Longtail domains

[heidrek]

I've become interested in longtail domains which get significant google searches for their specific domain name as a query.

Because the query is so long there is usually little direct competition for it so I'm thinkgin that I should be able to rank fairly well in it once I get indexed.

My question to the assorted geniuses (genii?) is this:

Have you tried a similar strategy? has it worked?

[namedia]

It's an interesting strategy but what you need to look at is the level of competition for each keyword as well as the longevity of the search volume. A keyword set that gets searched 30,000 times this month but then fades away to only a few hundred next month isn't valuable at all. That is the biggest problem with SEO and is what makes it a very overrated marketing method. Basically you need to look for consistency.

[peteVA]

I'd say long-tail metas and long-tail PPC keywords, but don't think I'd go that route with domains. Few key them in, it's mostly links that brings traffic, so why bother the few who do key it in with a longnamewithnospacing. Or-a-bunch-of-hyphens?

[heidrek]

Agree that search volume is key, but what really matters is what proportion of searches you rank well enough in to actually caprutre any traffic.

Take mortgages for example. good paying keyword, lots of searches, but flooded with competition. Trying to capture traffic on a search for "mortgage" is pointless unless you are already very well established.

"mortgage refinancing information online" (for example) might get searched only a fraction of the amount, but if you can rank well in the results (because of reduced direct competition) you'll still get probably about the same amount of traffic, but with a more specific query to work with.

This is really the rub for someone like me - trying to find a way to actually capture search traffic. Unless I'm willing to invest $$$ I can't realistically expect to capture any of the really competitive and highly searched keywords. For this ereason I'm looking at trying to corner niche searches.

there's a lot I don't know about SEO though, so I'd appreciate any informative feedback I can get.

here's my main question:

Lets say I register mortgagehomeloanrefinancequotes.com as a new domain. PR 0, and set up a few links to it, add some keyword rich content including good title and description and get it indexed.

some one googles "mortgage home loan refinance quotes"

What is going to be #1 on the results page? my PR 0 domain that fits their query exactly, or say mortgagehomeloanquotes.com which is Pr2 but isn't an exact match and doesn't have such targeted content, title, description etc? (this is all just examples by the way - purely hypothetical)

Appreciate any comments from those who truely understand the ins and outs of seo!

[namedia]

PR is not always overly important for rankings but can be when two sites have almost identical content and keywords. If in your example the PR2 site has the same amount of relevant content and backlinks as your site does, it will most likely rank higher. I had a PR2 4-letter domain that was totally irrelevant to the content I placed on it, yet it outranked sites with domains that were specifically targeted to the niche and had relevant content. From that experience, I would say the PR2 would outrank you. However, if you have more relevant, well worded, unique and backlinked content you should outrank them.


It appears that you are very focused on SEO and that's fine if you have the know how to do it all yourself for free. From personal experience though, other traffic generation methods are much more effective. I recently launched a website and before launch, I had established a joint venture with an industry stalwart whereby their site would host my ads and in return, I would pay them a small percentage of the profits the site earned. In this case, the amount they receive is directly proportional to the effectiveness of the advertising and I'm not paying them for an unknown result. On the very first day of launch my site received 160 uniques and 700 page views and hasn't looked back since. In 2 weeks the alexa rank shot from 7,000,000 to 182,000. Using SEO, this would require either a) at least a month or 2 of constant, brain-numbing work with an unknown and somewhat uncontrollable outcome (what if the searches for your keyword drop substantially within that month) or b) a significant amount of money spent on link building or hiring a professional; again for an uncontrollable result.

SEO has become somewhat of an industry standard yet, for the really successful sites out there, it plays basically no role whatsoever

Please consider this when you venture into traffic generation.

[heidrek]

Thanks for the info namedia - great feedback to have.

How's the venture doing? taking off well I hope.

[namedia]

No worries heidrek.

The venture has actually been more of an instant success than I expected so it's moving along nicely, it might be up for sale soon to move it on to the next stage of growth

[heidrek]

LOL!

homeloanmortgagemortgagerefinance.com - Traffic Details from Alexa

Alexa rank 5M worldwide, 811K in the USA - GTFO!

gotta be a glitch of some sort, no way can this site stay under 1M in the US.

time to focus on monetising it better I guess!