Think back 10 or 12 years ago. How nice would it be to know then what you know now about domain names? Wouldn’t it be cool to go back and register mortgages.com? Or some nice keyword rich domains?
Well, you can. They’re called .ca’s. And they’re available by the boatload for the registration for less than $15. Get in now.
When I started doing internet stuff, nobody used .ca’s. They were the mickey mouse version of the .com. I recommended that Canadians buy the .com. And it’s nice if you still can get them. But Canadian consumers are changing. Years ago, a .ca was a pale imitator. Now, .ca’s are preferred by Canadians. We’re sick of shopping at American websites, or getting non-Canadian information. Now the .ca’s instantly tell visitors that the site is exactly what they’re looking for. A .ca domain is an indicator of trust now for Canadians. Things have changed.
What hasn’t changed is that these .ca domains are readily available for registration. We’re in 1997 with the .com’s right now - there’s so much good stuff available.
And I’m not talking even about right now. But 10 years isn’t that long of a time. And in 10 years, the .ca’s will be like the .com’s - all the good ones will be taken. For the couple of bucks, it’s worth it to buy a bunch then just hold onto them until they increase in value.
Going back to our theme on mortgages, ontariomortgagerates.ca is available. I doubt there’s a us state mortgagerates.com left available. So get them now while they’re cheap and there’s no competition.
I’ve got a bunch registered myself. For example, in my niche there’s a multi-billion dollar industry in the US, it’s three keywords. Current legislation in Canada says this service is not allowed in Canada right now. That’s fine, but I can’t believe that the website keyword1keyword2keyword3.ca was available (where keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 is the three word name of the industry). So now I own it. What do you suppose that’ll be worth if the legislation changes in Canada? Even if that’s 5 years away? or 20? I’ll still be kicking around in 20 years, I could be looking like a real smrt fella in 20 years with a domain like that. Right now the domain would be worth say $100. If the legislation changes, it’s worth 7 figures.
In addition, there’s plenty of keyword rich combinations that could take some type in traffic. Not even for parked landing pages - but a simple conversion page on a keyword rich domain might yeild some results.
So get on board with the .ca’s. Write out all the keywords in your industry and start looking at the better combinations. Check if the .ca is available. It probably is. Go register it.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Very nice post, and I agree with you… hell, photoscanning.com is probably worth a couple thousand, and I got the .ca for the registration fee…
Another one I picked up yesturday which may or may not turn out to be a good investment is john-tavares.ca (He is the top prospect in the world for the 2009 nhl entry draft)
If this kid pulls a sidney crosby on us, then I’m going to be making a pretty penny!
I agree though, and check for domains as I think of them regularly.
Have you registered seobash.ca?
You should get some content up on the John Tavares site, the hockey season will be starting soon and this kid could be the next big thing.
Just last night I told a client to pick a longer .com then .ca but he is going after a more global market.
I could look for some in my market, maybe a .ca sister site to some of the sites I already have.
Q: I use enom for my domain reg, when I search then have a suggestion field, but it doesn’t show .ca domains, does anyone now a service that will suggest .ca domains?
http://register.ca/ has a suggestion tool Nick.
I have been registering at godaddy for mine, with the coupon code downforce they are the cheapest (10.50 or something)
I threw a wordpress blog on that tavares site with a bunch of hockey affiliate stuff from CJ and ad sense, and what I think I’m going to do is buy a crap load of these new players and have like a “prospect network” where I just post news from them, videos from youtube, etc. Hopefully the return can be something but any suggestions I’d love!
Thanks for the link I’ll have a look. Godaddy coupons are great, makes it cheaper then my reseller account with enom.
I think some news and stats would keep the site fresh but maybe having like 10 pages of uniqe content would be a good idea. Hmmm I like the prospect network idea.
I’m working on it, I just started this yesturday. I have 10 players now that I can grab the domains for, throw up a site, and post a couple times a week with a news article or something. I’ll be writing a spun version of the wikipedia listing for each person, and linking them all together.
I just used the advice for checking back links, and found a couple with 500 backlinks… but I think it was banned from google because those were only in altavista. I also took an expired hockey domain list and ran it through http://www.bulkpagerank.com/ and it came up with a couple pr 4s, but they were snatched up by squatters.
I did find an amazing domain though that I’m going to snatch up for the main site. whoohoo!
Side note… does having a “-” in your domain hurt you a lot? seo wise? traffic wise?
Banned in Google and penalized in Google are two different things.
Banned, you can check by searching on site:domain.com in Google. If there are pages there, then it’s not banned.
More commonly though is that a site has some sort of penalty. That’s tougher to check. See if it’s ranking on anything - do a gut check see if it makes sense where it’s ranking or not. Also check the backlinks. If they’re crap, then be careful. Google knows all.
Bear in mind that checking backlinks in Google doesn’t tell you much at all - Google’s backlink checker doesn’t really tell you anything.
In terms of using hyphenated domain names, I prefer as a matter of taste not to use them. I would though use a single hyphen without issue because that can occur naturally. Seobash-inc dot com would seem like a possibly normal domain name. Two hyphens is teetering on the edge in my opinion, I’d probably stay away. Three, no way.
With three hyphens in the domain name, we’re getting into keyword stuffing in the domain name and that’s smelling like SEO that Google doesn’t like.
Gotcha, I am looking at one hyphen domains (hyphen between first/last name.
I don’t want this one, but for example, tom-cruise.ca is available.
I kind of like the look of one hyphen domains if you are using a name, like the tom-cruise to me looks better then tomcruise although grabbing both would be better.
Admin, these .ca names you’re registering… are they actually getting natural type-in traffic? Enough that if you park them with an aggregator you can cover the annual renewal cost? Or is it all speculation of future value?
For .com names, I use pcnames.com to check availability. I wish there was a similar tool for .ca names.
I don’t do type in traffic. Maybe it’s there, I dunno. I’ve been registering some generic keyword domains in my niche for later development. My intention is to have a broad spectrum of sites. I’ve got two main producing websites right now, want to bring on at least another two ‘main’ websites for a total of four ranking on the main search terms. Then I’d like to have a bunch of secondary generic domains to capture the odd bit of longtail stuff.
Let me correct myself. I just checked my google adsense account. I’ve got a couple of domains in a high paying niche that I bought generic typos for - they’re .com’s.
Funnily enough, I had someone from digitalpoint do a bit of work for me on a site in the niche. And they kept spelling this one word in a peculiar way. So I registered the typo using his spelling.
Those two typos are not quite parked domains - I put up a page or two of content and some adsense to hold them until I get around to doing something. Anyway - looks like they will earn $60-$100 a year total between the two of them. Nothing really, but I guess if you’re one of those folks doing this in an automated fashion a million times over you could make some money.
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