Tag Archives: domain name

Square Bracket That Company Name – Not

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Company names are a particular interest of mine, particularly those that are not as strong as they should be. The company name is the single most important selling tool the company has. For some companies, it expresses in a few characters the essence of their brand. I was therefore most intrigued to see the following press release:

xplus1logo

NEW YORK, NY, October 16, 2008
[x+1], www.xplusone.com, the leader in predictive marketing, today announced a more powerful version of its patented Predictive Optimization Engine(R) (POE) which will be compatible with a wide range of statistical modeling techniques such as neural networks, linear programming and multi-tree decision support to maximize the return on investment (ROI) of online marketing and advertising campaigns.

I thought at first that there had been some mistake. Perhaps [x+1] was some shorthand that had been mistakenly left in the release and not replaced by the proper company name. However it appears that it really is the company name. That might have worked in the pre-Internet era, but it brings with it all sorts of problems now.

 
Google Ignores Square Brackets

The best advice is to have a name that you own on the Internet. That usually means avoiding any punctuation and ideally accents should be avoided too. It is not even clear what people might search for in this situation. Google ignores the square brackets, but would any potential client know quite what to do. In fact Google serves up X1 Technologies as its guess at the most relevant entry in a search for [x+1]. X1 Technologies is an operating company of Idealab and is headquartered in Pasadena, CA. It had the foresight to buy the great x1.com domain. Names that include the ‘+’ sign are just not allowed.

Related: SWOT That Company Name

Google Keyword Matching Options

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MarketingConsultants.com Is For Sale

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The Domain Name Is On Sale At Sedo

Many Marketing Consultants probably received an e-mail message from H Syed, who is selling the domain, MarketingConsultants.com, on Sedo. At the time of writing, the auction still has about three days to run. The current bid for MarketingConsultants.com is at $9,100.

Although the message came unbidden, I found it excellent. The owner has some strong arguments as to why I and other Marketing Consultants should be interested:

  • MarketingConsultants.com caters to a highly lucrative niche – Offline & Online Marketing.
  • There are 612 Pay-per-click Sponsors for the term “Marketing Consultants” on Google
  • Pay per click rate for “Marketing Consultants” is $3.00-4.72 at Google Adwords!
  • This premium domain will bring instant brand recognition!
  • MarketingConsultants.com would bring authenticity and trustworthiness to any Marketing Consultancy or Marketing service business.
  • 10 Year Old Domains, which are authority aged, will easily get top ranks in Search engines.
  • Sub-domains can be used for high search engine rankings. For example, if the new
    owner creates sub-domain Internet.MarketingConsultants.com, then the site is most
    likely to top search engines for the term “internet marketing consultant”.
  • The domain MarketingConsultants.com is concise and to the point & it would describe the site business very well.

If I believed in the power of the domain, I would certainly find the arguments persuasive. However Google is a dominant influence in the online marketplace. For some time, many people already have been doing a Google search to find a domain, rather than typing in the domain. Now we have the new browser, Chrome, from Google that has only one field, the OmniSearch box, to direct where you are going. This may make the value of a domain even lower.

As we have noted before, the important factor is to own the keyword or keyword phrase on the Internet. That means being high in the rankings in appropriate Google keyword searches. Currently in a search for Marketing consultants, SMM is at number three. Since this is only one of the many keyword phrases that we wish to be visible for, buying a domain is not a high priority for us. Perhaps other marketing consultants who are having more difficulty in getting online visibility may find it worth their while buying MarketingConsultants.com. We certainly wish H. Syed well in the search for a suitable buyer. The domain name, MarketingConsultants.com, has a great deal of merit.

[Update as of September 17, 2008 18:00 hr PST] The auction is now over and the MarketingConsultants.com domain was acquired by the second bidder for $ 9,200 USD. I presume we will know in due course who that bidder was as the domain becomes more visible.

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Choosing Domain Names Alphabetically

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There was an amusing aspect to the Google Search Engine Ranking Factors version 2 that SEOmoz put out this week. This report compares and contrasts the views of 37 experts in Search Engine Optimization on how Google ranks web page factors in keyword searches. It makes for interesting reading particularly given the consensus that developed on many of the most important factors.

Early in the alphabet is better than being at the end.

One small feature of the presentation is that the experts were listed, not in order of their website domains, but in alphabetical order of their names. More interestingly it was not in order of their family names but rather their first names. With a name like Barry Welford, I have been accustomed throughout my life and particularly at school to be at the end of alphabetical line-ups. If the BPWrap domain name had been used, then this also would have given an early mention in the alphabetical listing as it does in the DMOZ listing of similar websites. Using first names, we came third in the list, which is most pleasing. Of course the real winner was the owner of SEObook. Normally he would be at the back of the line with the other W’s. Aaron Wall came out first in this list. His parents were obviously most astute when they named their baby.

It’s an important consideration in choosing a domain name. There are many listings that are arranged alphabetically. If at all possible, why not choose something that appears early in the alphabet. Indeed if you’re really serious you couldn’t do better than the domain that Chris Winfield has chosen for his website on Search, Design and Social. That’s 10e20.com. You can’t do much better than that.

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