Why Archeo Likes Two Word Dot-Coms

Archeo a division of Marchex releases their first newsletter

Archeo covered a few topics in their first newsletter with the most interesting being their take on Two Word Dot Coms.

From the newsletter, which I recommend you sign up for,

Can a domain be too Generic?

Why we think 2-word dot-coms are the real winners.

Since Archeo launched it’s domain marketplace, we have been monitoring average sales prices (”ASP”) and grouping our domains into what we call “classes”, by common domain attributes. It’s no surprise to us that our most popular selling domains (40% of our sales!) continue to be 2-word dot-coms.

Our 1-word, acronyms, and short catchy names such as: Salsa.com, WAMY.com, and Hoorah.com have excellent brand potential and are often the target for multi-million or billion dollar companies to grow or expand into big online brands. However, they can sometimes be too abstract and can require significant marketing resources to gain brand awareness. Although these domains often receive the most attention from the industry blogs and fetch 6 or 7-figure price tags, we’ve found that a significant number of our customers are purchasing 2-word dot-coms. We believe our 2-word domains continue to be at the top of the sales leaderboard because they are often exact-match keyword (EMK) domains, and users typically search for multiple keywords at a time.

EMK domains continue to be an important component when it comes to search engine ranking. What this means is if the domain is literally the exact match of the search keywords, then that website will likely appear closer to the top of the results page.

Also, when users search online they typically don’t type in just one word. If you were to search for the terms “technology” and “professionals” separately in Google, the result count for each independent keyword is significantly higher. However, the results are very broad and range across many un-related products and services. When you use the combination of the 2 words together, you will receive higher quality results. In fact, on Google’s 2013 top 10 list of searched terms, all but one were 2-words!

Due to users being more likely to search for a product or service using 2 or more keywords, it makes sense that those same EMK domains will be the better option. These domains not only help their website appear near the top of the search engine results page, but they also typically attract more direct type-in traffic. Believe it or not, people are still typing EMK dotcom domains directly into the browser and hoping it will take them straight to the product and service they are looking for.

So, when you’re thinking about the best domain to purchase or to add to your existing business – although 1-word and more abstract domains may catch your attention, they may not be your best option. Be sure to think about what keywords your customers would use to find your business. Is it one word or is it two? Or maybe even three words? These keywords are your best guidance for determining the most ideal domain for your business.

The Archeo portfolio consists of more than 65,000 2-word dot-com domain names containing tens of thousands of unique keywords.