We are building a website to target Us citizens for escorted tours in the UK - Domain Help?

[MattByrne]

Dear All

We are a UK travel company that is looking for a new revenue stream. We are therefore building a new website that will target a niche american audience, namely those that will want to travel to the UK and then be taken round historic tours revolving round specific themes.

We have not yet created a brand or bought any domain names. i was hoping to be able to establish keywords within domains that might help us to attain traffic. What is the best way to review American keywords to be able to see which are the most searched for in that location and hence be able to establish the most relevant domain name to our target audience?

Regards

Matt

[RobertJakobson]

Hi Matt,

Brian Dean has produced the best and the most accessible guide to Keyword research: http://backlinko.com/keyword-research. No surprise that the two are the same for if one knows something one also knows how to explain it well

That being said, placing a keyword in your domain is no longer as important because of variety of reasons.

• First, it has been overused as a spamming technique so from 2011 onwards Google has been decreasing it's relevance as a ranking factor. An url structure of:  http://www.domain.com/keyword/post can have as much effect as http://www.keyword.com.
• Second of all, almost all keyword.com domains have been taken anyway so you will probably end up with either keyword.io or keyword.co or the like or with lets say combining the keyword with an adjective like bestkeywords.com
• The number of organic search result being shown above-the-fold on the first page of search results as we traditionally think of search results is decreasing. Particularly in your vertical. AdWords takes prime position but after that Google Maps, Google+ take up the most visually striking positions on the search results page. And, this is important, the majority of 3-5 organic results that a majority of searchers will ever see will probably be large internet brands like TripAdvisor or AirBnB that are expanding their business to include your vertical (might be even Google Travel :))

1 thing to take away from Brian's guide that I linked from above that you can do on your own: reverse search your competitors (draw up a list of their domains first) for keywords on Google AdWords Keywords Tool. I would propose doing that for you, if you don't have access to the tool, but I do not know if that is within the rules of this forum.