Extreme Domain Name Makeover | Live Case Study | Discovering the Perfect Domain

[Roll the original version of Star Trek's TV theme music in the background.]

NARRATOR:

Your domain name.

The initial frontier.

It’s really the first stop and your entrance into the imagination of your targeted website visitor.

The real seduction of your visitor begins with your domain name that your visitors will connect with.

When you’ve mastered the art of creating an irresistible domain name, you give your business the chance to truly energize your audience, build an authority site and even a brand, and boldly go where no man or woman has ever gone before!

[Fade out Star Trek TV theme music in background]

It takes a dramatic theme song and long enduring franchise to get the point across that your domain name is the forefront of your online business.

The domain name is quite prominent even when your visitors start their search to find your site on Google (see image above).  It’s the last line someone sees in a Google search engine listing.

I wrote quite a critical article about domains back in 2005 when I was teaching the Art of Adsense.  And I don’t think I’ve written one since.  But one thing I’ve notice along my travels…

Quite often, I’ve discovered that many of my clients are focusing on the wrong things when creating their domain names and are either too general or trying to be too fancy (much like Manhattan advertising agencies).

Whereas, most folks design a domain name from their own perspective, I am constantly obsessed not with myself, but rather, with the end client and person who is going to arrive at the site.

What’s their fixation?

What’s their obsession that I can tap into?

And what are the images I want to implant when they arrive at my site.

Fact is, words, just like the ones you are reading on this very page are the doorways into your prospect’s imagination.

Much like I can begin to paint a very majestic blue sky feeling throughout you, but it isn’t without mentioning it can I arouse that thought or image in your mind.

So words, do in fact, paint a picture in one’s mind, just like the words that are consisted within a well thought out domain name.

It’s like a Jedi’s sword that slices through the resistance of your marketplace.

And, as the suspense begins to build within you…

This is where the real treat arrives in this article.

Rather than give you an entire lecture based on philosophy and describing concepts, I will share with you an actual case file from one of my own clients, Seth Fogel, whom I had a tizzy fit with over a domain name he chose for his brand new Kitchen Remodeling website.

It was catchy, don’t get me wrong, but it was lacking the ability to make visitor foam at the mouth (not literally) — that’s the effect I’m after.

And this domain name left a lot to be taken advantage of.

After walking him through the entire process of uncovering the ultimate domain name, he never looked back at his old domain name again (but he had to find a way to hold on to some shred of his own dignity).

I can whole-heartedly say that the change will easily result in far more sales and literally a pre-sold, entranced prospect that is ready to be sold their new, custom made, top notch, granite kitchen.

I am actually going to take you through the entire psychological process I did with my client so that you, too, can master the art of creating a domain name that will have your visitors drooling before they ever read one word of your website copy.

Everything is a build up, much like the seduction of a lover, much like the mood of a really good evening.

So right when someone is glancing over the Google organic listings, they are ready to be seduced from the moment they lay eyes on your domain name, they are titillated to continue reading and so on.

GIVING MORE PHYSICAL LIGHT TO YOUR DOMAIN NAME

In the real world, your domain name is like your store name that invites welcome customers into your store off the street.

It’s the place that everyone talks about and wants to visit on their free time.

So in some little way, whether your domain occupies cyberspace — however you want to measure that — it literally has its own physical appearance in the space and imagination of your prospect.

Right when your prospect’s eye hits those words, it begins to draw and paint a picture of a discount type site, or a high end site, or a really generalized site, or a spammy site or an adsense type site or an authoritative type site.

You get what I’m saying because if you can reflect on your own searching habits, we all begin to judge things from the word go (very few people have the ability to block out the inner dialogue that goes on in our heads when we see and read things — the mind is constantly rattling on, judging and labeling things as we run in an idol fashion throughout the day.

What does your current domain name say about your business if it were built out in the real world?

What appearance or feeling or excitement or directness about the topic of your site does your domain name do just for you?

When your prospect says your domain name in their mind, they either get excited or fall flat on no feeling whatsoever.

Have you asked someone else’s opinion about your domain name?  (And those who used their company names for the domain name — please see me outside the west corridor exit)

Seriously!

I am not joking and serious as a heart attack.

Do you get excited when you say your own domain name? (just from the name itself?)

Does it get right to the heart of what your site promises to give your prospect at the very bare essence?  (Don’t worry — we’re gonna give you examples of hot smokin chile peppers).

I’m not going to go much deeper, but when I usually discover exactly what my client’s business model is, and then look back at their domain name, I tend to see a major disconnect or problem with the frame of mind how their prospect is going to enter the site.

And most of the time, I can tell you, my gut tells me it aint good.

The more stubborn clients I ended up hearing about the story a year later from either the client directly or from someone who knew the client and they were too embarrassed to say that they decided not to take my advice.

My expertise may be keyword research, but the emphasis on human psychology is high on the scale of priority in order to profile your prospect and seduce them.  This isn’t called Search Engine Seduction for nothing.

A domain name should not confuse your prospect, but actually make it clear what they are going to get on a particular topic once their click that button.

No surprises.

EXAMPLE:  ReachTheirInbox.com — It’s my own private built online email marketing software that helps marketers monitor email reputation, servers from blacklists, so the email that marketers send out can actually reach the inboxes of their prospects at the highest deliverability possible.  (One day, I may plan to share the knowledge from my years of email marketing expertise, but the domain is all I care about right now sharing with you.)

Now, do you think that actual, real live domain name strikes at the heart of the prospect’s desires in the marketplace?

Then you’ll want to keep reading and have your username and password ready when I take you through the pinnacle steps of uncovering as we walk through the live case study.

It is without a doubt that the domain name should make a prospect more curious than confused.

“FORGET ABOUT THE SEO FOR NOW, SON”

AND WHAT YOU WILL GET OUT OF THIS ARTICLE

Let’s put aside what we may know about Search Engine Optimization and all those considerations that say we need to have our keywords in the domain name.

Sure, I believe keywords are essential in drawing a picture for the prospect, but sometimes it can be overdone and you lose the essence of building a long term brand versus just building a website.

But I want to rather focus on the following in this article:

1. The Psychology of How to Create an Irresistible, Memorable and Highly Sticky Domain Name that Makes Your Target Audience Drool
2. The Fogel Files:   The Entire Process of How I Helped My Client Create an Irresistible Domain Name That Captures His Clients’ Imagination
3. Example of Domain Names and Why They Work So Well

And before we embark on our mission to uncover the very essence of what I discuss above, I’d like to share with you a story.

This story will forever impart how critical the title of a book can be once you’ve sold hundreds of millions of copies of actual real books.

Shall we dare to equate the title of a book as domain name is to a website?  (I dare not said Juliet)

Now, what’s nice is that you don’t actually have to endure the potential loss and facing utter failure of having to sell that many copies of books, whether offline or online because someone else has done the hard work for you.

You see, E. Julius Haldeman back in the 1920′s created a publiching business that sold information products, known as the “Little Blue Books,” and he did quite well.  This was all done by mail order back in the roaring 20′s and more shockingly…

He sold over 300 million of them on topics from ranging from sex, love and romance, self improvement, free thought and skepticism entertainment and other interesting how-tos.

And what’s more, to add to it and much more impressively, the first 100 million (title of his book) was done in the first nine months!

You would think that he got quite good at knowing what sold and what didn’t back in the days.

Well, you betcha he had a process of elimination of the bad and sell more of the good.

In fact, it was Emanuel’s policy that if a book title did not sell 10,000 copies in a year, it would go into the “hospital” in his office where a new title would be re-written. If the new title didn’t do well, the book would eventually make it to the “morgue” not to be sold again.

Emanuel was so meticulous in keeping records of what sold, he published his findings explicitly giving away his most treasured marketing title secrets in a book called The First Hundred Million.  Here’s what an Amazon reviewer had to say (and if you aren’t the least bit curious to peek in a book like that, you may not have a pulse):

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable detail! A nust have for authors & booksellers, April 11, 2005

By	Iron Book Worm – See all my reviews

This review is from: The First Hundred Million (Popular Culture in America Ser.) (Hardcover)

This is impossible to find in hard copy but a new digital publisher has made it available in PDF.

I saw this at a local library and couldn’t believe the amount of sales detail and general publishing insider information. EHJ tells everything about his business.

This author was basically a mail order, direct marketing book seller who sold hundreds of millions of books. It’s an incredible story and most of what he offers in this book is still relevant today. I use it as my primary tool for brainstorming book and article titles.

It’s like a title workshop. Highly recommended for writers, book authors, ebook sellers.

Definitely a keeper for my library!

You see, I’m not just smokin crack out of a lead pipe.

What’s truly interesting is that you can take many of the things divulged in The First Hundred Million and see for yourself how things haven’t changed much for us humans nearly a hundred years later.  Sure, we have computers, but some of the titles are literally themes of what is being sold online today.

I’m not in any way trying to promote the first hundred million or any book, I simply brought this up to prove a point of the power of the WRAPPING of whatever you may have:  a website, a book, a store, a business name, whatever it may be.

While the title I mentioned above (The First Hundred Million) may be a distraction due to the insightful marketing knowledge included, the real underlying point is this.

Titles matter!  A titles to a book is much like a domain name is  to a website.  (Make that your montra as you drive on the way to work.)

Domains.

It’s the gateway between preparing the minds of the people that will continue down the sales/affiliate/adsense process you’ve laid out for your site.

A great book title can outsell a lousy title by 3 to 1.

A great article title can get 7 to 8 times as many clicks than a louse article title.

A great video game title can outsell a totally lame one by 20 to 1.

And if all these examples are so, then a domain name is pretty much the title, the label, the first thing that anyone will remember your site by.

So why not make certain to make it irresistible and totally easy for your prospect to never forget.

Sure, most names are taken, but if you walk with me through the live case study with my client, you’ll see that there are some pretty awesome domain names people can come up by just using the formula proposed below.

Let’s get into it.

THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND CREATING IRRESISTIBLE DOMAIN NAMES

Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you some mind-bending speech on psychology with some terms you’ve never even heard in school.

First of all, I’m not that smart, even though I may have a few words to say about a topic or two. 

In fact, let’s just make it simple.

It may even seem over-simplified until I actually take you through the entire process step-by-step that I did with my client.

And it usually only takes me about 15 minutes to get right to the heart of things with anyone in any business.

So here it is — you ready?  It all boils down to this.

Create domain names that hold within them the desire that your visitor wants the most.  Find that out and you begin to open the imagination of your prospect right from the word go.

Of course, you’ve gotta have that sales process there to compliment the domain name, but it all starts with the domain name.

See, I told you it was simple and that’s all there is to it.

However, once you read the live case study, you’ll certainly know how to arrive at the juicy domain each and every time.

Make sure you are logged in so the continuation of this piece can occur and you can partake in the live case study which is the entire psychological process as well as the additional domain name examples you can check out for yourself.

LIVE CASE STUDY THAT TAKES YOU THROUGH THE DOMAIN NAME PROCESS

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