Purchasing domain names

[jwmcphee]

How does this forum feel about purchasing domain names that look like this: www-keyword.com? Would this be considered spamming?

[seobook]

well that domain name would likely be terrible for branding purposes.

[dannysullivan]

Yes, www-keyword isn't very descriptive. I'd change keyword for something related to your product. You know, say you sell widgets. Then maybe www-widgets

Seriously, please see our standing thread on the topic: Commonly Asked: Keywords & Hyphens In Domains & URLs

[andrewgoodman]

FYI, this question appears to stem from a recommended strategy to use keyword-rich domains to squeeze better performance out of AdWords campaigns.

By recommended, I mean recommended by some well known "info marketers" who by the way seem to be running an auction for quasi-keyword-rich domains that *they* own, such as www-football.com.

Note, this is actually www.www-football.com, not www.football.com.

Here's the upshot:

- having a domain that includes www and a hyphen gives the user the impression that the domain is actually a common keyword rich domain (they assume the www isn't part of the domain). so example would be http://www.www-hotels.com. Hotels.com may not be able to sue for any kind of infringement (some debate about that - just an example -- at the very least some such domain owners might not be able to sue). In the display URL for your AdWords ad, you can reference it as www-hotels.com, thus heightening the confusion.

- Potentially this increases CTR's substantially over using less "definitive-looking" display URL's in AdWords. Potentially this could really help even a brand retailer do better on specific products, rather than using their main brand. A lot of back of the envelope calculations can get done showing the potential improvement in performance - higher ad positions at lower CPC's, etc.

To me, it's a gimmick, susceptible to Google rule changes, and based on hypotheticals rather than true ROI calculations.

Every few years (or more lately, months) there has been another reason to "corner the market" on another "class" of incredible domain names. People rush out and buy up 100's of names, and then find out whoops, I have 100's of names @ $8/yr. and can't use them all.

Business doesn't revolve around gimmicks. It's way harder than that.