A friend recently approached me to discuss a batch of domains he had bought on ebay.

The background was that he saw a domain he wanted on ebay but it was part of a “mixed bag” as follows

Some with traffic domains - A couple of expired forums and the like
A few LLLL.com’s with bad letters
A few LLLLL.com’s and
Some rubbish .net’s, .info’s etc

He asked me what I would do?

Well the first priority was to gain maximum benefit from the domains with residual traffic. Obviously this isn’t going to last forever. People will realise their favourite forum is no more and indexed pages will gradually drop out of search engine.
In short, traffic will never increase as domains become derelict.

I recommended either redeveloping these ASAP or selling them on.
(One good way to benefit from domains is to put a basic wordpress blog on and sign up to myarticlenetwork - you can get free content as often as you like).

The LLLL.com and LLLL.com’s I recommended holding MAKING SURE THAT the whois details are changed over.

and the rest, I recommend he dropped - MAKING SURE that the domains are not set to autorenew using his existing credit card details and thus costing him money…

What do you think?

Domain Names

Domain names are a key component to a web presence. Domain names convert the numerical format that computers use to identify a website into a text based name that is easy for human users to understand and recall.

This section of our site, contains a large number of domain names related articles, covering many different aspects of selecting and using a domain name.

The domain name registration market is now very competitive with many thousands of services operating around the universe. As the competition is big enough in the market you can find many domain names discounts. I will recommend to take a look at Godaddy and try to find Godaddy coupons there are thousands of sites that offer that kind of coupons, my favorite is Coupon Codes Mall.

Domain names now have many forms known as Top Level Domain Types or TLD’s. The most fully known in the market TLD remains .com but local names are a rapidly growing area such as .co.uk’s

Discount Domains is a leading UK domain name registration service and offers web hosting and web design services as well as domains.

If you need help or advice with your domain name selection please post a comment here and let´s get a great discussion.

There is no secret that a domain name plays a critical role in a company’s overall brand strategy. But what role does a domain name play when building the most important brand you have control over, your own personal brand? This valuable, but less implemented, brand strategy is arguably one of the best investments that many individuals have yet to take full advantage of in today’s wired world.

One of the most effective ways to build personal brand is through a domain name. To show what I mean, let’s look at Michael Simmons of Success Manifesto.com, a successful entrepreneur who is using a domain name to build his personal brand while also helping bring attention to his new book The Student Success Manifesto, The Guide to Creating a life of Passion, Purpose and Prosperity.

At the age of 21, Michael is a student at the Stern School of Business at New York University, a writer, and an award-winning entrepreneur. Michael has written popular articles on entrepreneurship that have been published by Entrepreneur.com, College Bound Magazines, and Whizteens in Business. He has a unique perspective on the importance of personal brand and how it plays a role in helping people achieve their goals.

According to Michael’s book, knowing how to brand yourself is critical. In the same way that companies have a brand, individuals have one. By becoming aware that you are a brand, you too can leverage it to achieve your goals. In The Student Success Manifesto, personal brand is composed of three parts. I have listed the three parts below, but for the purpose of this article I have changed the meanings to better relate them to domain names:

1: Communication - The overall message a domain name says about you 2: Credentials - The phrasing in the domain name that communicates experience 3: Reputation -The phrasing in the domain name that communicates trust

In order to have a positive image associated with a personal brand it is important to have a domain name that is able to bring all three of these parts together to deliver one meaningful message. Just think of the benefits of having your own personal brand associated with a well known and successful domain name! An individual’s association with a highly credible, trusted and meaningful domain name can be leveraged to get jobs, network with people, acquire customers and clients or fulfill any other desirable goal. By having a domain name associated with these three intangible assets, personal brand can be leveraged to achieve any purpose.

The Owner of the book knows how to leverage a domain name to improve personal brand recognition. Michael is not only the successful brand strategist behind SuccessManifesto.com but he also co-founded Princeton WebSolutions.com when he was only sixteen years old. The company later went on to become the #1 youth-run web development company in the nation in the year 2000. Michael credits much of his personal brand building success to his carefully planned domain name strategy.

Michael’s latest domain name strategy involves the launch of SuccessManifesto.com, a domain names and web site that prominently displays his personal brand as the main theme. The site features his own image, personal achievements, and an online journal that helps bridge the gap between him and his inspired readers. The domain name and web site also serves the purpose of helping him gain credibility with young people and giving them access to his new book The Student Success Manifesto.

Another interesting brand strategy Michael has implemented with his domain name and web site is his ability to blend his company brand with his own personal brand. After visiting SuccessManifesto.com, visitors come away with the perception that Michael Simmons, the person, displays the same characteristics and values that the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation, his company, holds.

Whether he is starting a new business or promoting a book, Michael has always demonstrated an ability to use a highly brand-able, trusted and persuasive domain name as part of his strategy. This method has been used to build credibility with his target market. His innovative approach of using a domain name for his personal brand building through SuccessManifesto.com gives Michael a clear and competitive advantage over other individuals who do not have a domain name or are only using conventional means to build their personal brand. To date, using a domain name as the foundation to build one’s own brand can still be considered an unconventional route. The good news is that only success and growth have come to individuals who have chosen this less traveled path towards personal brand building.

Most businesses don’t like to use subdomains because they feel like they give them a disadvantage in many areas, such as having a prefix name before your web-site, being ignored by bots and index spiders in search engines and all in all, it just doesn’t look right. So let's check our facts on subdomains.

A subdomain is substitute or second-level of a domain. A regular domain looks as follows: www.jamesbrown.com . A sub domain looks like this

http://bravenet.jamesbrown.com. Subdomains do not have www on the front of them. All subs start with “http://subdomain/maindomain.com pattern of identification.

Subdomains rank efficiently well. Search engine spiders and bots are not prejudiced when it comes to the ranking of subdomains and regular domains. As long as your site has the right SEO keywords and has been optimized, whether you have a subdomain or regular domain name doesn’t make a difference at all.

Let's pretend that you site has a lot of categories in it. If you were to submit to a search engine, you could submit each subdomain as its own individual category and still get a good ranking.  Each subdomain would be looked at by search engines as a new site with its own index or home page. You may want to try creating subfolders on the subdomain to get around this so that search engines can read the folder as one set of site information.

People worry about their subdomain getting banned if the main domain name is banned. If the main domain is banned, it will have an effect on the subdomain. You see this happen often in adult content sites that have violated certain agreements that they have signed with a provider that does not want a domain used for adult material.

Again, there is nothing wrong with using a subdomain. If you want to develop each subdomain as its own entity, then by all means, do so.If not, get yourself a main domain name and use that as a certified landing page.

Use common sense when choosing a domain name because your domain name, or URL, can have an impact in both the search engine marketing and offline marketing of your web-site. Long or difficult to spell domain names can make people ignore your web site and it has to be pretty good for them to stick with it (for an example, go to www.thedolphinsmakemecry.com website.  Short domain names register better with people’s memory and are easy to remember.

Obtain a domain name that will help you in your marketing niche and strategy. Like I stated before, you can use your business name as your URL. If your business name is already taken by someone else then get a URL name close to what you are doing. Purchasing a business name domain name isn’t the only way to go, and when a keyword domain name could do just fine.

If you plan on using the .net extension, you may want to wait on deciding your name until after you have found an available domain name that is suitable to your type of business. If you follow the steps below, you should be okay in identifying your name brand to the internet community.

Structure Your Brand Name. Put your domain name on your letterhead, business card, printed materials; put it on your phone recording, the side of your car; don’t forget to include it with your email.

Keep it Short & Memorable ?Don’t get a URL that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet.

Secure a .com URL - I strongly recommend purchasing a .com domain name as opposed to a .net, .info, .biz or anything else. If your chosen domain name is not available in a .com, keep looking until you find one that isn't taken. There is nothing wrong with the other extensions but when you have a .com extension, it sounds like you're been on the net a long time.

Remember, your domain name is an extension of your business and your brand of product or service.

Does the length of your website’s domain name registration affect search engine optimization and results?

Should you renew your domain name for a long period of time? And if so, how long is long enough? If you want to stay ahead of your competition, then you might consider looking at the length of time your competitors have registered their domain names. If your competitors have generally renewed their domain names for one or two years, you might consider registering your domain name for 5 or 10 years. While putting off your domain name’s expiration date might help your search engine rankings, keep in mind that this may be only a small victory when it comes to search engine marketing.

Its good business sense to register a domain for at least 10 years. You don’t want to deal with the process annual process of renewing them every year. It’t best to obtain the domain names that you want to keep for a while and renew then on a 5 to 10 year plan.

If your domain name expires, there’s a good chance that someone will register your domain name immediately after it expires. If, for whatever reason, you don’t renew your domain name, someone watching a ‘watch list’ of expiring domain names will try to capitalize on the online business that you’ve built over the years. They know that there is potential website traffic they can have simply by renewing your old domain name. By renewing your domain name for several years, your domain name won't expire for a while, and it won't be opened up to expired domain name buyers.

If you really want to stay ahead of the competition, you might consider registering or renewing your domain name for 100 years. Currently, Network Solutions (www.netsol.com) is the only registrar offering the 100 year option, which costs $999.00. GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com), currently offers to renew or register a domain name for 10 years, at a discount of $6.95 per year.

Yes, you can lose critical positioning in the search engines if you don’t reregister your domain name in time. You may have to start the SEO process all over again!