Domain service doesn’t have to be a boondoggle, no matter what you might hear from the blokes at Domain Registry of America. Scams like theirs have been around for decades…and it’s our goal in this series to spread the word via strong SEO principals.

This week, we’ll be looking at how to use keywords — the basic building block of search engine optimization. Last week we did our research and identified “domain service” and “Domain Registry of America scam” as the keyword phrases most likely to achieve our goal of reaching the eyes of anybody the Domain Registry of America scam might try to deceive.

We do this by inserting our keyword phrases liberally throughout the blog post. This week, we’ll look at inserting it into our text. There are other places to put them, but we’ll deal with that in other posts about domain service scams. Places to insert your keywords include:

• Your URL
• The first paragraph of your text
• All other paragraphs of your text

We’ll start, literally, at the top. Read the URL for this post. See how it includes the phrase “domain-service”? Your web address is one of the first places Google will look when searching, and one of the most powerful and important places to include a keyword. If I were doing this as a business, my URL might very well be www.domainservice.com or www.domainregistryofamericascam.com.

In the text itself, you want to put your exact keyword phrase in the first paragraph — preferably the first sentence. This can sometimes get tricky, especially if your keyword phrase isn’t grammar-friendly. That’s why I opened the paragraph with keyword phrase I did, instead of trying to shoehorn “Domain Registry of America Scam” into the first sentence. If you’re using multiple keyword phrases, that first para should include all of them. This is just one reason why it’s best to focus on just one or two phrases at any given time.

Other paragraphs should get one instance per para. You can choose one instance of each keyword, if you think it will feel natural. Since our stated goal here is to stick it to the Domain Registry of America scam and help people choose a good domain service, I’ll go ahead and put them both in most paragraphs…it illustrates the point and you’ll forgive my being overly blatant.

Which brings up the most important point of modern SEO writing. It absolutely must feel natural. Google’s Penguin and Panda updates specifically target and penalize “keyword stuffing” and other ways of gaming the keyword system. Just write your best work, include keywords where they fit, and you’ll climb the search ranks quickly enough. That’s what we’ll do here, and how we’ll score a good position for the domain service keyword.

It can get hard to make those keyword phrases fit in every single paragraph. I mean, how many times can I say “the domain service Domain Registry of America scam” before readers get tired of hearing it. We’ll close with some hints for making it more palatable to write, and to read:

• Feel free to split up phrases with punctuation and “invisible words”
• Using synonyms and antonyms will still get Google’s attention. Even though that’s kind of hard with “domain service” as a keyword, it will work with other phrases
• Write your rough draft without keywords, then insert them where they’re most natural
• Ignore “keyword density” metrics. Those might have been important in earlier search eras, but are as likely as not to get you into trouble now. Just write naturally and well.

The story thus far: Last week, I got a letter in the mail from Domain Registry of America. It’s an official-looking letter, and opens with the following:

“As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire in the next few months.”

It goes on to tell me how to renew my domain, using Domain Registry of America, at a price that’s 6 times what I pay for full registration, hosting and customer service with my current domain service provider.

So….these guys are jerks. This is a scam, designed to trick the unwary into thinking a government agency has contacted them about their soon-to-expire domain. My plan is to make these guys famous, and use my campaign as a sort of SEO tutorial for all of you.

Domain Service Scam SEO, Part One

Any SEO campaign starts with finding the best keywords for the job. The easiest tool for this job is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. I use the more robust Market Samurai, which has a free trial, but for today we’ll use the Google tool and look for keywords related to Domain Registry of America in general, and Domain Service as a whole.

Once we log in, we navigate to the “Find Keywords” page. In the blank for “Word or Phrase” we type in “Domain Registry of America.” I choose this because it seems like the most likely thing somebody would type in after getting a letter like the one I got. We click the search button and wait for Google to process. 

When the results come up, we get a look at the performance on Google for the phrase we entered, plus a whole bunch of related searches. When we scan through them, we’re looking for four things.

1. How many global (worldwide) searches happen for that term each month.
2. How many local (in your area) searches happen for that term each month.
3. How much competition there is for that particular keyword.
4. A basic logical analysis of any attractive keyword about whether or not out target market (people who got letters) would use that phrase in a Google search.

Looking at the results, four phrases jump out to me as possibilities: domains, domain service, domain registry of america, and domain registry of america scam. Let’s look at them one by one.

Domains

This one looks great on the surface: competition is low, it gets over 2 million monthly searches worldwide, and a half-million in my local area every month. There’s only one problem: it’s really, really generic. Folks who do this search may or may not have any interest in what I have to say about this particular domain registry scam. Also, it’s worth noting that all of my other phrases include this word…so we’ll get some service here anyway.

VERDICT: PASS

Domain Service

Great numbers here. We have 133,000 monthly global searches and 40,000 monthly local searches, with low competition. If I was starting a business, this is the keyword I’d jump on. It’s still a bit generic, but I’m happy to warn people searching for this term about the nefarious rapscallions who are running the scam called Domain Registry of America.

VERDICT: KEEP

Domain Registry of America

This is where things get interesting. The global and local searches are low: 3,600 and 2,900 respectively, and the competition is high. If I were running a business, this would be a really bad choice. It doesn’t get enough attention to justify how hard I’d have to fight to get “above the fold.” On the other hand, we really need to serve people who do a search for this specific term. That’s the whole point.

VERDICT: PASS

Domain Registry of America Scam

We have low competition, which is good, but very few searches. A total of 480 a month. For a large company, this isn’t much, but it might be a good pick for a local businesss. A martial arts school, for example, could do worse than generate 480 potential leads every month. This also works for our purposes. There won’t be many people using the search string “Domain Registry of America Scam” but because of the low competition, we stand a chance of reaching all of them. You’ll also note that the phrase includes the Domain Registry of America keyword we wanted, but though the competition was too hot for.

VERDICT: KEEP.

In the end, we’re focusing on Domain Service and Domain Registry of America Scam as our keywords of choice. As the series progresses, we’ll demonstrate how we’ll corner the market and claw our way up the Google search ranks.

The Domain Registry of America is a Scam

They’re not even a creative scam. It’s a derivative dodge based on an idea unscrupulous humans have been using for centuries. Their mistake is they tried — unsuccessfully — to run their scam on me.

A lot of my readers have been wanting to know in detail how to specifically target keywords for search engine optimization. I was wondering how to do it, procrastinating even, when their letter hit my mailbox.

So, we’re going to have a tutorial on getting your page above the fold on Google. Specifically, we’ll target people searching for “Domain Registry of America” and make sure they see all about how the Domain Registry of America is a scam. Along the way, I’ll show you the steps I’m taking piece by piece.

Should be fun.

I read and reviewed The Name of the Wind last year. Short version: I loved it. Best fantasy fiction I’ve read in the past decade — and I reread Lord of the Rings during that period.

Wise Man’s Fear is the sequel, an even longer book with a word count higher than the first three Harry Potter novels combined. It’s even better than the first.

This is the second book of the Kingkiller Trilogy, and like most such novels it continues the longer story rather than telling a tale of its own. However, it’s more than just a “bridge novel.” Plot development is minimal, but Kvothe develops as a character and we learn more about the world.

One specific element I like is Rothfuss’ exploration of language. Dialects, illiteracy and song are all part of the landscape in this story — even a dual-level language where people communicate simultaneously with word and sign.

As before, the novel makes good use of action — but not just combat. He can depict playing a song in concert, or verbal sparring, or taking an exam as gripping, important and instense.

Seriously. Read this. Wise Man’s Fear is the best book I’ve read this year. Only fiction I’ve read this year, but the competition will have its work cut out for the next 11 months.

Thanks for listening.

So here’s the thing about Terry Pratchett. If Douglas Adams and Jonathan Swift were a two-daddy family who raised a child made from the DNA of Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain…and that child grew up reading the best of fantasy, detective fiction and journalism…Terry Pratchett would be the guy that kid wished he could write like.

Snuff is the latest (and sadly, likely the last) installment in Pratchett’s Sam Vimes novels. Sam is a copper, head of Ankh Morpork’s City Watch, who struggles under the weight of being a far better man than he imagines himself to be. This particular novel has him solving a murder in the countryside while quite accidentally freeing an entire species from enslavement.

The action and humor of Pratchett’s books are liberally seasoned with philosophy and biting social commentary. Snuff is no exception, this time aiming mostly at ideas of class, status and privilege.

In the spectrum of City Watch novels, Snuff falls between Thud and Jingo. In the spectrum of fiction I’ve read this year, it lands between The Bobby Gold Stories and Bite Me — placing it at #3 on the list.

If you’ve read Pratchett before, you won’t be disappointed. If not, you’re in for a treat — and not just because of how good Snuff is. Pratchett has turned out dozens of books, all of which are worth an afternoon or two of your undivided attention.