.brand URL's

Online businesses strive to appear on Google’s first page for keyword searches, a unique find me when you need me approach. There are thousands upon thousands of businesses all competing in the same market, each surviving with their own keyword niches. For instance, in the online professional translations market there are hundreds of keywords a potential customer can type into Google whereby each translation website can maybe focus on competing for only a few keywords at a time. The target audience may search for particular services (legal translations, medical translations etc). They can search by location ( London translation services, USA translation services etc), or even by the language itself ( Dari translations, Farsi translations etc). Sometimes the search can even be a combination of the above or whatever may be on the persons mind at the time!

The point is keyword optimisation for online businesses is an essential part of their marketing strategy. The question at hand is how is the ‘dot- brand URL’ going to change the way online businesses compete for Google rankings?

Well, let use a similar example. The domain ‘.legaltranslations’ will have a massive advantage for ranking high for legal translations, that’s pretty obvious. Furthermore the owner of that domain can then make numerous websites with the same ‘dot- brand’. For example you can have ‘london.legaltranslations’, ‘french.legaltranslations’. These URL’s will be pretty impressive in the eyes of the search engines. What strikes me is that these domains are going to be very expensive, very very expensive but also very effective.

Is this the start of online corporate monopolising? Or at least creating a market place that will become less crowded and more profitable for the big players? I can imagine five years from now most of Google’s top pages will consist of dot- brand domains meaning less power for the consumer and certainly less opportunity for small businesses.

If you are an online business competing for keyword searches, I suggest you start retaining your cash flow, either for a dot- brand domain or decade’s worth of Google ads!