Buy the Domain, Not the Keyword: e-Commerce Times
Matt Bentley has a good article regarding buying domains to augment paid search campaigns.
People in the domain circle have been talking regarding the value of domains names as opposed to paid search campaigns for years, but the internet community is starting to pick up on this concept. E-Commerce Times just published an article by Matt Bentley regarding why firms ought to buy domain names to augment their paid search campaigns.
Domain prices are soaring as firms figure out the value of this free form of traffic. Why pay $5 per click to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) for eternity when you can get free traffic for life for one upfront payment? Bentley points to examples such as School.com and OfficeSupplies.com (both Office Depot); Gift.com (JCPenney); Investor.com (MSN Money); and StudentLoan.com (Citibank).
Bentley makes a couple statements that are dead on:
Online consumers are turning to these “parked” Web sites — pages populated mostly by relevant keyword ads — since they can sometimes produce better, quicker results that avoid the manipulated listings that increasingly clog search engine results for highly commercial keyword terms.
It’s ironic but true. When I’m looking to buy something I don’t bother with Google’s organic listings. I turn straight to its paid listings. Following all, humans are often times better determinants of search results than a computer. If a firm is willing to shell out money for a search term, the landing page I go to will be very relevant to my search.
Bentley suggests firms acquire the keyword domains that perform best for them on their search campaigns. I recently sold one of these domains to a software firm. Another benefit that Bentley doesn’t mention is that these domains can improve ROI on your paid campaigns as well.
Bentley continues:
As a marketer, investing in direct navigation generally pays for itself within a year or two, dependent of course on the quality of the domain and how well you can convert the traffic into sales. Still, instead of being an expense as with purchasing clicks from a search engine, acquiring a domain (or portfolio of domains) for direct navigation purposes becomes an asset that retains its value (possibly even increasing in value) and can even be resold again in the future ought to your marketing objectives change…Only a few very savvy firms have by now discovered that in this click-hungry era where many firms blow tens of thousands of dollars each month on PPC advertising, that purchasing targeted generic domain names delivers the same type of high quality targeted visitors at a much, much lower cost.”
Yes, only a few savvy firms have figured this out. But as firms spend thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click, they’ll soon figure out that paying $25,000 or more for a domain name is a great deal.
