Pornoclast

The first thing that any webmaster whether they be a newbie or an experienced webmaster needs to think about upon deciding on a new project is a domain registration.  Domain registration and the selection of a domain name can be a critical step in the success of a new online adult project, and there are as many approaches to this as there are domain registrants.

In fact, often times finding a domain name and selecting a niche are often inextricably linked, which leads to the two major strains of belief amongst adult webmasters in their approach to conceptual development and domain name selection.  On the one hand, there are those who believe that the concept is key and the domain name is near irrelevant as it is the promotional skill in developing the domain as a destination that is key. On the other hand are those who believe that a domain name that is keyword based is absolutely critical to the success of a project, particularly for a traffic/affiliate based program.

The reality is that both approaches are part of the tool box and elements of a successful web promotional strategy…..

The ultimate value of your planned site and its domain name will in reality be provided by the efforts you put into it in terms of targeting your audience, developing key attributes of the site, design and development of your offering, driving traffic to it, and ultimately monetizing that traffic.  One can easily divorce these activities from the act of selecting a domain name.  There are many exceptional websites out there where the domain name has no seeming relationship to a keyword that relates to the concept or offering.  In the adult world, one of the oldest is Persian Kitty @ persiankitty.com.  Other examples include Greenguys Link O Rama @ link-o-rama.com, the Huns Yellow Pages @ thehun.net (disproving that .net names cannot be made valuable), or Richard’s Realm at richards-realm.com.

While none of these sites have particularly adult related domain names, and they have become quite famous, they are all to greater or lesser degrees memorable – and easily memorable at that.  This reinforces both realities of domain names in that they do not necessarily need to be keyword rich domain names but they should be memorable.

Later in the development  of the inernet, sites like Pussy.com @ pussy.com, World Sex @ worldsex.com, and Stocking Tease @ stocking-tease.com used the concept of keyword rich domain names to their advantage.  The development of Pussy.com, which rocketed to the top tier of visited adult websites is a clear indication that keyword rich domain names can help the search engine relevancy of a website.

Particularly for a new website, however, it has been demonstrated that a keyword rich domain name will help the search engine relevancy for that site.  You will find many people that will disagree with this notion, but the simple fact that Google, for example, highlights the search keyword in urls is but one example of the fact that it is recognized.  Furthermore, should your url and site name be identical, you will almost always find that your site will rank near the top for that keyword or phrase once it is indexed by a search engine – unless of course it is a highly competitive keyword or phrase with many other sites featuring that keyword or phrase in their urls and prominently within their site.  A great blog post on the subject is on the v7 website that expresses this concept quite logically.

Many people are asserting, however, that the era of keyword rich domain names is over.  This, however, is mostly wishful thinking as the market for keyword rich domain aftermarket sales continues to grow by over 40% per year, across all categories.

None of this means that a keyword in your domain will necessarily work.  If the construction of the domain name is clumsy or not usable as a site name, and I have seen some strange constructings like “anderotickinky” for a site called Erotic and Kinky, it is less likely to work.  In other words, a 50 character keyword rich domain that is nonsensical will have, I believe, no value at all.  It also is no substitute for building and promoting your site effectively.  Consider a keyword rich domain to be just one more tool that you have acquired that will increase the probability of your sucess, not insure it.

All of which leads one to a conundrum about selecting a domain name.  In my exprience, the following guidelines are important to follow when selecting a domain name for your adult site – and they are listed in order of their relative importance:

1.  Memorable:  Make sure it is memorable; this is a key criteria.

2.  Title Relevancy:  It has been my experience that titles (bracketed by your H1 tags) that are the same or close to the same as your url gives you a boost in your initial search relevancy.

3.  Short Titles/Domain Names:  In general, short is good.

4.  Keyword Rich:  Atempting to find a domain name with good keyword relevancy can help you launch your site with the search engines, as long as it is sensical, searched for, memorable, relevant to your site title, and reasonably short.

5. TLD (.com, .net., .info, etc.):  In the domain aftermarket (more about this in the future), .com domains are by far and away the most valuable.  There is a long held belief that .com TLD’s get a higher search engine position.  Put it this way, if you find a good domain name relevant to your title, keywords, that is short and memorable and is only available as a .net, take the advice of those that believe promotion is everything and take it.  While it is a pretty good idea to favor .com TLD’s for future aftermarket opportunities, it is not critical to your sucess.  Our experience shows that .com, .net, .info, and .biz are all good promotional TLD’s.  With the changes in the .org administration, it is best to stay away from those for adult domains for the time being.

To summarize, find a memorable name, it is better if it is the title of your website, it even better if it is shortish, even better if it your main keyword is in the url.  So, memorable first, relevant to your title second, shortish third, and keyword rich fourth.  If you can accomplish all four things, you will have demonstrable search engine relevancy and marketing advantages.  If it is a .com name, that is even better but not particularly necessary.

The above represent a pretty tough set of criteria as the number of potential “available” domain names shrink every day.  The good news is that there are a variety of methods of obtaining domain names these days:  from the availabe and unregistered pool at any domain registrant, from aftermarket resellers either privately or through brokers such as Sedo, to pre-release future dropped domains, and through buying pending deletion and dropped domains with residual traffic or PR value. 

In our next post, we will discuss some of the tools on the net to assist you in identifying a good available domain as well as those “pending deletion” and how to go after those pesky “pending deletion” domains.

Related posts

• No related posts.