Domain Name Selection & Hunting

Picking a domain name is a major choice for most people looking to build a new website, so I wanted to be sure to talk about a few approaches that you can use.

Exact Match Domain (EMD)

The most commonly used strategy to pick a domain name is to get an exact match .com, also called an EMD, for your primary keyword phrase. Using the phrase for my niche site, that would mean using the domain name downcomforterguide.com.

This is a strategy that I have used repeatedly for more than a decade with excellent results. Even though most people believe that the power behind an EMD is dead these days, I still debate that they maintain at least some power and always will.

I definitely agree that EMDs do not have as much power as they used to. For this reason, it is really up to you what type of domain name you would like to use for your site.

If you can find an EMD .com for your target keyword phrase that looks to be a great phrase with all of the other research you have done so far, then you should probably get it because it certainly won't hurt and you also don't want someone else competing with you using that domain.

If the EMD you want is not available, that is still OK, but I do recommend making sure that particular domain isn't ranked in the top 10 for your target phrase. If this is the case, you could be eternally competing with that particular domain.

Branded Domains

The other option is to go with a branded domain, which would essentially make you look more like a business. With this option, you really have unlimited choices in what you could pick, making it a viable option for any site. However, I still like to make sure that someone with the EMD is going to be a major competitor for my site.

You can go for a completely branded name or a mix of a branded domain and an EMD. For example, I could make a site called RyanDownComforter.com or RyanDownGuide.com - both of these contain a word completely unrelated to my niche and then two words that are from my target keyword phrase.

You can even do the same and only use one word from your target keyword phrase, like DownEmporium.com - the key is to use a word or combination of words that still has some type of relation to your target phrase because it will help you with search rankings.

Available Domain Name Hunting

If you only have one or a few potential domain names that you may want to use, searching to find out if they are available may not be a big deal. However, if you have a large keyword list and want to find out if you can get an EMD .com from that list, you may find that this could take forever to do.

I want to take just a minute to show you my personal strategy for hunting for EMDs that I have been using for years.

First, go back to Google Keyword Planner and search your target phrase and/or a general phrase for your niche to get a large list of keywords.

In the Keyword ideas tab of the Keyword Planner, look for the downward pointing arrow button in the top-right:

Just click on that arrow to open a window to download an Excel CSV file with those keywords - this is just a spreadsheet file.

Then open that file to get access to the full keyword list that you can copy and paste. If you don't have a program that can open a CSV file, like Microsoft Office, try OpenOffice.org (free, open source -remake of Microsoft Office basically).

This Excel CSV file uses Tabs as the delimiter - if you're importing the file into Open Office, you will need to select the checkbox for Tab to get the file to open correctly. Take a look at the picture below to see how this should look. Once you click on the checkbox for Tab, the field information will split correctly into columns.

Now when I open the file, I can see all of the information for those keyword phrases that includes a column for nothing but the keywords.

If I click on the second row under the keyword column (which says down comforter), I can then scroll down the page to find result number 501. Then just hold down the SHIFT button and click the keyword for row number 501:

This highlights a total of 500 keywords for me. Now just press CTRL + C (to copy those keywords).

Next, open the program Notepad and paste all of those keywords into it - these steps could also be done in the spreadsheet program, but by default, the CSV file will be read-only, so it won't let you perform these operations on it without saving it to a permanent file first.

All I want to do here is simply delete all of the spaces in these keywords. To do this quickly, click Edit and then Replace from the menus at the top of Notepad.

In the Replace window, just type in a single space into the Find what text box, and then click on the Replace All button.

Once you have done this, you should see a list of keywords without spaces:

Select and COPY all of the keywords in Notepad now.

Then open a browser window for GoDaddy to look to see if there is an available EMD for one or more of these keywords.

I have picked out some discount coupons that are available for GoDaddy and my recommended hosting company, HostGator:

http://supertargeting.com/domain-name-and-website-hosting/

If you begin your GoDaddy domain name search by clicking on the banner on that page, you can get your initial registration purchase of the domain for a steep discount. You can also get a discount on HostGator hosting by originating a purchase through that page.

On the GoDaddy home page, look for the Bulk Search text link to the left of the large domain search bar.

Now PASTE (CTRL + V) all of the keywords without spaces into the Bulk Search box for GoDaddy -also be sure to click on the .com checkbox to the right:

Now all you need to do is click the GO button and GoDaddy will do the rest of the work for you to check the availability on 500 EMDs all at once! 500 is the max amount they will search with each attempt, which is why I only had you select 500 of the keywords even though 800 were in that CSV file. You could then return to that file to get the other 300 keywords to search for even more.

From that one search of 500 keywords, I was able to find 186 EMDs:

Again, this is just a strategy that I will use if I want to hunt through a large list of keywords to find an 

EMD, but if I already have a preferred primary keyword phrase that I want to use, I may just search for that by itself instead of doing a bulk search.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be building DownComforterGuide.com, which was one of the keywords in that list.