How To Guide Traffic With Domain Name Portfolios
November 3rd, 2011 by Elan Sherbill
In recent posts, we’ve focused on how e-commerce managers can use inbound marketing techniques to guide traffic to their shopping carts. This post will focus on enticing visitors to your site by building a strategic domain name portfolio.
I’m referring to the practice of identifying, registering, and using domain names that relate to your business for SEO and improving type-in traffic. A good portfolio also prevents competitors from poaching your potential customers.
What Kind Of Domain Names Do I Need?
Your domain name will either be geared toward “brandability or discoverability.” A domain name geared toward branding is one like zappos.com, whose brand and domain name is catchy and memorable, but doesn’t really describe the product or service being offered.
Compare that type of brand and domain name with one like shoebuy.com which basically tells you what you’re going to find on the site. Even though shoebuy.com may not have the same brand recognition as Zappos, since they target the relevant keywords of the shoe market, they turn up pretty high in search engine results related to buying shoes.
The first thing you want to do is identify which keywords are leading to your business. Then see if you can pick up some of that traffic by registering those domain names and tying it into site.
Companies with a strong brand name should invest in domain names that combine your brand with discoverability. For example, Zappos also owns zapposshoes.com and zapposhoes.com, which ties right back into zappos.com when you navigate there directly.
Although part of the strategy behind acquiring these types of domain names is to keep them out of the hands of Zappos’ competitors and cybersquatters, Zappos’ search engine rankings benefit from the keywords these domain names target.
Capitalize On Type-In Traffic…
E-commerce merchants can capitalize on the fact that many people search for products by typing keywords followed by a top level domain into the address bar of their browser. A good example is Lavasoft, a global leader in anti-spyware software.
Even though their homepage URL is geared toward highlighting their brand, they wisely chose to invest in the domain name adaware.co Read the rest of this entry »
