What are premium domain names?
By Karn Jajoo
What makes a domain name a premium domain name? Why are premium domain names so expensive? How to buy a premium domain name for business? Is the premium price tag justified?
If you are new to the world of domain names or if this is your first time choosing one for your online business, chances are that you’ve encountered these questions. In this post, I will answer these for you and help you understand the concept of premium domain names better!
What makes a domain name ‘premium’?
Domain names that are short, memorable and category killers are pegged as premium domain names. These domain names are easy to remember and even easier to build a brand with. Consider www.magazine.store, the online magazine store with hundreds of the most popular magazines of our times. This is a fitting example of a simple and, may we dare say, a perfect domain name. The It is a category killer premium domain name as no other website selling magazines can acquire a name that awesome. Thus, a premium domain name is an investment in your brand — it offers exclusivity to build a stellar online identity.
How do premium domain names help in brand building?
What does your domain name say about your venture? www.CES.tech comes across as a leader in its forte whereas www.cesweb.org comes across as a player that arrived late to the party and had to make-do with whatever was available.
Your website name denotes your residence of business on the internet and a compromise just won’t make the cut. Settling for a domain name that is long, awkward or hard to remember only because it is easily available isn’t a smart decision. Spend quality time in finding a domain name that works for you and your business.
A premium domain name is descriptive as it clearly establishes what’s on your website. For example, www.freedom.press is used by Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization that actively supports free speech and freedom of the press. Their web address doubles up as a social message towards which their initiative is designed.
Recently, Google picked up the domain name business.site for their program, Google My Business. All businesses that are part of this program will get a BUSINESSNAME.business.site sub-domain name for free. Why did Google pick this name? The reason is simple, business.site describes the objective of its exclusive program for small businesses: getting them online for the first time with their business site!
Another example here is that of Luxembourg based venture capital firm, Digital Space Ventures, which invests in early-stage FinTech companies and uses www.digital.space to define their space on the web. Isn’t that slick?
How do premium domain names impact the website’s search ranking?
There are hundreds of algorithms that contribute to a website’s search ranking, and domain names, if chosen wisely, can create a positive impact. The single biggest factor for a website to rank high on search results is quality content. If the content is good and gets relevant backlinks from other credible websites, it sends a positive signal to the search engine to rank the website higher. The key to ensuring that the backlinks are relevant is the anchor text. This is where your premium domain name can really help. For example, if the anchor text is magazine store and it is backlinked to www.magazine.store, it will give an indication to the search engine that the website is relevant, and thus strengthens its organic search ranking.
Another way in which a premium domain name helps you is that it builds link trust. When you search for ‘magazine store’ and you see multiple search results, you are likely to click on the website name that seems more credible and professional.
Simply put, a relevant domain name that is keyword-rich, when paired with excellent quality content, will get people to click on the domain name in the search results.
Are premium domain names a good investment?
Maybe you are not looking for a premium domain name for your business but you can still buy one as an investment. In fact, did you know that you can buy a good domain name at a standard rate of, say, $10 and flip it for thousands of dollars in the secondary market? Interestingly, 26 .online domain names purchased at a standard price ($1.2 — $55) generated $60,697 in secondary sales. That’s an ROI of 8,308 percent!
On that note, here’s a fun fact: earlier this year, casino.online was sold for $201,250. That’s huge by every standard!
How to buy premium domain names?
There is a strong probability that most premium keywords that you can think of are currently available on new domain extensions. While some of the top tier names on new domain extensions are reserved with the Registry, majority of the premium names are available through domain registrars. If you are keen on buying one or a few, look them up on any of these registrar websites.
Karn Jajoo heads the premium names program for Radix’s domain extensions: .WEBSITE, .PRESS, .HOST, .SPACE, .SITE, .TECH, .ONLINE, .STORE & .FUN. Radix has made more than $1.75 million in premium domains revenue in 2017 thus far, including the biggest nTLD sale of all times — casino.online, and the sale of business.site to Google for it’s free website builder, Google My Business. Karn considers himself a new gTLD evangelist and has had articles published inThe Next Web, Website Magazine, & CMO.com.
