One of the first questions faced when creating a new website for your organisation is that of domain name.
Typically an organisation already has an existing brand, and therefore, has already decided upon the domain name they will choose for their future website, ie. www.<insert brand name here>.com (or something related).
However did you know that for new brands, your choice of domain name can actually make the difference between getting 40,500 visitors to your website from Day One and none at all?
How to get 40,500 visitors to your site from day one
There are generally two choices we give clients when creating a website from scratch.
We call these approaches “Brand Down” and “Consumer Up” and these choices don’t apply to any other field of marketing except online:
1) “Brand Down”
By far the most common approach is “Brand Down”.
Here, the client already has an existing brand and therefore has already chosen to use its name (or derivative) as the domain for the new website:
eg. Brand: McDonalds -> Website: http://www.mcdonalds.com
2) “Consumer Up”
Far less common is the “Consumer Up” approach.
That is we find out what consumers are searching for and use search data to create a brand (& hence, a domain):
eg. People are searching for “singing lessons“ -> Website: http://www.singinglessons.com
“Brand Down” vs “Consumer Up”
Why would one choose “Consumer Up” over “Brand Down”?
The short answer is: ranking on the first page of Google.
Although Google never releases its exact ranking algorithm, for low competition keywords, the domain name is an important ranking factor that trumps all others.
“Consumer Up” Case Study
One of our New Media Mentoring clients, Mr Josh Fuhrmeister, is a music producer based in Melbourne, Australia.
Josh has recently become known as being a specialist producer for the Melbourne dance community – in particular for the very popular Zouk subculture.
We began his online marketing strategy using the Consumer Up approach and within 4 days:
- Got his new website, zoukmusic.net, ranked on the 1st page of Google (see screen capture below):
First page google ranking
- …with virtually no content! (see screen capture below of his site that got ranked):
zoukmusic.net: the site as it was ranked
The diagram below is an SEO analysis of the first page Google search results:
As can be seen in the SEO analysis, zoukmusic.net:
- Ranks at number 6 on page 1 of Google in Australia when searching for ‘zouk music’, yet:
- Has a Pagerank (PR) of 0
- Has a Domain Age (Age) of 0
- Has a Backlink (BL) count to the page of 0
- Has a Backlink count to the entire site (BLS) of 0
- Has a .gov/.edu Backlink count (TBL) to the site of 0
- Outranks 4 other websites on the first page that each have higher PageRanks of PR 3 and 4
- Outranks 4 other websites on the first page that are several years older
- Outranks result 9 on the first page that has 462 backlinks to that page
- Outranks result 7, 8 and 10 that have over 100,000 backlinks to those sites
- Outranked the 1,250,000 other ‘zouk music’ pages indexed by Google
How did zoukmusic.net rank on the first page of Google with:
- Virtually no content?
- No PageRank?
- No Domain Age?
- No Backlinks to the page?
- No Backlinks to the site?
Relevance is rewarded
The answer has to do with Google’s goal: to return the most relevant search results to the searcher.
If an organisation has gone to the trouble of using a search term as their domain name upon which they will build their brand – that is a significant signal to Google that the content of that site will presumably be relevant to that search term.
It would be rather foolish to create a site called zoukmusic.net then write about a completely different topic, say cars.
In our case study, the domain name alone of zoukmusic.net tells Google that the site is intentionally dedicated to those searching for “zouk music”.
This is relevance – and relevance is rewarded by Google.
The real benefit of “Consumer Up”
As good as getting a first page Google ranking is, the real benefit of the “Consumer Up” approach is, of course, traffic.
Using the Google Keyword Tool (screen capture below) we can see that a first page ranking on Google will give zoukmusic.net a decent share of the 40,500 Global Searchers searching for ‘zouk music’ last month.
A Google Insights analysis (screen capture below) confirms that the trend across the years (from 2004 till today) for those searching for ‘zouk music’ is consistent – ie. it is not seasonal.
This simple analysis reveals:
- A Consumer Up approach will give zoukmusic.net a share of the 40,500 Global Monthly searches assuming a first page ranking in Google
- The overall trend for the search term, zouk music, is consistent and so should bring a consistent monthly flow of future traffic
- Josh’s goal is to now rank even higher than #6 by writing more regular, relevant content, therefore gaining even more market share of the 40,500 Global Monthly searches.
The consequence of the “Brand Down” approach
Of course, Josh could have decided to build a brand of his own choosing, eg. joshfuhrmeister.com.
The consequences of such a decision would be:
- At launch, Google will not rank joshfuhrmeister.com for anything to do with the product/service he is offering – zouk music production
- At launch, Google will most probably rank joshfuhrmeister.com for searches to do with ‘josh fuhrmeister’.
- At launch, since only those who know him will be searching for his name, joshfurmeister.com will have little or no traffic.
- Josh will have to spend time and effort writing content and gaining online credibility (ie. backlinks) that will ultimately convince Google that ‘josh fuhrmeister’ is synonymous with ‘zouk music’.
- This process may take months, if not years.
As can be seen, a “Consumer Up” approach to branding can make quite a difference to the “Brand Down” approach at launch day.
When would you pursue “Consumer Up” versus “Brand Down”?
The Consumer Up approach is more appropriate where:
- There is no real existing brand awareness of the products/services on offer
- There is no/little external marketing initiatives (online or offline)
- There is a regular (not seasonal) high volume of specific searches
- The intent of the searches aligns with the offering of the website
- A headstart in free traffic is required/desired
- The overall website is targeted to a specific niche closely related to the keyword search
- The products/services on offer are relatively generic and are readily attainable through several different vendors
The Brand Down approach is more appropriate where:
- There is a desire /budget to build a unique brand name from scratch
- There is no ready search demand for what is on offer, or
- There is already massive brand awareness such that a relatively small amount of free traffic provided by the Consumer Up approach wont make a significant difference
- The products/services on offer are unique and are not easily attainable elsewhere
- The brand is being built over the long term
- The brand targets more than one niche
- When the brand will be monitored for mentions/sentiment on the internet
Conclusion: Brand Down versus Consumer Up
The decision over Domain name is not an insignificant one.
In come cases it can mean the difference between getting 40,500 visitors to your site from Day One and none at all.
When deciding over the domain name for your organisation’s new web presence, you should consider whether you should use an existing brand or create one based on the regular monthly search volume.
Brand Down or Consumer Up?
One approach isn’t necessarily better than the other but each has its own consequences.
Choose wisely.