These domains have ranked very well for me in UK markets.
    - 80% of the time, the above steps will find you a good, keyword rich domain. If so, check the .com version of your domain, just in case it’s free too. If you don’t uncover any domain options, move on to the next keyword from your Google list.
Overall, domain checking does take a little time and you will probably have to check a fair few domains before you uncover one that you are happy with. Try to focus on matching the highest traffic volume keyword against a domain that you feel could represent your business/website effectively. Some people don’t like .org.uk domains (I agree these are harder to utilise for conventional ‘offline’ businesses), some people don’t like hyphens. That’s fine, choose a domain that you feel good about in all of it’s extension, connotation (does the domain truly reflect what you offer?) and traffic potential. Getting all of those three right pretty much means you’ve found a domain worth bagging. Don’t be frightened to note a few domain possibilities down and think about them for a day or so. I often do this, and so far the domain has always been waiting for me when I’ve returned to buy.
Going back to our working example of ‘buy shoes’, let’s see what potential domains we have uncovered? Click to enlarge the image below.
The fourth keyword I checked for domain potential uncovered some possibilities. As you can see above, www.buycheapshoes.org.uk is available to buy. With Google showing 1000 exact match searches in January 2010, I’d say that’s a pretty good domain for a ‘cost effective’ online shoe retailer to consider. If the .org.uk doesn’t feel right then a little bit of digging will also show that ‘buy-cheap-shoes.co.uk’ is also available to buy, as is ‘buy-cheap-shoes.com’. Overall, I tend to struggle more with hyphens than I do with org.uk, but’s that nothing other than personal preference! Both versions of the domain will work well in targeting the keyword ‘buy cheap shoes’ for Google top ten ranking.
Don’t Go Domain Crazy
Here’s a word of warning. Many people I work with online tend to go a tad domain crazy when we delve into domain research. It is better to spend some time researching and thinking about the right domain for you than quickly buying ten or twenty domains in the name of ‘freezing out the competition.’ For example, the above domain ‘buycheapshoes.org.uk’ is definitely not right for you if your stock retails at the higher end of the market! One of the great things about the internet is that there is always another keyword opportunity/keyword rich domain to find. So, find the right one for you then spend your time promoting it. If you haven’t found the right one, keep searching. Try new keywords altogether, ask your friends and family what they would search for when looking for your goods/services. You will always be surprised.
Next time, we’ll look at how we can delve deeper into Google’s keyword data and find more keywords for use throughout our new website.