What’s your domain name?

How old is it?

How relevant is it to your business and does it contain relevant keywords?

SEO related keywords or keyword phrases perhaps that relate directly to your field of business?

Of course your domain name is important. Why else would they be so highly sought over and go on to sell for sky high sums? Perhaps the most famous example is sex.com. As one of the world’s most desired and fought over URLs on the Internet, sex.com has a history that reads like something out of a novel. There were bogus faxes to Network Solutions (the organisation charged with administering domain ownership) that stole control from its rightful owner Gary Kremen, and passed it onto fraudster Stephen Cohen. A subsequent court case ruling in Kremen’s favour prompted Cohen to escape the USA before he was eventually apprehended and imprisoned. The sale of the domain to Escom LLC in 2006, and their recent demise has once again put the domain on the market. Whilst sex.com will likely fetch a large sum, the chances are that it may not earn the £9.1 million that they originally paid for it.

Why not? Because whilst having readily memorable domain names is without doubt a good idea, and having relevant keywords or keyword phrases in your domain is regarded by many SEO professionals as advantageous, a cute domain certainly isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to defining success or failure online.

Whilst companies are happy to pay large amounts for the right domain name – in 2009 fly.com went for £1.2 million and call.com £700k – things have changed. Before the emergence of Google, search domains would have played a much more important role in the way that domains were found; users memorised them and typed them into the address bar. These days Internet visibility and success relies much more on SEO – search engine optimisation. On-page factors such as using relevant keywords and tags alongside off-page factors such as strong inbound links play a critically important role in achieving top Google search placements and winning traffic. There’s much more to it now than just a name.