The normal route to building a business website is to
a) Register your domain name
b) Find a web host
c) Design the pages of your website (hopefully taking SEO into account).
d) Come to the realization that no one is visiting your site because they don’t know about, and then taking drastic ( read “costly” ) steps to drive traffic to your site. Or of coarse you could wait literally years for the traffic to develop “naturally.”
This article is about how to avoid the painful process found in ‘d’ above.
“The first step in avoiding a trap, is knowing of its’ existence.”
Know and accept that just putting up website does not get you traffic! It doesn’t matter if your web design is a work of art and every detail of SEO has been taken into account…people have to know your website is there before you see even one visitor. The most cost effective way to get traffic is through searches. Let’s say you sell widgets. A potential customer types “widgets” or “buy widgets” into a search engine, and if your website is near the top you get vast amounts of FREE traffic. But in order to get listed near the top of a “search page” your website generally needs many links (called ‘backlinks’) from other established websites. This can take time...maybe years.
“If it ain’t broke…don’t fix it!”
How you can avoid this painful process is in just finding, and using a pre-existing domain name with all these backlinks, and/or traffic right from the start. It’s that simple! Why spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars marketing your website or waste years of time just waiting to get noticed, when all you have to do is use a domain name which should already rank high in the search engines?
Domain names aren’t purchased, they are leased.
Technically, you never buy or own a domain name. You “register” a domain for a fixed amount of time like a year, or ten years. You may of coarse “re-register” them as many times as you like, but you never really “own” a domain name. Now sometimes…a domain’s registration expires. Either the company who had registered the domain went out of business, or forgot to re-register, or whatever. The fact is that the domain is now available FOR YOU to register and use if you would like!
“The early bird catches the worm”
To find an expired domain which already many backlinks AND meets your naming requirements can take a bit of work, and you have to be quick! Domains with good search engine rankings could have taken a long time or a ton of cash in marketing, so others are looking for good expired domains too. One way to find expired domains is by using www.whois.net. There is an “expired domain” tool on their site where you can search through thousands of expired domains. Most of these domains are junk, but some will have some backlinks...hopefully many. These are the ones you want.
Another option (I think the best option) is to just visit various “webmaster” forums and look in their “buy domains” (or “domains for sale”) section (remember you don’t really “buy” domains, it’s just more convenient to call it that). Here, webmasters will often be “selling” domains for pennies on the dollar of what it may have cost in marketing.
“Keep your eye on the prize.”
All this may sound like a lot of work just to get a domain name. I mean you can go to any domain name registrar, and usually for less than $10 register a domain name in minutes. But for less than $100 you can probably a suitable domain name for your business, which has backlinks and could have cost thousands of dollars to develop. For around $1000 to $3000 dollars you can probably find a really good domain name which could have taken many years to develop.
“A lesson learned is a lesson earned”
When I started my first website, I fell into the trap. I built my fantastic website, and then it didn’t get any visitors. Slowly, I realized what I should have done right from start (and what I do now)…I search for suitable, pre-existing domains to use for any new websites I create. Hopefully, you will do the same.
