Buy Multiple Domains. Dominate Your Market

Why would you get another domain if you already have one for your business?  Because you can get years of ongoing extra free traffic coming to your business with every strategically bought domain you own.  There are many well documented case studies of companies growing their business through strategic buying of multiple domain names, who then dominate specific areas of their market and kill off their competitors (case studies below).  

It’s a strategy that works and is especially easy because each domain is pivotal in bringing in more income that pays for the next domain and so on. 

What sort of domain should I buy?

An Exact Match Domain (EMD) is a domain name which contains the exact keyword that people are searching for rather than your business, product or brand name.  For Example PestControlSydney.com.au is an EMD for the keyword “Pest Control Sydney”. 

You see, not everyone knows who you are and so when they do need what you do, they tend to search for “what it is you do”, or “what your product does” rather than your name.  For example, they are more likely to search for “Pest Control Sydney” than “Rentokil”.

Having an Exact Match Domain helps you rank higher in the search results for that main keyword phrase because Google sees the domain as being more relevant to the people searching for that keyword phrase. In turn you get more visitors to your website.

Better Ranking = More Visitors
More Visitors = More Customers
More Customers = More Income.

 And this extra traffic you get is ‘Free Income’ (more on that later).

How do I really know if an EMD ranks?

The easiest way to see if EMDs rank well is do a search on Google for some local business industries and see if you can find any exact match domains (EMDs).  If they're being used correctly (and not just ‘saved for later with no website' or have silly SEO tricks applied to them that gets them penalised by Google) you should find them doing really well on page 1.  An EMD gives you an amazing bump in results – even ahead of multi-million dollar companies who pay mega bucks to get their website ranked high.

Here's some examples of local EMD websites currently ranking #1 and #2

What difference does a higher rank make?

The difference between a #1 position and a #3 position is HUGE.

This chart shows the percentage of people who click on the first result as compared to the second result and so on.  So someone in position #1 gets a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 36%, meaning 36% of all people who search for a particular keyword phrase will click on the 1st result.  If you look at these figures in a different way, you’ll notice that jumping from #3 to position #2 means an almost 30% increase in visitors.  But from #2 to #1 is a mind boggling 300% jump in visitor numbers.  The extra visitors you get (meaning more income) is significant.

You can see how important it is to be in the number 1 spot.  And the only domain almost guaranteed to be in the number 1 spot for an Australian searching Google is an exact match Australian com.au site.

So what search volume are we talking about here anyway?

It's impossible to share with you all the search results for every industry and every city in this post, so to get your own industry figures it’s probably best that you take a look for yourself.  If you go to google.com.au and search for ‘Google Keyword Planner' you will see a tool that google lets you use for free.  You may need to sign up for a free account to use it, but that won't take long.

The figures tell you how many people search for any given keyword anywhere in the world.

When you go into this tool, make sure you select the area you are in, so you only get LOCAL results (Australia wide or down to the city level).

As an example, here's the number of people searching for ”Office Fitouts Sydney” each month and what Google charges someone if they want to run an ad on the same page as the search results for that keyword.

What this is telling us is if you're happy to pay Google to run ads for you, you'll be paying $19.24 per CLICK anytime someone clicks on your ad.

This could be a genuine customer or it could just as easily be a tire kicker, a competitor, an upset employee wanting to cost you money or even some school kid playing pranks.  It does not guarantee a phone call or enquiry and sometimes you may need 10 of these clicks to get a phone call (so the office fitouts people are paying a lot per phone call).

This is important to understand because you need to know what your competitors are paying for traffic right now.  And this is what you could be paying too – unless you can get these visitors for free.

If we look back at the above Google stats, we can see that 590 people are looking for “Office Fitouts Sydney” each month.  There's actually loads more people looking for office fitouts, but these people are doing a general search – meaning these are the ones who have no relationship with anyone (otherwise they would search for a company or brand).

So from these 590 people, if you were in the #1 spot, you would expect to get around 36% of these people clicking on your organic result.  This means you will get 212 people visiting your site each month that you would otherwise need to pay google $19.24 each for.

The bottom line is that whilst everyone else has to pay Google ‘per click’ for their traffic, this domain could generate for you 212 visits x $19.24 = $4,078 per month of advertising value – absolutely free, month after month forever.

It actually gets even better because you’ll also get traffic from a bunch of other keywords directly related to your exact match domain name over time as you build out your site.

So with that understanding, how would you value OfficeFitoutsSydney.com.au?

One way to look at the value is what is a fair ROI (return on investment).  

Would it be fair to expect 100% of your investment back in 12 months?  

If so, calculating the value of this domain purely on the advertising value alone, it would be worth around 12 months of advertising value which is $48,936.  In other words for anyone else they would need to pay $48,936 to Google for that same volume of traffic through paid ads (each year!).  But you would get that traffic for free, year on year until you decide to sell your domain.

Are you starting to see the value in that extra domain now?

Do Domains Increase In Value?

Domains are an investment because they are an appreciating asset (and therefore should not be seen as an ‘expense’).  There's already 3,000,000 domains sold in Australia and when you consider there are only 500,000 words in the English dictionary it won't take long to realise every one word, two word and most three word phrases are already registered by someone.  And as with anything rare – as time moves on, the better domain names become more and more valuable as they become more and more rare. 

It's something you can always sell when you're done with it because there is only ever one person in Australia that can own that particular name.

Which to buy?  .com.au, .com, .net.au, .net

Google likes to give the most relevant result wherever people are searching in the world.  If you’re searching for something in Australia (especially a local business), you can expect to see domains ending in .au at the top of the page before domains that are not from Australia.  That’s only logical.

All being equal, Google offers up local results in this order .com.au, .net.au, org.au and then any overseas domains like .com, .net, .org and so on.  So as long as there is no one local who is pushing their australian EMD, you may be quite lucky with an overseas domain… for a while.  But all your efforts will quickly vanish the minute your Australian counterpart finds and optimises the local variant (and you've just seen what 1 higher position can give you).

Is there a Domain Price Guide?

When domains are sold privately, the sale is generally not published, but there are a lot of domains that are sold publicly at public auctions.  

These sale prices below give you a great insight into what domains do sell for if they are sold in a hurry. 

Remember these are ‘fire sale’ public auctions which would be the lowest you could expect to sell your domain for.

Summary

Multiple domains can help you get more traffic which gives you more customers.  It doesn't matter whether you're a local locksmith or a big national, the strategy is the same.  The beauty with the internet is that you have the opportunity as a small guy to look like a big guy by dominating the market with very little cost. 

The way you can start to dominate your market is firstly take a look at what some of the major keywords are in your industry using the free google keyword planner.  Next, find the best exact match domains available that match those keywords.  Then build a small site with maybe 10 pages of content around that keyword and watch it start to rank.  A few links pointing to that site will certainly help it rank faster but don't overdo it.  Too much SEO (link building etc) on an EMD is not needed and can actually work against the site.  If you need help in this area just give us a call.

Looking for More leads?

At Online Crowd we specialise in helping small business get more leads.  If you’d like to learn more about our lead generation systems or discuss how we can help you promote and grow your business, click on contact us and leave us a message or call us on 1800 767 750.

We also have over 1,000 premium Australian Domains currently for sale.  If you'd like to discuss how we can help you, call anytime.

Further reading:

Forbes – One Domain is Never Enough
From Beep To CarLoans – How A Domain Name Change Resulted In A 40 Million Turnover Boost
Netfleet Talks Domain Names
The Value Of Better Domain Names
Customers Trust Exact Match Domains

PDF: How Many Domains Do You Need To Succeed