How do we optimize long tail keyword domains? Are SEOing this type of domains worth it? Does Google frown on domain that “appears” to play around with fair competition in Search Engine Marketing?

Although I personally prefer to work with short domains that are not particularly keyword based…it’s important to mention that as “unbrandable” as a long tail domain is, it does have an added dynamic SEO advantage.

Let’s consider the domains ExampleABCD.com where:

Example= word1
A= word2
B= word3
C= word4

and D= word5

A domain in which you have five words can be potentially broken down to 4 to 6 keyword sets.

EXAMPLE:

ExampleB.com

AC.com

ExampleBC.com

ABC.com

ExampleAB.com

If you focus on “breaking” the domain down to other keyword sets and optimize around those keywords, you’re bound to experience a significant increase in organic traffic. Doing this will definitely require for you to do link building using general and niche directories, blog post, article marketing, blog roll and other methods. There will be odds as you will face competition on high volume searches but once you get to the top 15…

Ask me if I need say more.

Surprisingly, the word “calender” (with an E!) aint meaningless either in the world of domaining. Although, the word cannot be found in your dictionary, it’s probably the most common of spelling mistakes. The word has exact global monthly searches of about 368,000…Yes, with that wrong spelling that could have gotten your a D in English!

Estibot appraisal? $ 562,000 USD for CalendEr.com The story doesnt end here. If you scroll down the appraisal page…the related sales shows surprising statistics:

Calender.me $372 USD

Calender.net $5,000 USD

Topcalender.com $735 USD

Auctioncalender.com $10,000 USD

All these domains have ONE thing in common: they are all misspelled!

Those who already know about .co may skip the first paragraph. Just making things easier for you!

.co is the Internet Country Top Level Domain for Colombia (ccTLD). Most good .com domains are already taken making it difficult for many business owners to build their site on a  .com domain. .CO, even being the country level domain for Columbia is being promoted as .COmpany, .COrporation…the promotion aims at helping trademark holders secure their names and business owners to acquire a reasonable alternative to .com. Besides, .CO is 33.33% faster to type than .com!

Following the extension’s opening to public registration a few days ago, many domainers went about registering as many .co domains they could (the registration cost of .co averages about $28). By the end of the first day, almost all possible reasonably good sounding domains were gone. Many webmasters I have come across spent more than $1000 registering .co domains. Some spent 5 figure amount!!

Now, I like to see .co domains as future investment. Future investment because you’re unlikely to find a buyer for your just-registered .co domains at a high price in a month from now…unless of course if you own a killer domain like Colombia.co or E.co (sold at Sedo for $81000) etc. In this .co domain buying spree, I remain skeptical: What happened to .im(promoted as Instant Messaging), .ws(promoted as World Site) and .me(promoted as “Its about YOU!”) was sad! Resellers who bought domains on those extensions in the past are trying hard to get rid of them at low $xx today. Others letting them expire!!

When a new extension is released, many investors jump into buying domains without thinking much about whether the investment will actually pay off! Sure…there is no surefire way to know how an extension will do. But when I see similar situation go downhill in the past, why not evaluate the aftermarket first? In other words, I believe it’d be unwise to bust my $xxx on an unknown future.

With $1000, I’d buy a couple good .coms than 30 .cos to be absolutely honest. However, for the helluvit, I did register just one .co domain…468.co!!

I wish .co better luck than .ws and .me and XQ Domains will join the aftermarket action if things look promising!(…) However, I am positive that if the extension is not extensively marketed and USED by developers and companies alike in the coming 6 years, the current  hype is likely to be sad news for .co investors.

I participated in a few discussions on this and today it seems important to elaborate this with the readers. Here is my take on this:

Technically, I classify dropped domains in two different types:

1) Expired-Dropped and 2) Dropped-Established

Let’s see what there Expired-dropped domains are. Let’s say you had bought a domain 3 years ago with the idea of starting an online business. You registered the domain for a year after which it had to be renewed. At some point and after long consideration since you bought the domain, you gave up the idea of your online “venture”…Believe me, you wouldnt be the only one!

So you didn’t renew the domain despite repeated notices from the registrar. Consequently, the domain expired and DROPPED…

There was never a website built on it and therefore you’re unlikely to have any backlink whatsoever. The domain is probably never even indexed by seach engines. This type of domains, if registered are treated as almost fresh by search engines and you are unlikely to face any penality when it comes to rankings. All you need to do is develop the website and build links around it and overtime your site will rank!

2) This second type of dropped domains (Dropped-Established as I call it) are a little trickier to handle. Let’s suppose you purchase example.com from a reseller. You notice a few backlinks and some PageRank in the domain. You want to develop the domain to a site on let’s say…”Luxury Furniture”

Now, if it’s not a new domain and has PageRank and backlinks, it’s almost certain that the domain was being used for a website in the past. If example.com was a website on tattoo designs in the past and was abandoned by then owner, search engines WILL see your attempt to develop this domain to a furniture website as manipulative. The domain was previously indexed and categorized as Furniture domain in the past by search engines. If you’re trying to use the domain for a website on a completely different niche, you will eventually lose existing backlinks at some point, which will also lead the domain to losing its current PageRank.

Paying $xxx for this type of endeavor is not foolproof. Therefore, if you’re planning on developing an old domain you want to make sure the type of back links the domain currently has if any. Also, it pays off to have a look at Archive.org’s Wayback Machine and see what site had run on the domain in the past.

Choosing the right domain for one’s business is vital. Domain is your face to the world. It’s what visitors feel about you at first sight and what they remember later…Buying a good domain gives business owners a sense of pride and can become the turning point when it comes to the future growth of business.

As Robert Frost wrote:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I chose the one less traveled by…And THAT has made all the difference”

Your domain is one of the two roads…