If you have something like 15 minutes to spare, you could use that time to find some really excellent domains to register. But please note that domain-hunting can get addictive. You've been warned... :-)
Have you tried to register some domains recently? Then you probably know the frustration - 99 percent of decent domains that you can come up with are already taken. Unless you enjoy domains such as 1st-in-your-keyword-online, it can be really difficult to secure your virtual estate.
Well, clever tools to the rescue. The solution that I am going to show you, has two important advantages:
- It's semi-automated (if you need a fully automated method, then you will have to spend some money);
- It's free.
Keywords first
Guess what, we are going to register keyword-rich domains. They may not be the most brandable domains in the world, but they often provide you with some free, defensible, type-in traffic that you can monetize and they also tend to improve your rankings in Google for phrases, which include the terms in your domain.
You can use whichever method of keyword generation you fancy. I am in a lazy mood, so I will use my own random niche generator.
When you click the above link, you will have to wait about 10-15 seconds for a list of results similar to the one below:
If you don't like the first set of results, just reload the page. You will usually get between 50 and 500 results.
Excel tricks
Before you can use that list, you need to process the keywords a bit. But don't worry, it's nothing complicated. I usually use Excel, but OpenOffice will be equally well suited.
- Copy the entire table with results into Excel. You may find this tips on copying tables from Firefox to Excel useful. You will end up with something like:
- Delete columns B, C and D.
- Select entire column A (with your keywords). The easiest way is to click on the top header of the column.
- Search and replace all spaces with a null string (or a dash - depending on the type of domains that you are interested in). To do that in Excel, press ctrl-H and use the dialog box properly.
- You will get a list similar to this one:
Bulk domain search
Now comes the last crucial component of our search - the actual search for domains. We will use a service which allows you to perform bulk look-up - up to 100 hundred domains per each run.
There are many bulk domain check services, but I really like the one offered by DomainTools. There are two reasons for that:
- it's blazingly fast
- it offers in-depth information, such as if the domain was already registered in the past (even if it's available right now).
So just launch their their bulk domain check tool:
Copy your list from excel and paste it into the field shown above, then hit Submit.
Just remember that you will not get results for more than 100 domains, so if you have more names to check, you will have to split them. You can use several tabs in your browser to check each lot without waiting for previous results.
After several seconds you will get a list showing you clearly, which domains are available:
My experience shows that I can find at least 3-5 very promising and available domains within 10-15 minutes using this method.
Fine tuning
When you get many domains which can be potentially registered, you can perform further fine-tuning. I like to check the popularity of the domain's keywords using services such as Wordtracker or Nichebot. I also take note of the CPC prices provided by my random niche tool mentioned above.
When I have really long lists of keywords, I often trim them by excluding phrases above certain number of characters in length. This way I don't have to waste my time looking up domains which are excessively long.
You could also filter out phrases below certain CPC value level.
I hope this will inspire you to try some domain hunting!
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