I haven’t plugged too many other websites in a some time, but I figure now is as good a time as any. I’m experiencing a bit of a lull before I start a fresh, new project next week and can’t see myself having much time to add to this blog again until after Labor Day. When opportunity knocks….
Dramatic title notwithstanding, I have to say there are a number of web places I frequent which have helped me out immensely. I believe in giving credit where credit is due so here goes:
Copyscape — So much stuff is ripped off online that keeping track of it all is a must. Because I accept guest posts across several blogs, I need to know that the articles I publish are unique. Copyscape has helped me toss two articles back which means I saved myself from the embarrassment of having to toss them after they were published.
Twitter — Is microblogging crazy, or what? Yes, I spam the heck out of Twitter-what else is it good for?! Seriously, I’ve connected with some new clients including one who used me for one gig and is considering me for a much larger second one. Seriously!
Thesaurus — I rarely open up a dictionary anymore and I can’t recall if I own a thesaurus. There are times I need to reach for a word that offers clarity on something I am trying to convey and this site is a must-have tool for me. Extremely helpful for when I’m working on a magazine article.
YouTube — Who knew that YouTube had such great tunes? No, I’m not talking about the garbled mess a lot of people upload, but dedicated channels with clear, crisp tunes? I’ve been discovering DC Talk and Toby Mac, my youngest son’s favorite artist and I must say his music is inspiring and enjoyable. Love my ear buds….
Google Analytics — Google is ‘da bomb for most things Internet. When it comes to helping me track traffic and where people come in, what they read, where they go and what they do and more, Analytics is an indispensable tool. I just hate it, however, when I discover I broke the code and data isn’t being recorded.
Curiously absent from my list are most social networking sites. That’s because I have chosen to avoid most of them for a season so that I can do what I do best — writing for my clients and getting paid for my work!
By Duncan Heath
I recently had an idea about using popular YouTube videos to help inform your domain name choices, and thought I would share it here.
Many people set up blogs not to sell anything in particular, but instead to build powerful sites over time that they can sell advertising on, sell guest posts from or dare I say it…sell links from. When setting up these sorts of sites, not a lot of attention is given to domain names. Most people go for something that sounds “cool” or is otherwise a generic phase such as “everythingandalways.com”. However if you thought carefully about domain choice, you could kick off your site’s traffic and link building efforts with much greater ease.
Popular YouTube
The first thing to do is search on YouTube for very popular (or better yet famous) videos. You can do this by sorting all the videos by “most viewed” and setting the time scale to “all time”. Here are some examples: evolution of dance, tootin bathtub baby cousins, the gummy bear song.
Next, you should check out the competition for the terms in the SERPS and also the suggested search volumes in Google Adwords Tool (yes we all know it’s flawed but it’s a good indicator). You’ll notice that the official site for Judson Laipply appears top of the SERPS (under the video results) when you search for “Evolution of Dance”. It’s also worth noting that this site is a PR5 site and has backlinks from Wikipedia, PCWorld and Wired.com.
Popular Terms
With this in mind it might not be worth going after the “evolution of dance” term, but it does show just how popular a site like this can become. If you hunt around the terms related to the other videos above however, you’ll notice there is very little competition in the SERPS, and certainly no optimised URLs. Just doing a quick check, I can see that domains such as tootinbathtubbabies.com and gummy-bear-song.com are available to buy (at time of writing).
These domains represent brilliant opportunities as there will not only be a great deal of search surrounding the terms, but very little competition standing in your way. With a little onsite optimisation and some targeted link building you should be able to move to the top of the SERPS without too much trouble and may even be considered a brand after a while due to a specific domain name, specific link building using domain name terms, and high search volume surrounding “your brand term”.
Careful Choice
I wouldn’t use this technique to determine the name for my new clothing retail site, but for a general blog I would much prefer to have a domain name that already had half a million searchers per month relating to it, than something like everythingandalways.com, which I would suggest gets none.
Author Information
Duncan is an SEO and marketing professional promoting a villas in France enterprise. He’s always looking for new ways to get the most out of the SERPS.
Linking Strategies | Matthew C. Keegan, 20 Aug 10 | 
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