Honestly, TheMakeMoneyOnline.net is a horrible domain name. It’s not the sort of name that you’re going to hear banded around and shared amongst friends. However, to understand why I chose it you need to understand the primary way in which I make money online. I don’t build communities, I don’t leverage social networking, I don’t use mail lists. At the end of the day, when all the talk is finished, I make almost all of my money online by converting search traffic into cash. I have 35+ websites doing this with various degrees of success. That’s just the way I work. Key to my living is generating healthy amounts of organic search traffic, something I’ve never failed to do, and it is for this reason that you are now on a domain called themakemoneyonline.net and not something that rolls of the tongue a little easier.
Search engines deal with text. There are various blocks of text (URL, Title, Description, Body, Alt, Headers etc) that have varying amounts of influence on how each individual page is seen. Remember that search engines rank individual pages, not domains. When it comes to blocks of text (including your URL) there are some commonly accepted facts –
1. The closer words are to the start of a block the more important they are
2. Fluff words are ignored
The URL is still one of the most important blocks associated with any page.
Using “The” in front of a keyword rich domain is an old SEO trick, “Is”, “And” and many more also work just as well. I have always worked with keyword rich domain names and this is one way of getting a good (in terms of SEO) name in a very competitive niche. The search engines ignore the “the”. If I was brave enough to show you my keyword stats for the past 2 years I think you’d be surprised by just how much natural “make money online” traffic this website has attracted. I’m not brave (or stupid) enough by the way to give you a list of my top performing keywords. Every single page on this website has a URL that includes the words make money online – when that is apended with the various post titles then it creates lots of long tail make money traffic. Obviously with Google’s ever increasing emphasis on off-the-page factors it doesn’t work quite as well as it once did but with Yahoo and MSN it’s still very effective. When starting in a niche I will always 100% go with a keyword based domain name, search traffic is what I do. The other bonus to having make money online in the URL is the links, most people who link here totally ignore the “the” as well and just link with “make money online”.
This is all great so far BUT when I started this website I certainly wasn’t looking long term. This website was just another way of getting high value Adsense clicks. In terms of traffic it certainly doesn’t come into my top 20 websites. In terms of the amount of time I spend updating this website it is more than any other I own. In short this website has sort of become my spiritual home online. I never ever expected it to happen. I do have a personal blog but it is here where I enjoy posting most. I had a schedule, post lots initially and then maybe once a week after that. Get to my income goal and then just keep the traffic steady. It’s never happened because as much as this site makes me very little I really enjoy writing for it. I enjoy sharing what I’m doing to make money and replying to comments/enquiries. I’m now at the point where I have to decide what to do for the best. With all the will in the world I’m not going to be able to grow a readership and brand this website with a domain name like themakemoneyonline.net . Sure I’ll always get nice search traffic but with this website I now want more than that (I think I do anyway). This is all new territory for me. So what do you reckon, do I take this website to the next level? Do I go for the new domain name, the custom template, the cartoon picture of me waving cash whilst sat in my car? Would that even go with the type of content I create? Or then again do I back away and spend the money on building more of the websites that have traditionally made me money in the past? I’m going on holiday soon so at least that will give me the chance to have a think.
11 Responses to “What’s With The “The”?”
Paul B
May 20, 2009
I promise that under no cirumstances will this blog ever start to resemble a John Chow type thing. Almost all my friends are totally non geeky and none run blogs. I have no ambition to become famous. We certainly don’t get together to talk about the web over some light snacks. I’m more a chicks and beer type person.
In general I was thinking a nicer news letter style template, shorter domain name, guest posts from anybody up for it and that type of thing. I know a lot of my readers have just as much if not more knowledge than me and I’d prefer it if this blog became a collective, yet very relaxed affair.
Obviously there is the problem of getting people to contribute and I’m now unsure about the domain name and changing it. Seems a 50-50 split.
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