Case Study Friday: CreditCardChaser.com
Since it seems all the rage for domainers to talk about web development and SEO – with “talk” being the key word 
I thought it might be a fun thing to do to dedicate Fridays (or at least most Fridays) to do case studies of different development and SEO projects that either John or I have been doing or that we have noticed others doing. (If you like this idea then let us know in the comments below).
For today let’s take a look at a domain that I own that admittedly is not an exact match keyword domain name or a geo domain name as are most of my domains but is rather a brandable domain name: CreditCardChaser.com. The site is of course geared around helping people compare credit cards and “chase” down the best credit card offers.
While this site has been up for a little while with some basic content up I just recently decided to really put some time and effort into attempting to make this a great web property. In order to do this I enlisted the help of John to lend his coding genius to designing the “Chaser” tool that would actually compare the credit cards. I also used our Domain Superstar resident expert graphic designer Rachel to design a custom logo and to design some custom images for the tool interface.
If you look at the site carefully you will notice that it is built on a WordPress backend with a customized version of the “The Station” theme from Woo Themes as well as of course some heavy customizations added outside of WordPress.
A few of the things that I wanted to concentrate on to start the site off right was to slowly but surely add a lot of high quality unique content to the site. The site currently has around 200 pages of high quality credit card content on the site with many more articles on the way. My goal is to publish somewhere around 10-15 new pages and 5-10 new posts every week making sure that they are very high quality and of course unique.
While the site is still very new and I have only begun to really market the site by getting the name of the site out there with many of the top bloggers in the personal finance space the site does already have a little over 2,000 backlinks in Yahoo which is a good start. Most of the backlinks so far are of low to medium quality but with time the site will begin to attract some very high quality links.
The main attraction of the site is of course the very cool looking interface for “chasing” down and comparing credit cards but it is bolstered by its strong content as well in areas like the credit card FAQ section of the site (There are 20+ FAQ’s published as of the time of this post but I have 160 FAQ’s in total scheduled out to be published over the course of the next 3 or 4 months).
I have a lot of other ideas for the site as the site is far from finished but the “Chaser” tool works great and is a hopefully very informative and helpful aid for people looking to compare credit cards and find the one that will best meet their needs. Look for a “Case Study Friday” post in the future from John as he discusses some of the techniques that he used to develop the credit card finding tool on CreditCardChaser.com.
So, now is your chance to skewer the site if you do not like something about it or praise the site if you think that it is looking good so far. What say you?
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Absolutely beautiful. I REALLY enjoyed looking through the site!
Thanks – I appreciate it!
CreditCardChaser.com is a Superstar site! I love your drag and drop credit card type feature; it takes WordPress to another level.
You might have overlooked registering:
CREDITCARDsCHASER.com
and/or
CREDITCARDCHASERs.com – both currently available.
We also have a WP credit card site for Australians. It’s style is quite different to yours. The other day we got it to position 4 in Google.com.au for “compare credit cards” and are stoked
Have linked to you here:
http://www.creditcardsheaven.com.au/finance-related-resources
Cheers
Thanks! I just registered those domains as well so thanks for pointing those out. Also, congrats on getting your site ranking so well!
Great case study. Couple of things about the site:
1. You are really playing with fire there with “chase”. I’m not opposed to brandables, but that brand is taken.
2. Don’t post blog posts as admin. In fact, you should generally change admin to be something other than admin and create a least privileged user to do the posting that way the “public” only knows the username of a person who can only create new posts. They won’t know the name of the admin account than either.
3. The content looks really good. Did you use a service/contractor for the content or did you create it yourself?
In terms of the case study, I think it would be helpful to have a breakdown of at least your plans for monetization, if not some actual figures and projections.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks. Here are my thoughts:
1. “Chaser” is just a synonym for “Finder”. It is pretty clear from the site that it is not infringing on a trademark since the site is not a credit card company but just features a free “Finder”/”Chaser” tool that finds credit cards from many different credit card issuers.
2. Done, thanks for reminding me.
3. Thanks, I write a lot of it myself and then I also use a professional writing service for the rest (and then I do the final edit of course).
I should have probably labeled this Part I or something because we will revisit this site again soon for another Case Study Friday where John will talk about some of the technical things that he did to code the “Chaser” tool and then down the road I can also maybe talk about monetization if I can do so without giving away any competitive info that I would rather not
I think the site looks great and your “chaser” tool definitely makes you different then all the other credit card sites out there. I think it is a great idea to do these posts on Friday as it will inspire me and others to develop. It is a lot of work developing and marketing a site, but seeing the success from your efforts is worth it.
Joel,
It’s a great concept/design but I’d like to know why you decided to use a brand name vs keyword name? You even said it yourself in your post titled Strong Domain + Niche Expertise = $$$: “With an exact match keyword domain then half of your battle is already won..” If you’re putting this much time/effort/money into this project wouldn’t it be worth the $ to acquire one solid keyword name? A few examples:
CreditCardFinder( dot )com
- currently parked
- 1,900 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $13.72 CPC
CreditCardComparison( dot )com
- currently parked
- 18,100 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $12.22 CPC
CreditCardSearch( dot )com
- currently parked
- 2,900 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $8.86 CPC
CreditCardRatings( dot )com
- currently parked
- 2,900 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $8.93 CPC
CreditCardReview( dot )com
- currently doesn’t resolve
- 3,600 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $6.72 CPC
CreditCardDeals( dot )com
- currently parked
- 22,200 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $16.45 CPC
CreditCardCompare( dot )com
- currently parked
- 3,600 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $10.68 CPC
CreditCardRating( dot )com
- currently parked
- 1,600 avg monthly Google exact searches
- $7.52 CPC
Many others.
Names like these will always have value so in case the business fails, you can at least recoup some of your investment.. hopefully not though
Edwin
Also.. are you attending TRAFFIC NYC next week?
If I had to do it all over again then I definitely would have bought an exact match keyword domain but this was a domain that I picked out back in 07 before I was as sold on keyword domains as I was now and now it has become somewhat pebble in my shoe to really develop this idea that I had been sitting on for quite a while.
Also, around 25-50 pages of the content has been sitting on the domain for quite a while and aging which is good in the eyes of the search engines.
I guess more than anything I had considered it some kind of personal challenge to see if I could replicate the success of other credit card/finance websites that were based around more of a brand name than an exact match keyword domain (i.e. bankaholic.com, creditcardguide.com, etc.)
My thinking at the time was that the main keyword that I was gunning for (and still am) is “Credit Cards” which is obviously one of the most competitive keywords there is and there was no way that I could get the #1 domain (CreditCards.com) so my strategy was to go with a keyword rich domain instead of an exact match domain for a sub keyword like “Credit Card Ratings”, “Credit Card Compare”, etc.
I may have chosen this strategy to my own detriment but I still consider it some kind of personal challenge to build out a brandable domain name like this into a web property that has better content and a more user friendly interface than CreditCards.com, CreditCardGuide.com, etc.
Does this make sense at all or am I just crazy to be going off on some kind of personal vendetta in this instance? lol
(I will not be attending TRAFFIC NYC next week but I would like to attend one of the TRAFFIC events sometimes soon)
It’s certainly an enormous challenge to target the keyword “Credit Cards” but I admire the ambition
The reason I brought up the keyword-domain issue is because I know that you truly understand the value and competitive edge that these names offer. A few months ago you purchased a keyword car insurance domain from me for low $X,XXX (21-year multiple based on parking rev – I was very happy). Within three weeks you had it on the first page of Goog for the matching keyword.. a keyword with an avg CPC of $18.41! Oh well.. lesson learned. Aaron Wall needs to hurry and re-open his site to new members because I clearly have a lot to learn.
Parking will always have it’s place in domaining.. but what you’re doing is unlocking the actual value of our assets and that’s truly the future of domaining. You definitely “get it”
Anyways I look forward to reading more about your development projects. Keyword domains in particular
Edwin