Domain Name & Website Value

Domain names are unique and that's why it's hard to base the valuation of one domain name on the prices of other ones. Finally, a domain name is cost exactly what a buyer is willing to pay for it, no more and no less. Also, remember that a domain name with a track history as an established website, with incoming links and steady traffic, worth more than the same domain name/website left undeveloped.

Here are a few tips to help you realize the potential value of your domain name as undeveloped domain name:

- The most important factor for domain name price is the extension of your domain (TLD). Generally, a .com domain name will have up to 10 times more than the value of the same name with other extensions like .net, .org or .info.

- Another extremely important question is the number of characters a domain has. Commonly, the shorter the better when it comes to domain names, but this shortness should not come through throwing away words or letters, or replacing letters with numbers.

- Is the domain name hyphenated or contain numbers? Usually hyphens and digits reduce the value of a domain name. Prefixes, suffixes, and misspellings also kill the value of most domain names.

- The most valuable domain names are common English words that relate directly to a viable product or service. Usually, the more words in the domain name, the less it is worth. But sometimes common two-word expressions are worth much more than one-word domains with low commercial applicability. Remember, that the higher the competition is in a field domain belongs to, the higher is the price. Also, domains which contain keywords that are more narrow in meaning have less value.

There are many factors that influences the fair price of a domain name as established website:

- Existing backlinks from well ranking sites may have a price impact. Backlinks show that the website has a strong foundation for traffic and may be able to be trusted to grow in the future.

- A large number of real unique visitors or great number of unique page views your website received increases the value to the buyer.

- The net income from the past months. If it is possible to prove total revenue from ads, affiliate commissions, paid advertising, and other sales minus money you spend on maintaining your website, this will go a great way in final website valuation.

- Add the value of your website content. This is the value of your articles, images, videos, and any other unique content from your website.

- Google PageRank is a good indicator of a website value. PageRank signifies how much priority a website has on Google and indirectly on most other search engines.

- Alexa Ranking or Alexa's traffic rank that gives at least a glimpse into the scope of a website's traffic. Ranked from 1 to millions, the lower the rank, the more popular website. It is not recommended that this score be used as a basis unless the website ranks below 50,000.

- It is very important that the site have search engine prevalence on it's back. Age of search engine presence is very important and gives a website a better chance of being into the top on competing keywords, and getting more search engine traffic. The longer the website has been prevalent, the higher chances it has of succeeding. It' s also good when domain name is paid for several years in advance.

Most domain names and many websites are worthless. It is very hard to define which domains have monetary value and even more challenging to decide what that value might be. Maybe the best way to clarify the true value of a domain name is to let a buyer and seller negotiate a price.