That's fine. I placed a bid on TinyGirls.com yesterday for $3,500 as that is all I thought that domain was worth but it sold for $12,000.

Check DNJournal.com and you will see 1000's of domain names that go for amounts that just do not make sense.

I respect that you believe I am over pricing my domains but Google pays quite a bit of attention to domain keyword content without overspill or hyphens and if you doubt that (I used to - don't anymore) then you need to open a few Moonfruit.com (or Geocities or another free website builder) and use a keyword domain with one and none a non-keyword domain with the other and see which one gets in the top ten returns for the keyword search term.

I did this with IrishChauffeurs.com - I set up two sites on Moonfruit.com and made sure each one had five incoming links and five outgoing. I made the sites exactly the same and with four weeks I was number one in over 80 countries worldwide for the search term 'Irish Chauffeurs'.

'Irish Chaffeurs' does NOT have a high search volume at all so it made it easy for me but the site with the poor keyword domain couldn't get ranked by Google even though it had the same amount of links (the links are still out there but I took the Moonfruit site down).

It used to be that type in traffic was the only reason to buy a keyword domain name but I honestly believe that direct navigation is almost dead. I mean just there today I google'd YouTube and also Gmail -- why didn't I just type them in -- laziness? These two exmaples (YouTube & Gmail) are small urls - how about the large ones out there.

My point is that people are paying big money for a reason and that is because of their keyword content. One they are easier too remember but most importantly search engines rank pages higher with EXACT keyword content without hyphens. That is why the TRAFFIC auction gets such high prices for their domain names as thos guys know what's what with SEO.

A lot of people made money off telling people for years that keyword content didn't matter and if you pay them enough money they had all the keys to getting you site ranked. Just Google SEO and you'll see the promises.

Now I'm not saying that they are all conmen as some of them are very good and getting their clients ranked but it's usually through hard graft with getting links well placed both incoming and outgoing and most importantly getting listed on the right pages and not just some of those massive link jungles out there.

I bought a few domains that were blacklisted by Google and it took me ages getting the site un-blocked by them. Everytime I had a problem getting ranked with a new domain that I was messing about with I'd find 20 or 30 links in those link farms by the previous owners.

Look Davys Stockbrokers doesn't need IrishStockbrokers.com to get highly ranked - they could be called anything and they would be top as they are so well linked from well established websites that Google would trust.

However, I know that I (or anyone with good SEO skills) could get ranked in the top five positions of Google for the search term 'Irish Stockbrokers' with this domain. Now, you may say big 'whoppie de da' (or something along those lines) .. but take a look at Davys profits last year and tell me you wouldn't like a slice.

Hell I'd like a sliver of those profits and that domain does what it says on the tin. You wouldn't forget it and I bet the traffic I get are looking for Davy's anyway and they show up as the top ad I think

So, that's my view and I respect all of yours. I am a newbie here so don't want to step on any toes.

Declan

I don't think you need anyone to summarise anything as I'm sure you were just trying to be .. well I'm sure but exactly, but hey that's fine. Selling domain names for so long now that you develop a thick skin for people saying your domains are not worth much.

Remember, out of the hundreds of guys who will knock someones domain names and say they are overpriced that seller just needs one person to disagree and buy it. At the end of the day .. only someone who actually wants to develop a domain name and use it knows what it's worth to them.

One of the comments so far was that I'm saying my domain names are worth x,y & z because 'Google likes keywords' - well they can be as flippant as they wish but the fact is Google ranks keyword domain names far higher than better linked pages that have been around longer.

Take BabyGifts.ie as an example. There have been many many websites selling baby gifts in Ireland before they came along but as soon as they did they ranked No1 on Google and this can only be because of the 'exact' keyword content of the domain.

A classic example is CoachHireDublin.com -- type into Google 'dublin coach hire' and CoachHireDublin.com is no where to be seen. However, type in 'Coach Hire Dublin' and it's No1! Only change is the order of the words IN the domain.

I have found that when your title page's first words matches your domain this also has a masssive impact on your page ranking. I have tested this out by changing my title page's order of keywords and seen my ranking drop to 800th from 3rd or 4th in Google on some sites I've been developing.

Declan

Have to agree....

I get a number 10 ranking on google.com for "irish mobile" within 3mts of setting up shop and no seo work......I didn't even sort out the meta tags yet..

Lovley Jubly

Hi Googlebomber

I find Moonfruit.com very useful for finding out how you'll rank with regards to keyword domains attached to a basic website with no backlinks etc. They are free flash sites and you can attach up to three domains to a site that you'd set up in two minutes.

You can set page title, meta tags, keywords etc. I only do that after I know that Google is already crawling my site though. I usually park on NameDrive.com which gets me crawled with a few weeks due to the links from the ads I guess.

I have been asking NameDrive for ages to allow their users to ad their own page title, meta tags etc but they tell me they have a deal with Google not to allow to much user control for some bizarre reason.

I was with Trafficz.com for ages which to allow all this control but Google dropped every one of the thousands of domains that they had and accused them of spamming -- which is far enough I guess as sites that were coming No1 in Google were just parked pages which I find really frustrating myself.

Here's a great link to see where a paticiular domain finishes with regards to a search term. It's tell you the position in over 100 countries worldwide:

Google Position Checker

Declan

Hi Declan

Thanks for the tips but you have me lost....

I set up a site quickly on moonfruit Irish Mobile I then ran it through the keyword google checker but it showed no results for any keyword......

Sorry for being a dummy but where do I go from here...

You have my attention anyway. Is this your main business? I've often wondered whether people make a living out of this and i guess so now. I heard about a guy in Asia who has a full-time team of people buying domain names with spelling mistakes i.e www.goggle.com , etc - Supposed to be mega rich! How many domains do you own?

So you buy them cheap on DomainsAreFree - $3.99 Cheap Domain Name Registration , transfer them over to Complete Web Solutions: domains, hosting, site builders and SSL. , and park them on NameDrive.com ?

Is this where you do the bulk of your selling? I don't mind if you tell me to **** off by the way

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Hi Declan,
Good to see another domainer around ( I'm not a web developer ).
I'm a newbie here too soo a bit shy..
As much as I know any domain is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
If you want to ask € 7000 or whatever for IrishCelticGifts.com is fine by me but please if you REALLY want to sell it to a big comp. or player or...whoever is willing to pay this money for it,please,please ..please do it the right way.From ALL the ccTLDs in the world only one is registered - the .com-yours
Now a guy like me come and register .net,co.uk, etc ( because THEY'RE ALL FREE on this minute ) and f...k you up.
I do let it go this time ( just joking - I've no interest in this name ) but please after you read this go and buy at least the net,co.uk,.eu,us and mobi ...just to look a bit serious when you deal with a real buyer.

Hope again that you take my post in a "constructive way" ( no intention in fighting or offending someone or...)
Cheers,
Raul.

Hi Raul,

I hear what your saying and I use to get Net and Org versions of all my domains but unless it's a massive domain I have no interest. I do own a few but I just don't think that .nets interest people and because I am mainly interested in 'keyword domains' then I am not bothered with them.

When was the last time you seen a .Net come up in the first page of any search term on Google? It's rear.

I agree though to a point and if I was launching a website tomorrow (I will be soon God willing) and was ploughing some cash into then yes I would .Net it, .Org it, hyphen it, misspell it etc etc as I wouldn't want anyone confusing my customers.

That's why I feel so strongly about geneic domains being turned over to very wealthy customers for no other reason that they have very big financial muscles. If your using terms like MySpace.co.uk then that is differnet as that's just messing about.

However, if you just so happen to have a website called My Space and had it years before MySpace.com came along then I don't think they should get it. If they want it let them shell out for it.

Declan

The problem is that the panelist felt that the owners were passing off ...

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Okay, I just checked out your site - it's IrishMobile.com right? - and I've decided to sue you and you should get a letter any day now from my legal team as I own IrishMobilePhones.com and I think it's clear you pretending to be me

Just kidding, listen your page is crawledby Google as when you search for 'irishmobile.com' on Google it's there so that's the first part now you need to open a small site on Moonfruit and make sure that you call the tile page Irish Mobile and add the keywords starting with the first two being Irish Mobile and the decription the same.

Add other test afterwards just to make sure that the text on your main page is maybe 200 words so that the first two words 'irish mobile' are only 1 or 2 % of the total words. Scather the word mobile and irish in those other 200 also.

Okay now you have the site you have added the meta tags, keywords, description and page title now you just need to change your A name on your domains to their Moonfruits ISP .. if your Registrar doen't allow this then change your DNS to to that of MyDomain.com and open a free account with thm and host your domain there as they will let you point the A name of your domain to Moonfruits ISP no problem.

Then you need to sit back and wait a few weeks to get crawled by Google and see where they put you. Moonfruit will list your site three times in there directory so that should at least get you somewhere.

The LONGER your domain though the easier it is as there is less people trying to get their sites coming up for that search term. Like I had no problem getting HandcraftedWoodenToys.com coming up first as there is very little sites dedicated to such toys. A very nice search volume though - think I cam up with a figure of 40 hits a day which wasn't bad for such a small niche business that sells toys for 100's of dollars. Even thought about getting a guy in England that makes handcrafted wooden horses for kids to supply me but then I lost interest

Declan

ps .. good luck with your domain and if you need any help just post and I'll do my best but it I usually only get online once or twice a day as I do in fact have a day job