The criteria for assessing a domain name for purchase, resale, or development are fairly open to all.  The keyword value forms one value. Monetary resale is always a goal. Various sites online work to produce an estimation value, although few can claim to be conclusive. Auction sales for domains work well specifically for this reason. Domains can go to the highest bidder according to independent valuation.

While one community of domain name buyers and sellers may quote assorted values from estimation sites, those members are never committed to accept those values as indicative of any redeemable or legal citation. The general value of a domain name still remains the value for which it can, and is sold. Other domain values are as spurious as yesterday’s news.

Some domainers prize traffic statistics, and some domainers work from the original sale price.  Domain ratings systems can indicate the value of a domain, but cannot guarantee it will bring that price under the domain auction gavel. But an important component of many a domain names’ assessment is how the buyer or developer uses those metrics to go forward.

Typing a name into a category does not institute monetary value. Many keyword generics lie fallow in domain portfolios worldwide. The rationale for these to not be developed is that no development could renew the value the domainer has already invested and still reap the profit they have planned. These domainers are waiting for big-ticket auctions to vend their names.

Other names are still in the transitory period between acquisition and decision making. Maybe the domainer hasn’t had time to investigate the best of of “x” domain yet.  Or perhaps they are waiting for a spike in related content or keywords to vend the name in a private sale or escrow process. Parking is a time consuming challenge to manage and keep up to date with. And the lack of development attached to a parked name always make me leery of its traffic.

A topical forum post caught my attention debating this topic. Yahoo has a domain rating system which declaims a domain as:  Banned, Trademark,
Quality Control, Controversial, and Restricted are terms no domainer wants to see associated with their names. These names generally will little to no sale value. But one domainer’s name value authority can be another’s temporizing engine.

Where do the evaluation and assessment sites stand? Yahoo has a cloud over it (not a good one), and many domainers deride Alexa while still avidly utilizing it to assess their domain positoning ion te name marketplace. Valuate.com has many fans, and many banner ads. Estibot has some faithful fans, and assessment tools at Sedo, Pool, and Google Adsense can offer some additional metrics.

Since domainers are always looking to revalue and affirm their portfolio total, a trustworthy domain ratings site or evaluation destination tool is mush desired. A domainer cannot guarantee the originating site or evaluation engine for a domain name will still be in operation or still have the same integrity when the resale or auction decision is made.

Domainers need to avoid becoming emotional about their domain purchase choices. The most unsexy of domains can be the hardest workers, reaping affiliate revenues and growing traffic metrics while the big players spend a fortune promoting their varsity level urls. The traffic statistics going forward are what matter, and the business development the current domainer invests in the domain name is what cultivates domain value.

Domain names can be valued at one time ans the equally creditable estimation of that same domain name can be evaluated at another time and the value can be very different but extremely accurate. A domainer assumes risk when a big dollar domain purchase occurs and the lifetime of that value is not the same as the lifetime of the domain ownership. The joy of domaining is leveraged on what values the owner can bring to the name, and any other strategy sounds a lot like sour grapes.

Originally posted 2010-06-05 15:27:54.

One of the biggest challenges that site owners face is link building. Whether you run an e-commerce site, a niche blog, or a reputation management website, generating quality backlinks is absolutely vital. SEO used to revolve around the on-page optimization, but since the Panda update it seems that backlinks (especially those from relevant sites) are now playing a more important role in the ranking of websites. There are lots of ways that backlinks can be generated, but not all of them are easy. And the ones that are tend to be not worth your time. So let’s look at three mistakes that many webmasters make when trying to boost their backlinks – and how to avoid them.

Assuming that a link from a high PR site is more valuable

The Page Rank system is useful because it lets people know how highly regarded a site is in the eyes of search engines like Google, but it’s not always a green flag. It’s understandable that if a site with a PR of 3 or 4 wants to link to you, that’s a tempting offer, but if you have to pay for the privilege you should do a little research first. The first thing to check is relevancy: does this page have anything to do with your site and topic? If not, the backlink won’t pack as much punch with Google. Another thing to check is how many other links this high PR site has. If your link is one of ten or more on a page, you might as well be throwing money away. Carry out these simple checks every time you’re considering a new paid backlink and you’ll be much better off in the long run.

Believing that NOFOLLOW links are useless

When Google is considering its rankings, it takes into account a great many factors. Some of these are well-known, like keyword densities and the age of the site, but others are a little more obscure. Take NOFOLLOW links for example. While it’s true that these don’t have a direct effect on your page rankings, they do affect the ‘spread’ of your links across the web. For example, if you had spent time and money generating 100 backlinks and they were all FOLLOW, this could count against you because the link spread doesn’t appear organic. On the other hand, if you have a nice mix of FOLLOW and NOFOLLOW, your link spread is much more natural. The bottom line is, don’t always assume that FOLLOW is best – try to mix it up a little.

“1000 backlinks for just $5.00? What a great deal!”

There are lots of places on the web that you can get something for next-to-nothing. In fact, there are sites that provide nothing but $5 services. And very often you’ll find someone there offering thousands of backlinks for very little money. Now, your logic should kick in here and tell you that these aren’t going to be quality links, but it’s easy to be blinded by what you consider a ‘steal’. The truth is that, wherever you find them, these cheap backlink services are a waste of money. Not only that, there’s a chance you’ll get your site blacklisted because your link will inevitably appear on spam sites. So the end result may be the opposite of what you intend, and your site will be penalized by Google. This will reduce your Page Rank, lower your site’s visibility in SERPs, and make all of the time and effort you’ve put into your SEO a waste of energy. No matter how cheap they are, no matter how smooth their patter, don’t be fooled into buying cheap backlinks – it’s a recipe for disaster. That’s not to say that buying backlinks can work, just always remember that you get what you pay for – and five dollars isn’t going to get you much.
Remember, the generation of backlinks is one of the best tools in a site owner’s toolbox, but going about it in the wrong way can have negative consequences. Tactics such as guest blog posts and link exchanges with other relevant sites are generally successful – just don’t let yourself get suckered into anything that sounds too good to be true. Because, as we all know, it probably is.

This is the Christmas season. That means good tidings and wishes of good cheer and so on. But it is never to early to start next year’s marketing plan for your domains and developed websites. Here are five things you can do today, per domain name, to improve your domain name value, page rank concretely and provide better sales and traffic metrics through the next sell offer or buying negotiations. Santa could bring good things in his sleigh for jolly domainers next year.

1. Rent a browser and plant some homepages

Find five new users per domain name who will put your website as their home page. Every use of their browser daily updates and indexes as a searchability and web presence factor. Finding new users form Craigslist or sifting through email responses to target end users with more precise communications in mind should keep your site bookmarked. Make your bookmark digits the new year’s goal. Added features and ease of use can make some homepages permanent. Use a very positive and well thought out branding approach for this type of marketing.

2. Organize a Traffic Plan

The rainy-day project most domainers never get to is the upstream and downstream traffic click reports. These can be awkward to absorb and bulky to review. But they will clue the designer and webmaster in to where users are likely to be found. Market to those sites, and more clicks will come. Review an updated study of demographics for end users with holiday leisure Web traffic in mind. Got a gaming or entertainment site? School’s out and newly mobile teens and students will be looking for content to test their new devices on. Link up and seed new directory additions for domain exposure.

3. Create Button Sites

Button sites are dashboard pages organized so encouraged visitors can review your broad diversity of online content offerings and select the one closest to their heart for a closer look. But just links won’t do any good. Make some magic with a custom graphic for each link or site, (perhaps the logo), and provide connotative dimensionality like something “fun to drive”. A button is infinitely more fun to punch than a plain old link. End users can find news and RSS feeds from other sites at other sites. These are especially utilitarian for mobile users trying to navigate without knowing how to type in urls via text tools or work their sparkly new phone.

4. Utilize FaceBook Properly

FaceBook is a great medium for social marketing, unless there is value reward or functionality with your end user’s “Like” click. Do they get points, offers, free coupons, or something? Make sure the offer is blended into a slogan or some type of marketing text aimed at the recreational “Like” clicker. Make your ‘Like” message domain name related. FaceBook users want to be the first in their group to know about the cool new thing, class, event, hobby, charity, or website concerning anything. Their announcement or url promotion can bring end users in droves to see what’s up. A cute domain name packs a lot of punch here.

5. Devise a Campus Campaign

Schools and college campuses are the target institutions of choice these days. Find a way that your website and its functions creates value and pinpoint ways to market to those users. Some campus newspapers and institutional trade publications may accept your ad. Your domain name should be prominently displayed. Bored students and people looking for another way to spend their time scan even back pages of trade journals and newspapers looking for something interesting. Your site or its optional participation entertainment give people “something to do”.

Originally posted 2010-12-21 11:10:11.

The type of material one carries in one’s wallet tells people who you are and what you make, where you live and how you spend. But in the wrong hands this could be deadly. Your Social Security Card, pay stub, occupational health membership card, even your health membership card can be used to social engineer a password or reset at a moment where your email account is compromised. Hackers are that clever, and in this world of online job competition they are motivated indeed.

1. Too Much Information

Take a look at the information inside your wallet. The worst type of identity slacker has their computer password or even printed out documentation with their passwords on it folded inside. This is the mother lode to a hacker looking to hack your corporate account by way of your personal email account. Little strips of paper and notes tucked inside for later use can be forgotten, but a hacker has plenty of time to figure out why they are so significant to you.

Solution: Carry a sport version of your everyday full wallet. reduce the full wallet and use it only during travel or International commerce, such as stock exchanges, border travel, or purchasing cruise tickets or anywhere you’ll need passport level documents with you. Keep a drawer in your desk with spare bit  of addresses passwords, and other task reminders. If you think you need the information somewhere in your everyday travels, transfer it in code to an email. A hacker won’t even know what it means in a sentence or subject line but you will.

2. Stacking the Deck

Another crime of wallet stuffing is carrying every credit card you ever got in a rubber banded stack. This can let thieves know you won’t miss one if it goes away or if you copy them the job you’ll have canceling every card will give them enough time to run up some charges. Hackers have bogus mail drops they can ordered goods delivered. Do NOT keep blank checks in there “just in case”. Keep your checkbook separate or have your wife carry it in the purse.

Solution: review what cards you carry every day and slim down the deck.

3. Layers Upon Layers

If you can’t tell tell by one look at the cards in your wallet what is missing, reduce down the number of cards and information you carry. Just trying to check if everything is there could take another ten to fifteen minutes hackers can use to set up a bogus account and use it to qualify for charges. Pickpockets know to steal the cards and information behind the visible layer. A man finds he left this wallet behind and has no idea someone has looked through it and seen what cards he has, what car he drives and his work and home address.

Solution:

4. Schedules

That work schedule or the department’s work layout plan?  Thieves really want to get their hands on these. This shows where you will be (and where your car will be left unattended) and when certain co-workers of yours will be present or not. Why do thieves and hackers want to know when you are not at home? because they can drop by you place and use your router or hack your desktop.

Solution: Keep your schedule online in a scanned version or text yourself pertinent days and hours you need to be at work.

5. The Phone as PDA

Think twice before committing a lot of sensitive information to your portable device or planner. If your phone is stolen, what will be more compromising, the renewal of phone service, activation of a new device, or chasing all the Internet access services you accessed by phone? And how much information about you social network is in there? Hackers usually start with emergency contact data, since this is a close relation to you and subject to being more vulnerable to social engineering.

Solution: carry either your cellphone with ID scanning and smart payment option  and some cash or your wallet, but not both. That’s two payments methods muggers can steal that hackers can enjoy all night long online. Or at least make sure you use a password on your phone that hackers can’t break.

Source: ClickJacker.com – July 30th, 2011

Hey domainers get out your small change. The $4.95 Godaddy special is up and working!

Remember when Groupon was just a funny little website with a unique sounding domain name? Groupon has now become the domainer’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the GroupOn story has grown and grown, until the tombstone headlines in the business journals have proclaimed it a blue chip investment worthy of underwriting on the metropolitan stock exchanges worldwide.

The ongoing opportunity in the online space for a domainer to build a brand, establish a service, deliver a product and find a market still exists. As many experts observe, the SEO search result B2B offering has barely been tapped, domainer clams to the contrary. The SEO business available online is a green market ripe for plucking. Domainers needy for SEO development and cementing into the virtual universe on the vine.

Domainers and their service providers have fallen short of delivering the full scope of SEO quality services, as one observer notes in an article “The B2b of SEO”.

“Even with the popularization of SEO value present in the current online media community, actual search engine penetration is rare. But the cause of this is more counter intuitive than even the most qualified experts can defend.”

GroupOn was smart enough not to listen to the naysayers who scoffed at their idea or nodded knowingly at one more undevelopable app coming down the pike. They ignored even further the people who said according to the extant rules GroupOn might fail. Every domainer should doff their cap to GroupOn for extending the domaining possibilities for every name in every domain portfolio in existence.

Yes, I am talking to YOU. Why aren’t you marketing your domain harder? Don’t you want an IPO? Get on the stick and get your marketing department clicking. It costs NOTHING to plant urls and post comments, yet so many ambitious domain owners haven’t posted a self-serving blog comment or forum post in YEARS.

Physician, heal thyself.

DirectI, parent of BigJumbo, DomainAdvertising.com, Logicboxes and ResellerClub (amongst others) announced this week the merge with the DomainAdvertising and BigJumbo brands into a single Domain Parking Platform. The merged entity will function under the brand DomainAdvertising.com. this signals a shift in parking offerings from seller side features to a more customer based approach.

Do you need an entire company to structure a parking offering? Aren’t these generated by scripts? Where does the human factor add value? I have yet to see a compelling content generation model from any parking company, which emphasizes the metrical aspect to website and domain promotion but skips the content angle. This mirrors how I feel the parking industry should be developing. Once the arrogance of a parking company fades away, the utility of their service offering improves.

One of the worst and most ignorant comments I heard this month about doing business online is that you “can’t promote your website on Youtube because you don’t have any videos to upload”. I had to stop laughing after a few minutes out of sheer disbelief. When you wonder why the competition isn’t winning inflating the value of their domain names, statements like this will emerge as big reason why the strategy bubble on the other side has burst.

I actually read an email where this man claimed that “nobody” could watch the content of the TV site on YouTube because it was ”all taken down”. I was gobstopped. I absolutely stared at the screen in horror at this comment. Since I had spent days watching films and clips and fan videos concerning the very subject, that would not be taken down, and been on Youtube for years, this guy was full of it.

I guess that’s why Google bought Youtube, because it would “all be taken down”. At this writing, Youtube has billions of videos up and people taking part in discussions and comment exchange worldwide. These are the kinds of statements that “ROFL” was invented to cover. All i could think of was that this client was so removed from the actual user experience at his website that he had no clue how organic web traffic actually grabs hold of one of his pages and stops by for a visit.

The opportunity to gain valuable first time end user feedback from YouTube contacts is one of the most exiisting online. Using the browser traffic to get a concrete opinion about how your site fits user needs, by users who have already passed the subject and interest test qualification, is priceless. This is specially true the when the domainer is the webmaster. The communication cycle is very shrunk indeed when a user says “that picture is awful” or “There’s no place to comment”. These golden kernels of user feedback can be directly incorporated into site redesign steps.

I could tell that the client not only had never traced the end user’s navigational path to the website, but had errantly shut out all related wisdom. This client insisted Youtube was not the place for any links back to his website. He also insisted that dropping links in forums was not a good idea either. Yes, these are usually the people who come crying to me at the end of the year saying they can’t figure out where the traffic is going.

Catch a clue, buddy. People search YouTube because they want video formatted content. They search YouTube because it is entertainment not found anywhere else. They look for the sarcasm, pathos, satire, comedy and witticism that makes human communication surprising and worthwhile. I know these entries stay up for a long time because I can get response emails from youTube a year after I commented. That’s the longevity of a YouTube link marketing effort.

Nobody goes to a search engine page looking for humor. But people online check out YouTube on the hour looking for diversion. But that’s not the only end user online at YouTube. The information from a slideshow or clip, video or narrated upload is infinitely more appealing to some than blocks of dry text. If you can engage even the operators of other channels that is a dozen more users watching your site, or citing it in communications than you had before.

Youtube is the most popularly used website on Earth. That’s the planet you are now on, by the way. People go to Youtube to look for things because going through a search engine is a needless extra step when they know they want video. And when users want video content, the default is all the content that Youtube has. Video has become the easiest information to digest, both visually and by audio “entertaining” an end user into learning or knowing more about any topic.

Any website owner who does have one single Youtube to their credit deserves a stay in the domainer’s penalty box. This is because even a narrated version of a slideshow of the website, images to match, or a progression of clicks through the site can work as the uploaded video content. Why would any website manager or webmaster not want a descriptive tour of their website ready for interested would-be visitors to assess? Why waste a search opportunity and gift-wrap it for your competitors?

YouTubes has all kinds of ways to put out the SEO sign. (They’re kind of in on the whole thing). Titles, search tags, captions, bubble comments, Facebook links and channel comments drive YouTube interaction. Getting the debate going and reacting to a comment from someone else is the most exciting social networking interaction happening online today.These kinds of content triggers are exactly what spurs web traffic in the first place.

What kinds of videos on YouTube might lure viewers to your website? While several thousand domainers believe users will visit their site for no reasons, using grass-is-greener techniques with game-the-system strategies for empty parked pages, several hundred thousand domainers know a YouTube link can only help traffic stats and end user satisfaction. In fact, by qualifying your next end user by subject type and word associations, clickthrough likelihood and overall site visit times will only rise.

A recently published article in Entrepreneur Magazine quoted a Google employee as citing the probability of getting funding from Google Networks, when connected to a member of the Google Networks employee’s own networks as a sizeable influence. Google ventures, launched in 2009, seems to play favorite son with only it own siblings. Does Google hope to attract all the best opportunities, or only venture it is already invested in through third parties?
Google’s article expresses candidly that referred deals from the personal networks of the seven investing partners are the golden children of Google’s venture arm. But opportunity seeking franchise or startup investor might scratch their heads about the point of applying for funding from a “global” venture capital grower that specifically only funds its own grandchildren. What do other investor funds think about such a narrow minded approach? And how can Google Ventures maintain a competitive profile in modern B2B business arenas with such core values?

Google has both promoted (to the Web) and denied (o the FCC) its business goals toward cornering the online market in forward thinking enterprises. Only Google can afford to overlook business opportunities not blessed by their own strategic development and those without personnel already in its own immediate business networks. This leaves good opportunities for angel funding for companies which don’t have the Google seal of Good Housekeeping on them. As a business strategy the entire functionality of a separate funding company seems like an elaborate bit of paperwork.

A curious quote from the Google Ventures article says “We don’t invest to help Google sell products or services. We don’t avoid companies that do that, but it’s not an objective of ours”. This sounds like the way companies talk when they are distinctly trying to not say their fundings are targeted to individuals already associated with their company. Life science companies and bioscience starups don’t really have an association with Google ventures or Google products, but it’s a safe bet the workplaces of those funded startups utilize Google products and apps. Just as if they were really Google business partners.

If you think this doesn’t sound like an equal opportunity funding resource, you’re probably right. Which makes it a target for every ethnic based startup requiring venture capital funding. Google Funding claims it invests in areas which Google “understands”. This is obviously the strategy behind the conception of Google Funding in the first place, to make sure a Google Ventures employee was already part of the ownership of anything they fund. So, what was that about Google not trying to monopolize its business venture clients in a monopoly-type business practice?

So, all a startup CEO needs to do to secure B2B enterprise funding is to target Google Funding using one of its own “areas of understanding” and tapping a Google Funding staff member or employee to be part of the enterprise. Just a hint: you’ll probably get accepted. In case the original CEO’s or partners look for fersher pastures, this leaves the Google ventures staffers holding the bag, and the blueprints and the copyrights. Just as Google intended it to be. (or B2b).

Think you are too right-angled to forge a TV site? The days of cheesy, gray area TV links and download fears are past. This is not a niche site concept, this is the site everybody and their brother will visit. And Emmy awards traffic could be driving users to your site right now. As the big awards show comes up on the calendar for the best in television programming acting directing and production, savvy viewers want to catch details they missed.

TV sites promote themselves, but even business cards can get passed out on the train bus or wherever you have lunch. What’s the most likely thing you will be talking about people can overhear? When people ask you what show you are talking about, tell them what site you found the information on. Give them a card. No kidding just yesterday two different people wanted to know what TV sites I wrote blogs for. Yes, Virginia, they will come.

Make sure you provide formats for end users looking for TV new and updates. Visitors today are using whatever is nearest when they overhear a conversation or see a Facebook entry about a TV show. Facebook has even expanded its pages to allow a personal blog page for a Facebook group to follow a specific TV show. As everyone knows by know, a website without a social media adjunct isn’t worth anything.

Use are looking for information and discussion about their favorite TV show and the characters as well as the latest happenings. They are using laptop, desktop, tablet, cellphone and Iphones for information. The way to capitalize best is to launch right now. I would be willing to cut my rates in half for a TV site client, it’s that easy to write for. And the payoffs during international searches are to die for. Just keeping a running blog people can Twitter during the Emmy show is real, viral content.

Today the SEO value of any TV site is now is huge with potential. The person who collects the most updated information is the winner of the public’s never-say-die taste for new television related content. The only websites more frequently visited right now than TV sites are gaming sites. And when TV and game site visitor niches interconnect, you’ve got statistics gold.

If you have a TV name in your domain portfolio and you are not developing it right this second, shame on you. Time to roll up your sleeves and get out the hostings passwords because this is the time to make a website about TV shows like there never has been before. Provide some HD video options, connect the site search tools, and rewrite the title bars and you’re already haflway there. Start linking up new streaming site links and locating RSS feeds to populate secondary pages.

So many domain owners know how to buy great domains but they do not know how to fashion a website the public wants. The money needs to be earned! But Google searches and Bing searches and Yahoo searches for TV shows are stellar every day! Why not be part of that traffic that has to go somewhere.

Right now the searchable keywords for any television show are very clear, the name of the show, the network it is broadcast on, and the character names or the names of significant episodes are all a webmaster needs to know. Putting this together in a basic blog can be the beginning of your own social media success story.