Importance of Keyword Searches for Domain Buying

When buying a keyword domain name, it is important to know how many people search daily for the keywords that make up the domain name. You might have the most targeted website for the keywords, rank number one in the search engines and have the best website design, but if nobody is searching for those keywords on a frequent basis, it will be difficult to earn a return on your investment.
Many people reference Google’s search results to cite how much information exists for certain keywords. While Google will show how many times the keyword is mentioned on the Internet, it fails to show how many people are actually searching for it. Using Google for this can be misleading, because there can be much more information about a topic than people searching for it.
The Overture search tool   was a good indicator of the number of searches that were performed monthly but Yahoo has eliminated that tool.   I’ve used Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery before and both offer good indications of what keywords people search. If you own the domain name of these keywords, you have a strong search engine optimization advantage over everyone else. Once you upload relevant content and have someone optimize your site, you could see an increase in revenue.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. Couldnt agree more, just checked yesterday my new site New York ……. …….. and it was up rankes #3 at one of the most searched terms on on the topic. I am estimating about 1000 searches on it a month. Before, i wouldn’t be in top 100. Just because the name of domain fits, i ranked up much higher then some of the more major competitors.

  2. It is important to know how many monthly searches your domain is going to receive , but if you are invested in niches where the price of advertising is very competitive you can make just as much if not more from lesser searched terms. ie: Local Real estate , Local Insurance ect.

  3. Top notch blog with very interesting articles, everyday I seem to learn something new about the domain world, thanks to you…keep up the good work!.

  4. I also use Google Trends in conjunction with a tool like Keyword Discovery: http://www.google.com/trends
    Though that too is sometimes misleading, and has to be followed up by keyword research.
    For example, comparing “classical” with “classical music” on Google Trends shows that one word is so much more popular. But Keyword Discovery will tell you just as many people use the two word combo. So who to believe? There are some explanations which might take long, I think Google Trends aggregates data from few points to show the results.

  5. Great post, and I’m not trying to be rude, but there is no way in hell Keyword Discovery is accurate. I used it last year to buy EcommerceConsulting.com and the Keyword Discovery estimates were WAY off.

    My purchase and a screengrab of the estimates are here:
    http://www.marketingheadhunter.com/executive_search/2007/02/consulting.html

    Good estimates of 3-4 clicks per day are FAR more accurate than the 45,000 yearly clicks Keyword Discovery foretold.

    You’ve been warned.

    Kind regards,
    Harry

    ***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
    Hi Harry,
    On your website, you posted that Keyword Discovery quoted that “the term “ecommerce consulting” gets 45,032 search inquiries a year.” When I did a search a second ago, this is what I found:
    Query Searches
    ecommerce consulting 180
    consulting ecommerce 21
    it consulting ecommerce 21
    sales crm scm erp consulting ecommerce 20
    ecommerce business consulting phoenix 1
    ecommerce business consulting 1
    In any case, if 45,000 people searched for the term, and you get around 1,500 unique visitors navigating, this equals about 3% of the searchers are landing on your website – which is pretty good in my opinion. It looks like your site is somewhere around #15 in the Google natural search results, so when these 45,000 people search, they have to pass on the paid searches and the higher ranked websites in organic search to get to your website. If this is correct, getting 3% of the search traffic, when the name ecommerceconsulting.com is a bit on the long side for a type-in name, I don’t think you are in bad shape. If I am confused, I apologize.

  6. Elliot, your math is exactly right. But my hurried comment contained a typo: “Good estimates of 3-4 clicks per day are FAR more accurate …” should read “GOOGLE [Adwords] estimates of 3-4 clicks per day are FAR more accurate …” Oops.

    In other words, the phrase seems to get 1200-1500 searches per year, and I am only getting a percentage of those.

    While your mileage may vary, I can say that Keyword Discovery has been used by me to justify several acquisitions that were home runs, such as:

    managementrecruiter.com
    logisitcsrecruiter.com
    financerecruiter.com

    However, the acquisition of searchengineexperts.com was as inflated as ecommerceconsulting.com

    Again, my point to your readers is that KW does not offer “air tight” projections.

    Love your blog, and appreciate your analysis.

    Kind regards,
    Harry

    ***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
    “Elliot, your math is exactly right.”
    First time those words have been said to me!

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