How to select an exact match domain name

To Brand or Not to Brand
First and foremost you have to decide what is right for you. If you’re more concerned with branding and don’t get as excited about the traffic you could potentially receive from a high value exact match domain, then exact match is less of an issue. You should also take your competition into consideration. Is your niche saturated? Are the people in your niche generally SEO savvy or have they not caught on? One way to find out is to type your topic into Google and analyze the results. You can easily do this with a tool such as SEO toolbar from SEOBook. When you have the SEO toolbar installed and you perform a search on Google, the results show up with all the important information you need to determine how competitive your marketplace is. This tool allows you to see the volume of your competitor’s backlinks, whether or not they are listed in important directories such as DMOZ, what their Alexa rank is, and other valuable information listed directly below the result.

Keyword Selection and Domain Brainstorming
Once you get a better understanding of your market and determine whether or not you can devote the time necessary to move perform well in this niche, the next step is to locate available domains. Start brainstorming and write down several variations of the top 5 or so keywords for your market. Plug these variations into keyword research tools such as Google or Wordstream to see traffic estimates and remember to specify exact in the search. If you’re pleased with the amount of search traffic that particular keyword phrases yield, start checking if they are available for purchase or if they are already taken.

Premium Exact Match Domains May Cost a Pretty Penny
Typically, popular keyword phrases are not available, and if they are, the price for a premium exact match tends to be significantly higher. There are various places to look for premium domain names and some of the sites to utilize are Buy Domains, Sedo, and Flippa. Don’t be discouraged if all of the names you’re looking up are already taken, and don’t rule out a .net or .org extension. In terms of SEO, .com, .net, and .org are all eligible for an exact match bonus.

If all of the extensions are taken for the phrases you’re typing in, you might want to consider using a catchy name with only one of your major keywords in the title. Although you won’t be eligible for the exact match bonus, you still have a keyword in the domain and it might actually work out better for you in the long term if you focus on a catchy name that is good for branding rather than exact match traffic.

Exact Match is not a Sure Thing
Remember exact match traffic is not a sure thing! If you think you can buy a domain name that gets a ton of exact match traffic and sit back and get rich, you need a reality check. Just because you buy an exact match domain doesn’t eliminate the hard work that it takes to actually start ranking for your keywords. This is especially true in a saturated market. Buying an exact match only increases your chances of ranking but remember, it doesn’t guarantee them.

Guest post by Sarah Harris, of Zen College Life, the premier directory for online schools. Find out more information about criminal justice degrees.

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