In between my travels throughout Austin and Texas in general, I encounter a multitude of billboards, signage, businesses and mobile advertisements that use all sorts of domain names.
With nearly 2 million people in the greater Austin Metro area, having the appropriate and most lucrative digital presence is a MUST in a highly competitive market.
Supply and demand works against businesses in Austin Metro area in regards to owning and operating your business using geo keyword domains.
It’s not easy to get one’s hands on a “Austin + keyword” domain or any other city surrounding Austin. Most have been owned and operated for at least 15 years, if not longer.
So that begs the question. Is it possible to have the same profitable success using the inverse domain, meaning using a “keyword + city” domain?
Personally, “keyword + city” domains are not my favorite. However, the irony is that when I search, I typically follow the phrase by the city name to narrow my search results to a specific location. Imagine that.
It may be that I live and travel in a small bubble, but I don’t often see companies using a “keyword + city” domain as their digital presence. Most businesses tend to use the inverse.
And then it happened. Driving to the office, I spotted a black truck that had a domain on it’s back windshield. Well, look what we have here (see the pic below). On the back and down both sides of the truck the domain read: TreeRemovalRoundRock.com.
It caught me by surprise. I had to circle the corner again for a snapshot.
And what’s more interesting is that their small business is named Gerry & Gerry Tree Service. The domain looks to have been registered a year ago.
I viewed their website from mobile and desktop devices. I was quite impressed to find their website was well designed and responsive (see desktop image below).
I don’t know the financials, but I would assume that they are doing well for themselves.
Nevertheless, I passed back by on my way out, and they were busy at work removing and pruning a few trees.
But as usual, my mind keeps wandering and wondering. I wondered how their website ranked for the matching term. It’s not good. The site is in its infancy and ranked on page 4 of Google.
My guess for this ranking is that their domain is an exact match domain and less than 1 years old in terms of web existence. And if you know anything about exact match domains, then you should know how Google feels about exact match domains.
Then, still thinking, I wondered why they choose to use TreeRemovalRoundRock.com and not RoundRockTreeRemoval.com. To me, Round Rock Tree Removal rolls off the tongue so smooth. I may never know the answer to this.
Nevertheless, I cracked open a web browser and type the domain in to see what Round Rock company owns and operates using RoundRockTreeRemoval.com.
And what do you know! A website loaded when I typed in RoundRockTreeRemoval.com into the web browser.
It wasn’t just any website either. In fact, the website was one of my domain sales and leasing web pages.
Let me just say this one thing. You know you own too many domain names when you don’t recognize a name you own. 🙂
That’s right, I own RoundRockTreeRemoval.com and I didn’t realize it (facepalm!). I knew a company had to be using RoundRockTreeRemoval.com. I just didn’t know it was mine. Oops!
That may be my answer to why Gerry & Gerry Tree Service used the domain that they did: because I was owned on the virtual land they possibly desired.
What will be interesting to watch and review is whether or not TreeRemovalRoundRock.com is bleeding leads to RoundRockTreeRemoval.com.
I’ll need to mine the data for RoundRockTreeRemoval.com to see and confirm the results. If so, I may have a built-in lead generation domain that I can simply lease the monthly traffic to Gerry & Gerry or their competition.
Only time will tell… In the meantime, I want to hear from you…
What makes more sense as a digital presence for a business, using a “keyword city” domain or a “city + keyword” domain?
As a domain investor and business consultant, Alvin actively participates in daily domain auctions. Outside of auctions, he passionately shares his views, opinions, and vision for how businesses should and should not use domain names to generate greater customer growth and revenue.
