Over the years there have been a number of record-breaking domain name sales: Internet.com, VacationRental.com and, at $35.6 million, Insurance.com. However, UK domain names (those ending in .co.uk) have not historically traded for anywhere near as much money.
Back in 2008, travel agency First Choice Holidays bought holidays.co.uk for £560,000, a then-unthinkable sum of money. This particular record stood for 7 years, until last month when gold.co.uk was bought for £600,000. The domain now belongs to an online gold dealer, BullionByPost.
The ROI of a relevant brand name
Although your business can choose virtually any domain name for a website, there is a distinct ROI value in one that relates directly to your business. A URL that matches your company name, industry, or location/country, will help customers find your site more easily.
BullionByPost have both angles covered, owning bullionbypost.co.uk and gold.co.uk. Choosing an unrelated domain name would mean expending a significant marketing budget to try and build the instinctive customer connection required – which would then divert funds from the important task of publicising the brand and services/products.
By choosing a domain name that relates directly to your business, there’s a good chance that potential and new customers will ‘guess’ your URL address correctly, increasing your web traffic and ultimately sales too, as BullionByPost is hoping, thus returning your investment on the domain name.
The SEO value of a relevant brand name
Having a relevant domain name is also important for helping search engines discover and index your website correctly. Among the many factors that search engines use to determine rankings is the actual address of your site.
The domain name, gold.co.uk, when combined with the text on the page tells Google that the associated website is in the gold/bullion industry. Choosing an unrelated address – like cfghop.com – gives no clues to Google what the site is about, potentially affecting ranking.
Almost all of your first-time customers will come via Google or Bing, so it makes sense to ensure that your site is displayed in the top 10 search engine results.
Cost effective gLTD alternatives
Mr Halliday-Stein, founder of BullionByPost, admits that the cost may surprise some people, commenting in an interview: “We haven’t earned the money back yet, but I’m taking a 20-year view on it”. Not every small business can afford a £600,000 investment, particularly over a twenty year period.
If a specific domain is not available, you may need to get creative. Although .com and .co.uk are the most recognisable address types, ICANN, who oversee the global domain name addressing system, has authorised hundreds of new alternatives called global top level domains (gTLDs).
gTLDs allow businesses to choose addresses that fit their industry, rather than their geographic location. BullionByPost could have chosen a variation of the new .gold gTLD for instance, giving them options like gold.gold or bullionbypost.gold.
There are plenty of gTLD options that provide scope for a new, creative website address – think creatively to find something that suits the needs of your business, your customers and the search engines.
If you need help choosing a website address, or in registering, transferring or protecting your domain name, advice is available from our expert team at Broadband Cloud Solutions.
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