Cruise your way to the top of Google for only £560,000!
Cruise.co.uk have bought the most expensive ’s’ in the world, by splashing out over half a million pounds for cruises.co.uk. This is obviously a very quick way of buying your way to top search rankings, but I’m not so sure if it’s the most cost effective!
So how do you price a domain with #1 Google rankings?
Looking at the current Google.co.uk search rankings; cruise.co.uk rank #1 for cruise and #9 for cruises, with cruises.co.uk at #1. Neither are listed in Google.com’s top 10.
Bearing in mind the value of the domain as an investment and the average cost-per-click for “cruises” as a PPC keyword, it’s possible a reasonable return could be made via the extra organic traffic over the next couple of years. This is assuming the rankings stay the same over the couple of years, which they are likely to do but far from guaranteed.
At the moment each domain has it’s own website, so a 301 redirect could certainly have an impact upon Google.com rankings. But still, if instead they had decided to spend a small percentage of this on a fresh web design to improve conversion rates combined with on-site SEO, link building and social media marketing they could realistically achieve similar results (especially as they’re already at #9), leaving a few hundred grand to play around with on paid search and cruising around the med!
What do you think, is this is a wise investment or perhaps a case of having too much cash and not knowing what to do with it? 
I think this is a classic case of too much cash, and not knowing what to do with it. I mean, seriously? £560,000 for a domain name? Without having proper figures, my guess is that if you purchased a new domain name, you could easily have that be at a number one placement on Google.com & Google.co.uk within 6/8 months for less than half what they paid for that domain. That is of course, they chose a reputable company with a proven track record.
And whilst the SEO company works on getting them a number one placement, they could have spent another £50,000/£75,000 on a huge marketing campaign which could include TV, Radio and CPC ads on the internet, which would easily make up for not being at number one.
These companies are insane!
Comment by Andy MacDonald — February 7, 2008 @ 1:45 am
I think that the investment has paid off. A search on Google for the word ‘cruises’ puts http://www.cruises.co.uk in 1st place, with http://www.cruise.co.uk not far behind.
Comment by Stefanie — February 8, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
[...] TLD and are hosted in the states. Still they could always try and buy the domains back, it might cost a little more than the original registration cost [...]
Pingback by 12 Brands Who Forgot to Buy Their .co.uk Domain | SEOptimise — June 19, 2008 @ 8:22 am