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This is a guest article by David Lye of Publishing Australia.
Please feel free to leave some comments.
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The Google Adwords Keyword Tool (or GAKT for short).
Like many of Google’s products this is both free and indispensable. It will give the user access to information about search terms used on Google – in particular two important metrics that relate directly to domains – search volume and CPC. It’s best to use the tool when logged in (get a Google account if you haven’t already) simply by visiting https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
For domainers, where this tool comes in handy is when you are considering a particular domain name, say ‘CarLoans.com.au’, the first thing you will need to do it take the keyword constituents (in this case ‘car loans’) and bung them into the GAKT. To make it easier to read, I suggest always checking the ‘Only show ideas closely related to my search terms’ and if it’s an .au domain you’re looking for make sure you have location: Australia selected. Then on the left hand side under Match types uncheck ‘Broad’ and instead click ‘Exact’ and then press search.
(click on image to see larger version)
You’ll then be presented with a table – at the top are the results for the ‘exact match’ to your domain. Importantly this tells you how many people make that exact search in Google each month (based on the last 12 months) and what the ‘Approximate CPC’ is for that search tem (CPC = Cost per Click – in essence what an Adwords advertiser may have to bid for their ad on a Google search)
These two figures are very important. Obviously, the higher the search volume, the more people are making this exact search in Google but it also is directly proportional to the amount of people who will simply type the domain into the address bar rather than search for it in Google. This is known as ‘direct navigation’ or ‘type-in traffic’ and is extremely valuable to domainers because it demonstrates a highly targeted form of web visitor – someone who literally types in carloans.com.au is clearly looking for a car loan in Australia. This means ads can be placed on the website which are extremely relevant to the visitor which in turn will deliver a high click-through-rate (CTR) and therefore a share of the advertising dollars. In general terms, search volume figure is an indication of the size of the market.
The second figure to look at is the CPC. This indicates how lucrative a particular niche may be and for a publisher gives an idea of how much money you might receive per click should you park the domain or place Google Adsense on a website you might develop. However from a publisher point of view it doesn’t match exactly – the revenue is always less than this reported figure – sometime greatly.
The interesting thing about ‘exact match domains’ (EDMs) like these is that if you do develop them, Google will give the corresponding website a huge boost in the search engines. In this example, it is many times easier to get decent search engine ranking for the search term ‘car loans’ using a domain like CarLoans.com.au than a domain like AutoFinance.com.au. And you still get an advantage using the exact match domain over very similar domains such as CarLoans1.com.au. That’s why the domain’s exact match CPC and search volume can be so important in domain valuation.
Of course all the search volume in the world won’t help you if there’s not a single advertiser prepared to pay a cent for your traffic. Neither will a super lucrative niche pay off if, in practice, next to nobody searches for the corresponding phrase. So it’s a good idea to take a combination of the two metrics. Multiple them together to get a relative idea of the value of the domain. If you trust the figures, and can back your development and search engine optimisation abilities you can even take it a step further as follows:
If you develop a website and secure the #1 spot for the exact match search term (remember you get a huge advantage in the search rankings), then typically you could expect to attract 40% of the searches (an EDM will get a better CTR regardless of position). So, in the example above, 12,100 searches a month might deliver about 5,000 visits a month to a website that was ranking in the top position. A very basic ad-supported website might be able to achieve a 15% CTR from the relevant ads it delivers which means 750 clicks per month. It’s hard to say exactly what proportion of the ad revenue you, as a publisher, might get but $2/click would not be unreasonable. That means, taking these assumptions (and there are some pretty big ones here), you can use the GAKT to tell you that you might expect $1,500/month in ad revenue just by profiting from that single search term.
Of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg – any site ranking #1 for car loans can’t fail to rank for hundreds or thousands of other search terms. As you can see the GAKT suggests there are at least another 328 significant search terms just containing the term ‘car loans’ (such as ‘compare car loans’ and ‘get car loans’). It might not be easy to achieve a number one spot for hundreds of other terms (remember the ‘exact match ranking bonus’ only applies for a single search term) but some sort of decent ranking can deliver a great deal more traffic. Having a powerful domain name like this would still give you an edge in your search engine optimisation.
Please feel free to leave some comments.
------------------------------------------------------------
The Google Adwords Keyword Tool (or GAKT for short).
Like many of Google’s products this is both free and indispensable. It will give the user access to information about search terms used on Google – in particular two important metrics that relate directly to domains – search volume and CPC. It’s best to use the tool when logged in (get a Google account if you haven’t already) simply by visiting https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.
For domainers, where this tool comes in handy is when you are considering a particular domain name, say ‘CarLoans.com.au’, the first thing you will need to do it take the keyword constituents (in this case ‘car loans’) and bung them into the GAKT. To make it easier to read, I suggest always checking the ‘Only show ideas closely related to my search terms’ and if it’s an .au domain you’re looking for make sure you have location: Australia selected. Then on the left hand side under Match types uncheck ‘Broad’ and instead click ‘Exact’ and then press search.
(click on image to see larger version)
You’ll then be presented with a table – at the top are the results for the ‘exact match’ to your domain. Importantly this tells you how many people make that exact search in Google each month (based on the last 12 months) and what the ‘Approximate CPC’ is for that search tem (CPC = Cost per Click – in essence what an Adwords advertiser may have to bid for their ad on a Google search)
These two figures are very important. Obviously, the higher the search volume, the more people are making this exact search in Google but it also is directly proportional to the amount of people who will simply type the domain into the address bar rather than search for it in Google. This is known as ‘direct navigation’ or ‘type-in traffic’ and is extremely valuable to domainers because it demonstrates a highly targeted form of web visitor – someone who literally types in carloans.com.au is clearly looking for a car loan in Australia. This means ads can be placed on the website which are extremely relevant to the visitor which in turn will deliver a high click-through-rate (CTR) and therefore a share of the advertising dollars. In general terms, search volume figure is an indication of the size of the market.
The second figure to look at is the CPC. This indicates how lucrative a particular niche may be and for a publisher gives an idea of how much money you might receive per click should you park the domain or place Google Adsense on a website you might develop. However from a publisher point of view it doesn’t match exactly – the revenue is always less than this reported figure – sometime greatly.
The interesting thing about ‘exact match domains’ (EDMs) like these is that if you do develop them, Google will give the corresponding website a huge boost in the search engines. In this example, it is many times easier to get decent search engine ranking for the search term ‘car loans’ using a domain like CarLoans.com.au than a domain like AutoFinance.com.au. And you still get an advantage using the exact match domain over very similar domains such as CarLoans1.com.au. That’s why the domain’s exact match CPC and search volume can be so important in domain valuation.
Of course all the search volume in the world won’t help you if there’s not a single advertiser prepared to pay a cent for your traffic. Neither will a super lucrative niche pay off if, in practice, next to nobody searches for the corresponding phrase. So it’s a good idea to take a combination of the two metrics. Multiple them together to get a relative idea of the value of the domain. If you trust the figures, and can back your development and search engine optimisation abilities you can even take it a step further as follows:
If you develop a website and secure the #1 spot for the exact match search term (remember you get a huge advantage in the search rankings), then typically you could expect to attract 40% of the searches (an EDM will get a better CTR regardless of position). So, in the example above, 12,100 searches a month might deliver about 5,000 visits a month to a website that was ranking in the top position. A very basic ad-supported website might be able to achieve a 15% CTR from the relevant ads it delivers which means 750 clicks per month. It’s hard to say exactly what proportion of the ad revenue you, as a publisher, might get but $2/click would not be unreasonable. That means, taking these assumptions (and there are some pretty big ones here), you can use the GAKT to tell you that you might expect $1,500/month in ad revenue just by profiting from that single search term.
Of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg – any site ranking #1 for car loans can’t fail to rank for hundreds or thousands of other search terms. As you can see the GAKT suggests there are at least another 328 significant search terms just containing the term ‘car loans’ (such as ‘compare car loans’ and ‘get car loans’). It might not be easy to achieve a number one spot for hundreds of other terms (remember the ‘exact match ranking bonus’ only applies for a single search term) but some sort of decent ranking can deliver a great deal more traffic. Having a powerful domain name like this would still give you an edge in your search engine optimisation.
