PPC Domain Strategies

As you may know from my blogroll and also some of my previous posts, I’m a big fan of domaining. In my opinion, domaining is the natural extension of pay per click search engine marketing. Today, I’m going to look at domain selection from a different perspective and offer my personal advice on domaining specifically for pay per click websites.

PPC Domains Versus SEO Domains

Blue Network

Let’s start off with an interesting distinction: Sometimes it makes sense to have separate SEO and PPC websites. Whether you’re like me running pay per click campaigns for a large corporation or are a small business owner, there are often cases where you’ll want to have separate domains (and websites) for PPC and SEO. Now, this definitely is not the case all the time. In fact, most of the time, I’m a proponent of leveraging the same website for PPC and organic. Why? You keep a unified brand and get compound effects in your brand equity. However, there are cases where it makes perfect sense to split your domains for these two media channels. I’ll briefly highlight a few of them:

Your SEO site gets a ton of traffic and is very old, but the name doesn’t include the most important keyword(s) from your vertical. For PPC, it’s essential to include the keywords in your URL. Otherwise, your click through rate may be low and you’ll get priced out of the market.
Your vertical is incredibly competitive and you want multiple if not hundreds of PPC websites targeted toward niches within your vertical. Many of the most sophisticated affiliate marketers out there leverage this strategy.
You’re make a lot of money in SEO and want to shield your established SEO site from potential bans against your pay per click activity. Please note that I never advise pushing the limits. It’s all about the long term and your relationships with the search engines. However, recently I have heard stories about advertisers getting banned from PPC with little recourse. Some of these advertisers believe they were banned by mistake. If you’re making a ton of money organically, you may choose to play it safe and only send PPC traffic to new sites that shield the risk.
You’re an affiliate marketer with very little SEO presence, but a huge PPC presence. If you’re in this bucket, you’ll be thinking primarily about URLs that will improve your PPC click through rate and conversion.

PPC Domain Strategy 1: Keywords Are Critical

So we’ve established that there are times where you’ll want to have a separate PPC versus SEO domain strategy. In the remainder of this article, I’ll highlight a few strategies that can work wonders for your PPC click through rate and conversion rate.

First and foremost, make sure the most important keywords in your niche are actually in your domain name. It’s that easy! Google and other search engines will bold each part of your ad that matches the user’s query. The display URL is considered part of your ad. If the keywords are in there, you will see an improved click through rate (and therefore position) not to mention possible improvements to your conversion rate because the ad is more relevant to the user’s query.

Now, you may find when you search for keyword rich URLs in verticals such as insurance, mortgage, debt, education, and others that they’re all taken. My suggestion: Consider the dot net or dot org versions (these work well in PPC), buying your domain on the aftermarket, or leveraging dashes (see next tip).

PPC Domain Strategy 2: Leverage Dashes In Your Domain Name

This is one of my favorite tips because it’s counterintuitive and can save you thousands of dollars while adding huge value. The tip is simple: Consider PPC domains that have dashes in them. In the SEO world, URLs with dashes are often frowned upon as cheap domains for those that can’t afford "real" domains.

However, dashes can really help in PPC. When you separate the words in your URL with dashes, it makes the URL easier to decipher and can improve your click through rate. Moreover, URLs with dashes are cheaper and widely available because at this time they hold little value on the resale market.

PPC Domain Strategy 3: Buy Domains That Read Well With Subdomains

As mentioned earlier, it’s important to include the important keywords in your display URL to improve your click through rate. Now, one way of doing that is registering hundreds of domains and creating hundreds of corresponding microsites for all of the sub-niches within your vertical. However, there exists an easier way to do this: Buy short PPC domains that follow well with subdomains.

Let’s say you’re in the education vertical. If you have a long URL like ApplyForOnlineCollegeDegrees.com, you’re not going to be able to do too much with subdomains because the URL is already getting a bit long and there’s a 35 character maximum in Google’s display URL. Now, let’s say you own the URL Degrees.com. Obviously, this is going to cost you quite a bit of money, but you will have incredible flexibility in using subdomains for your PPC campaigns. For example, you can use Nursing.Degrees.com for your nursing keywords, Law.Degrees.com for your law degrees, and Accounting.Degrees.com for accounting. As an important note, Google does not care if you actually have a site present at these subdomains. The only requirement as of right now is that the root domain Degrees.com works. In sum: Short and flexible domains are awesome for PPC.

To close out, I sincerely hope these tips help in your quest to acquire and build out PPC-specific domains. Many times, your PPC domain strategy has strong parallels to your SEO strategy. However, other times your PPC domain strategy might be very different!

Image of Bull Market © iStockPhoto – enot-poloskun

Domain Investing and URL History

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Nov 18 2

I enjoy investing in domains during my spare time. In my opinion, domains are an amazing investment, just like real estate before the market got crowded and efficient. Each and every day there are awesome inefficiencies in the domain market that give savvy investors the opportunity to unlock great value. However, as with any investment you can quickly lose serious money if you don’t do your due diligence. Today, I’ll discuss one of my domain due diligence checks: The importance of investigating your prospective domain’s PPC search engine history.

Search Engines Store PPC History on a Domain Level

Domain Investing

Google has been focusing on permanently removing websites from AdWords that do not adhere to their policies. Whether a webmaster intentionally violates Google’s policies or does so unknowingly, it’s actually very easy to create bad search engine history for an otherwise good URL. Moreover, when a URL accumulates bad history, that history follows it forever. It doesn’t matter who owns the URL or who’s AdWords account you’re using, the bad history will always be there. The bottom line: Don’t Buy a domain that has bad search engine history, period. I will show you how to test a URL’s history later, but let’s first illustrate the problem with an example.

Example: A Domain With Bad AdWords History

Hypothetically, let’s say Domainer XYZ buys a one-word domain in the financial services industry for $20,000. Domainer XYZ doesn’t feel like developing the site so he simply creates a "doorway page" that basically asks the user to enter their zip code before redirecting to another site that has an affiliate offer. Thin sites like this are clearly against Google’s policy. However, because masters of PPC can make a quick buck (especially if their domain is good), this type of thing happens every single day. Now, let’s say Domainer XYZ advertises this thin user experience on Google AdWords for months and make a few thousand dollars profit.

Months go by and everything is fine. However, one day Google finds out what’s going on and they assign the URL a quality score of 1. Immediately, all of Domainer XYZ’s PPC traffic dries up. Because he has a ton of things going on, Domainer XYZ decides to abandon this site and work on other projects. A few months later, Google emails Domainer XYZ and says his site is permanently banned from Google AdWords. Sound unrealistic? It’s not, trust me! This amazing $20,000 domain is now tarnished forever. Regardless of who owns it, this domain will never be valid in AdWords again. History is stored on the domain level so it does not matter who owns it or which account is used for AdWords.

Now, let’s say you’re a new domain investor and decide to buy this domain from Domainer XYZ. If you haven’t done your due diligence, you could end up with a URL that has been banned from Google AdWords without even knowing it! (Side note: If you’re happening to read this too late and this has already happened to you, I highly recommend calling Google AdWords support. Google is there to help and they may be able to help in your situation, but it’s much easier to walk away from this type of deal than hope you’ll be able to get the quality score reversed after buying.)

Google Makes Quality Score Mistakes From Time To Time

I want to point out that this is just one example of how a domain could accumulate bad history. In my experience, Google is large enough these days and has enough automated processes that innocent websites can get assigned poor quality scores as well. I’ve actually seen this several times. Thus, if you run across a low quality score website, I wouldn’t just assume the seller is a malicious webmaster. At times, it’s just a function of Google’s algorithm making a mistake. The unfortunate part: Google will rarely be able to reverse a quality score mistake unless you’re a huge spender. However, if this does happen to you, never give up! Make sure to contact Google and explain your situation. At the end of the day, they are there to help and please keep a positive and optimistic attitude.

How To Protect Yourself As A Domain Investor

Now, let’s get to the fun part. How do you make absolutely certain that you don’t buy a bad domain that was previously used to abuse AdWords? It’s actually quite easy. First and foremost, just open a Google AdWords account and send traffic to the site (even before you own it). Send traffic to the homepage, but also a variety of deeper landing pages. Invest some real time in this. Let the campaigns sit for a few days. If you’re not seeing good or great quality scores (7 or better) and are not getting consistent click volume, you may have a red flag. Important Disclaimer: Do not send traffic to the site if it’s undeveloped. If you’re buying a URL that currently just has a list of GoDaddy ads, you could do some damage to the site’s history if you send traffic.

In addition to the AdWords check, I highly recommend running your site through the Way Back Machine. Understand the site’s look and feel over the years. Was it ever used as a thin affiliate website? If so, you may have a red flag. However, I don’t like this check as much as the last one because the seller can still hide "marginal activities" underneath and otherwise solid site.

To close out, I hope I’ve helped mitigate some potential downside in your future domain investments. Due diligence can be a long process, but it’s totally worth it. Invest the time and test the pay per click validity of a URL before investing your hard earned money.

Search Marketers Make Excellent Domainers

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 31 4

What do we do in pay per click for a living? We buy keywords. We understand which keywords work the best for the vertical at hand and optimize the heck out of them. What do domainers such as Rick Latona do for a living? They invest in quality domain names. They buy great domains names at low prices and sell them for higher prices. Sometimes, they’ll build out a site before selling the domain and the site (you can think of this as the Internet’s equivalent of flipping a house). I’m here today to make the point that all pay per clickers should spend a portion of their personal time investing in domain names. You can think of it as yet another perk of our great industry!

My Personal Story: How My PPC-Driven Domain Portfolio Got Started

3d Internet Domain Concept

At my first two jobs, I spent a very significant time managing some of the largest pay per click search engine marketing mortgage campaigns on the Internet. Having managing millions of dollars of PPC spend in the mortgage industry, with a focus on mortgage refinance, I became quite the expert on the industry.

As someone who’s always interesting in learning about new niches within online marketing, I became very interested in domaining right around the same time. Putting my two passions together, my strategy became very apparent: Why not leverage my deep understanding of the mortgage industry, pay per click, and keywords in general to pick up some great domain names? While my intent was to pick up several mortgage names, I quickly learned just how saturated the mortgage landscape is and only ended up with one. However, I’m very excited about that one domain because it has 8,000 searches each month based on Google’s Keyword Tool which is rather significant for this competitive industry. Moreover, I registered this domain on the open market leveraging GoDaddy’s standard pricing. This initial purchase turned into an addiction and I now own a nice-sized portfolio of domain names (both undeveloped and also developed) across a multitude of industries, most you’d never guess.

It’s A Fine Line, Do The Right Thing

Before I go too far, I want to highlight the seriousness of doing the right thing and playing the game ethically. There’s a clear separation of work and your personal business. Never mix the two. Don’t even think of your personal business during work hours. It’s all about maturity and ethics. Moreover, never buy a domain name that you feel, in any remote way, is “the wrong thing.” You know what I mean, as a pay per clicker, you’re privy to some pretty serious data. Let me make it clear: I think it’s ok to leverage your understanding of a particular market and keywords in general to research domains on your free time. However, it’s completely wrong to look up actual keywords you’re buying at work on GoDaddy for the purpose of registering them as domain names in your personal portfolio. That keyword list you’re leveraging is company property and is just too specific. Moreover, please keep in mind that you absolutely cannot develop any domains in the same industry as your current employer or even past employer (usually for a period up to 5 years). All the domains I’ve developed are in very different industries than those covered by my employers. I’m serious here: Leverage your judgment and maturity to do the right thing, while also leveraging your pay per click expertise to become the next big shot in the domaining industry!

My Core Domaining Strategy

It’s actually really easy. I’ve only purchased one domain on the secondary market. It was actually more than a domain, it was an acquisition of an existing web property and domain. All of my other domains are from the primary market, meaning I paid the standard registration fee with no markup. I really like Arbel Arif’s Blog because he created “the domain game.” He finds a domain each week with 5,000 or greater monthly exact match searches on Google’s Keyword Tool, a domain tha’’s free for the taking on the primary market. Then, he gives his readers 24 hours to register the domain name. If they don’t, he’ll register it! Bringing this back to my strategy, this is exactly what I do. I search for domains in industries that I love that either have an existing strong search query base or the potential for one in the future. I try to pick industries that I enjoy thoroughly, industries where I can write 100 plus pages of great content, no sweat. The end goal: Develop all of the domains into neat content sites that drive passive income from either AdSense or affiliate programs. The domains that I don’t develop, I plan to hold and then sell for a profit.

Why You Should Be A Domainer

So that’s my strategy, but what about you? I encourage you to do the same for one main reason: You’re an expert about something that others are not. Seriously, you may think there are a lot of competitors out there, but I can assure you that’s not true when you think about it through the lens of your niche interests. Think through your hobbies and interests. If you think hard enough, you’ll find an untapped market, I’m sure of it! Because you’re in the PPC industry, you’re in a unique position to not only pick the best domain names, but also to develop awesome web properties with all the relevant keywords in the titles, meta keywords, meta descriptions, page copy, and image alt tags. Your PPC background is guaranteed to make you a great domainer and part-time web publisher. Moreover, as a recurring theme through my blog, I can’t say enough about the growth and personal learning that will come out of this exercise. This is knowledge and growth that will directly impact your ability to do a better job for your employer, the most important goal of all! Want to learn more? I have learned a world of information from Lisa’s Website.