Domain Owl

A website should serve its customers, educate the public, and form a basis by which clients can decide whether or not to use the services provided. The website for a public facility such structures as a college, university, hospital, government building, or large shopping mall or a business plaza or public bureau block can diffuse frustration and allow the public to navigate their business smoothly. Domainers can spot the opportunity to mount a website such as this when a company fails to do so.

A survey of a company website from internal and external sources can yield surprising results. Factors for consideration should ease of use, correctness of information, updated technology, language, terms and standards, grammar, bilingual options, and feedback or contact opportunities for customers who need help getting to the next step. This information can be amassed by careful research when a domainer obtains a hot domain name property, preferable a short name with direct search engine keyword value that can quickly gain optimized traffic.

The company website for a corporate entity should not necessarily be the public-facing website. The corporate internal site and the company network should not have the same functionality and thus will not serve the public. If administration officials and staff choose to believe their website has a functionality for the existing user base, the existence of a better site made by a outsider can come as a rude awakening. It can also be an embarrassment for management.

Websites that follow a model of corporate jargon company philosophy, and frank inefficacy beg to redone by a domainer or webmaster who can deliver real utility to researcher and site visitors. The architecture of a site should hold enough virtuosity that no copycat will take the time and trouble to reap marginal advantages. But a weak company website begs to exploited by domainers and webmasters capable of making a superior site.

Administrators should capture the opportunity to own their own online presence instead of underdelivering on their website enough to beg an improved site from a non-stakeholder. If the staff do not have the skills to construct a professional looking website, outsourcing should take place. A consultant should be brought in if there is any doubt holes in the current website leave room for an outside to reap a benefit from the company’s own facility and services.

Architecture of a facility website should include a perspective of the physical layout that allows visitors to navigate the premises as well as convey a sense of the organization as a whole. The system map should naturally progress to questions a newcomer would have about how the location or campus interacts with visitors. The TLD .org can be used to promote a information feel for site visitors, although an official disclaimer should be placed somewhere on the site.

The public institution website can also furnish background data on staff and allow outside agencies to research data objects in the proper manner. These can be helpful to print out, or give or send to someone else who may find them of use. Companies who overlook this basic functionality of web publishing are letting their slip show. Every type of public facility should form a committee of persons who can give feedback about the condition of the current website and how it meets the needs of visitors and customers.

What a customer based website should do is allow potential customers and clientele to understand what using your business will entail what it will be like, and what path they should navigate to get the services and products they need. It is a pain point of management if an outsider can deliver this better than the host company.

In every case, people who experience the premises as a daily job or familiar place may not be best suited to understand how the physical layout looks to a stranger.
Customers, visitor, members, or clients need to have an idea of what they are going to be doing. This includes where to go, where to ask questions, where to park, and where to get related services.

Transportation and communication are two elements which can be smoothed over by providing needed information, such as distance from freeway offramps and proximity to bus line stops nearby. other unique data points will present themselves as the site project unfolds.

If a location or campus processes require detailed explanation, directions, coaching, or expansion, this should be done in a bulletin point list, slide show, or even an audio stream which mobile visitors and website readers alike can experience.
An Adobe PDF document ,in an easy to print format, encapsulating the necessary information, makes an excellent addition to any facility or campus website, or a website that aids newcomers and first time visitors to use the physical location the website refers to.

In the year 2011, people are used to referencing the internet before making the trip to any physical campus or premises. They want to know what they will need, what documentation to bring, and what telephone numbers to have or other paperwork/and or materials. A roadmap of how to get to the correct department of office is helpful, especially in a large building. Site administrator, both of physical locations, institutions, and public facilities can grasp the website as a information tool for the next generation.

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The domain world is like both the sports world and the business world, where the big names make big news and the legal ramifications and business parameters change at any moment. But recently the doings of the domain bigwigs, as well as the business restrictions and legal shifts associated with domain name trading and purchase and auction sales, have caused long term market watchers to re-estimate the current market for name trade potential.

Monte Cahn suing Moniker/Oversee is an eye-opener, unless one considers the ramifications of pouring one’s hearts-blood into an enterprise during critical business cycles of the domain game and then having the rewards twisted out of all regard. The encomiums that followed Cahn’s exit of Moniker could hardly have been garnered by a self-serving coterie intent on cementing future lawsuit goodwill.

The big impact of the February Domainer Flu Outbreak (dubbed the Playboy mansion DotCom malaise by some) seemed to be the proof that domain industry news was in fact media worthy, but the mainstream media still does not absorb and reflect domain name industry news accurately or assess its importance and relevance efficiently. What is this opaque banner between the media and general public and the domain industry? Is it only visible when one is outside the domain world?

A full week after initial reports were coming down the domain blog pike, network news, even in local areas was slow and sloppy. The attempts to cover the story , even with competition of global tabloid saturation on every Hollywood street corner, was clumsy and often inaccurate. For those looking to expand their B2B media offerings, thinks about delivering a new pipeline to broadcast media sources unable to decipher the terms, importance, or relevance of domain news to their own lives and commercial enterprises.

Domain name professionals are still weighing the value of the dot-co market. Godaddy certainly has made the introduction of a dot-co domain name into the portfolio cost friendly. Godaddy continues to sponsor entry level domainers into the name game by providing discount coupon codes. These dotcom name purchase codes, the recent feature .co registration discount, and the .info cost reduction are mighty incentive when crafting a domain development plan or business agenda for monetizing a name. These savings can really add up to domain name holders with sizeable portfolios.

It’s unsettling to realize that the domain world has been around long enough to mystify and alienate would-be industry buyers and potential players in the domain space. The battles for real estate on the domain name corporate playground show testimony to the fact that this is valuable territory to acquire and own.  Changes continue apace in the online and domaining world.
Online security is no longer a buzzword but a vulture circling over the shoulder of every webmaster.

Denial of service attacks for the Barcelona DomainFest event and the subsequent cancellation resonate with the mobile phone hacking scandal in the UK and the “Hacktivism” website hack of the PBS website in the United States. Until forthright security measures for data, hosting, and website architecture layers are followed, hacking will continue as a fact of life,  as online malice spares none. There seems to be a measure of dissonance that cognitively persuades technology officers these threats are not real, and it is a salutory effect of the many hack reports that gives webmasters worldwide a chance to correct their online security and programming integrity omissions. Will they take the chance?

Some changes are long overdue. Rick Latona’s website actually looks like a website brokerage now and not a watch shopping cart. The doings of ICANN continue to amaze Internet passersby and dubious domainer onlookers. To see Frank Schilling offer parking services is not a surprise, but my expectation is that the parking market is long diminished (except for the Whypark engine). The reluctance of some domainers to develop websites that function as new media and communication portals, with provision for any level of visitor interaction, is a long standing weakness of many domainers.

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Many times domainers come across Wiki names in the drop lists or in forming new suites of investment strategy names for their portfolio and wonder what they are supposed to do with them. The general consensus by now is that the end user public recognizes that the Wiki denotes information or at the very least a concise organization of data concerning the topic at hand. private domain value growth can occur while employing the “Wiki” strategy.

While there is no formal limit on how a domain name with the word “Wiki” in it is used for site programming, the fair use practices of trademark and copyright online website administration demand disclaimers to associations with the actual Wikipedia entity. But the trend among domainers is to establish an authoritative looking site with drilldown content that challenges the value of any Wiki.

Making a wiki site provides an opportunity for premium membership. This can keep subscribers updated while the general public has to keep scouting for disseminated information. A web site should have its own sources and it own authors, the more exclusive the better. Contrarily Wikipedia has a wide authorship, restricted content access, anonymous editors, broad editing powers accessible to many, and may not always bear the most accurate detail. But the beauty of such a site authored by a domainer is the relatively small upkeep required, unless key information should change.

Privacy and open access Wiki sites can be used for school reports, informal discussion, or as source material for other publications. But a website that follows the Wiki styles can have its own custom endorsements and be locked against editing from other Wikipedia authors. Even a project collaboration for a authorship of broken down parts can be controlled using tiered attributes in the editing user groups accounts programming.

Wiki sites can give domain name owners a chance to fulfill a domain name’s potential even if their is no gimmick or product to sell. keywords and high density of information can index a wiki leaning site higher in the search engines due to quality of information and end user traffic spans. The readability of a site can go a long way. Science terms and ideas, for example, can be versed in “plain English”.

The visual style and presentation of a Wiki type site should be as the Wikipedia site are clean lined and transparent as possible. Efforts to mimic the Wikipedia format and any such template usage will appear to violate the fair use intention. A webmaster building a nuts and bolts information site should show restraint from flashy animations, complex code, and purposeless trimmings or colors relative to nothing.

Overall, a Wiki type site can reflect well on its owner and furnish opportunities to link a variety of top level domains of the same ilk to related content for traffic and search query hits. The limited amount of ads or product recommendations make the product featured look better on almost any platform. The Wiki format is the perfect solve for domain names with information value but unfocused core users as yet.

Why park when you can wiki?

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This is the age of the mobile domain name. Everyone has got not just a cellphone but a smartphone, an Internet portal users can hold in their hands in line at the fast food place, waiting for the movie to start in the theater, and waiting for the kids to come out of school. The mobile domain name website designer needs to feature an app for browsing site visitors to utilize. Just signalling one point on the landing page for mobile users is a start.

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Everyone has got a cellphone. Infants and pets have cellphones. barbie has a cellphone and her doll has a cellphone. But not everyone likes the navigation or reduced footprint mobile access to Internet sites offer. My take on the mobile use of websites is that the visitation to any website can enjoy huge traffic bursts as long as there is a unique, standalone, easily navigable application (app). This can build in a number of directions.

I am confronted daily at my local bus stop by people who don’t know when the bus gets there. They are all holding cellphones. The reason they can’t access the local bus routes via internet is that the website for this service (mta.net) is the most bloated internet presence ever constructed. Getting schedule information is a tough dig.

Talk about a bloated online destination. Mta.net is the worst and most overpacked online enterprise I have ever seen, and its schedules are buried under a site map sinking under the weight of too much pablum. The overdesign of this site reaches critical traffic stalls regularly and the bus schedule I normally use has a permanent error built into its Adobe page split between the 5th and 6th age of my most used bus schedule.

What if I made a website that featured the bus arrival times and schedules for my local bus stops in an easily mobile-navigable format for simplistic mobile phone users to track and access? It sounds like re-inventing the wheel. But if the data owners don’t like their wheels to be accessible to riders, someone else can showcase the wheel and its dynamics.

Navigating an Adobe brochure on a cellphone with a screen size the size of a Lorna Doone cookie doesn’t work for me. But checking the schedule of the MTA bus route 183, MTA bus route 96, and MTA bus route 222 maps tos a series of clicks which culminate in (you guessed it) the entire multipage bus schedule download. This is awful to tab through on a numeric mobile phone keypad.

But what if a local website hosted these schedules in navigable form so that mobile users could grab their data while waiting curbside? Furthermore, a fun marketing idea might be to print stickers with this url and slap them on the bus stops so people would get the idea. Instead of worried faces and unnecessary delays, bus riders could access schedules “on the hoof”.

If a vendor or internet source online offers data in an unpalatable format, there is no law that says you can’t repackage that data on your own site and garner the clicks. By identifying bad websites and poorly accessible data, webmasters of would-be mobile features can target a repackaging strategy and spread the word. And domainers promoting these sites may see some tasty traffic.

Previously posted on 7/28/2010

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Have you gotten bogged down with everyday activities and missed a prime domain name deleting from your hosting or registrar account? Assigning an old email address, spam filtering, and the wearying upsell chain of emails from your hosting account and registrar can make even the savviest domainer skip any subject lines from those domain auto-generation lists.

Make a spreadsheet or get a small notebook. On each page (or in each column) write down the name of the domain you bought, the place you purchased it, how much, and the expiration date. If you have the Paypal address or the email contact and name of the person who sold it to you, this could be queried later on if there is a contested name change.

If you used an online forum, resales portal or auction house, get the user name and note whether or not the person exchanged proper trader rating data. Selling a domain name can be something that domain owners trumpet to the skies, especially if they made a profit. Following the purchase, Google the domain name to see if any comments (or protests) regarding the domain name sale have been published online.

The domain purchase price becomes the new start value for the domain. Every marketing cost or time investment must evaluated for change in domain value from here on in. Don’t use any other projected values discussed in the negotiation phase of acquiring the domain. Those are not concrete. Your goal is to change this domain name purchase value and increase it until the name can be marketed for resale.

Create  a page in the notebook or spreadsheet for domain traffic and SEO measurements. It is worthwhile to note online metrics generators searches for the name on such and such a date, and tabulate changes at these same generators for the name later on. If you jump around using sweetheart sites to get the values you want, the data validity won’t be as strong as all values over time.

As stated, the domain purchase price is the establishing value. This value can be inserted into a variety of formulas. These formulas can be used to generate reports for domain name auction or resale data later on. By establishing an origin data point for all your domain calculations from then on, you can make a quarterly growth table for all the values. These would be traffic, new user signups, offer inquiries, or ad responses and Google revenues.

The notebook domaining method can be used if you only have one or two domains and don’t feel a need to mechanize the data. But it gets easier as you buy more domains to just add the basic information and let legacy formulas through the sreadsheet take over the work for you. Also, exporting data be  comes easier to cut and paste into a computerized spreadsheet, especially if you are catching up.

Regarding domain name expirations; If you outline the Expiry date in red, or sort regularly once a week to check domain name expirations in the spreadsheet, you do a quick check for renewals due, So, when the panic strikes in the middle of the night your most valuable domain is slipping away through the droplist, you can flip pages or scan the top dates for calmness.

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The overdesigned site continues to create traffic opportunities for domainers. Tapping web rage at an incompetently designed (and poorly constructed) website yields fresh ideas for new sites that will attract traffic as the frustration with the company destination site grows. The same tricks the website uses to improve SEO strands the customer at the website, click after click.

For many domain name owners, finding the niche to get traffic is difficult to pinpoint. But the poor showing many websites make, even  glossy superbrand sites, embarrasses their company and offers a savvy webmaster a chance to shine. These are sites for companies like Target, Starbucks, and Rite Aid/CVS. Their unwillingness to proffer data and grudging inability to offer up the very information people seek is blindingly inept.

Why have a search bar with such poor results? Why bind a shopping customer to a buying decision before basic information is revealed? Why limit product availability and pricing data behind a login ? These types of website gimmicks make visitors frustrated and time sensitive surfers furious. Sadly, customers are used to the un-usability of these sites. (And if you call the store, you get a recording referring you to the website!)

You can’t find anything. The Google result leads you to the landing page where the search has to begin all over again. The assumption is that the customer will keep clicking and clicking until the site makes them cry “uncle”.  There is no valid reason a database or a clickthrough path should be this awkward and nonsalutary. The frustrating “option” is to undergo the “Contact Us” maze.

It’s just very poor design that renders customers willing to anywhere else to  get the answers they need. But how conscious must the webmasters of the site be to have organized he site plan this way? If a heading says “Medical Summaries” and I click on the product name, why is the CVS site search result an alphabetical search bar when I already performed the search and clicked on the result? Why not have the result be the …medical summary?

I was trying to compare the cost of a prescription drug online and I ran into an ugly surprise. There are still websites whose functionality is so poor they cannot render a liveable result without extra clicks, extra searches, extra pulldowns, extra runaround. The silver cream should have been a one click product listing reachable in the one click I performed from the search engine.

The three pages of drugstore products with silver in them did not help. Worse, clicking on the default drug listing that matched my search result returned me to an alphebetical index I had to click and click and click again and again to dot to dot find the information listing. Laughably, my search for “silver sulfadiazine price”  got an apologetic “Sorry, no search results found.” How inept a website is that?

I checked other sites, but they were online order houses. The whole point was to determine which local drugstore to transfer my prescription to. Without price information what data could possibly determine my choice? Why did the pharmacy require a blind transfer irrespective of price, when everybody knows there is some kind of offer or bonus for transferring prescriptions?

And fishing through my email for lost passwords to drugstore accounts I really don’t use is another waste of time. How can this be a sound process? How can site visitors forgive this inefficiency? Because they feel they don’t have a choice. Because the toleration for poorly performing corporate sites has become ground in. Web site visitors need search engine result choices.

This is where the domainer comes in. A website can be made furnishing comparative price information for the vendors . This is the information the store had decided must be buried beneath layers of click-heavy obscurity. The domainer gives the clicking public a choice.

Thus the unwary surfer has a place to go, to solve their problem and get their information. The unnecessary repetition of information many domainers see on new sites suddenly has just become very necessary. True, the development task may not be easy. But a domain name based on even one product, with an updated list of chain store pharmacy prices could make search engine referred viewers very happy.

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This is the age of the mobile domain name. Everyone has got not just a cellphone but a smartphone, an Internet portal users can hold in their hands in line at the fast food place, waiting for the movie to start in the theater, and waiting for the kids to come out of school. The mobile domain name website designer needs to feature an app for browsing site visitors to utilize. Just signalling one point on the landing page for mobile users is a start.

Everyone has got a cellphone. Infants and pets have cellphones. barbie has a cellphone and her doll has a cellphone. But not everyone likes the navigation or reduced footprint mobile access to Internet sites offer. My take on the mobile use of websites is that the visitation to any website can enjoy huge traffic bursts as long as there is a unique, standalone, easily navigable application (app). This can build in a number of directions.

I am confronted daily at my local bus stop by people who don’t know when the bus gets there. They are all holding cellphones. The reason they can’t access the local bus routes via internet is that the website for this service (mta.net) is the most bloated internet presence ever constructed. Getting schedule information is a tough dig.

Talk about a bloated online destination. Mta.net is the worst and most overpacked online enterprise I have ever seen, and its schedules are buried under a site map sinking under the weight of too much pablum.  The overdesign of this site reaches critical traffic stalls regularly and the bus schedule I normally use has a permanent error built into its Adobe page split between the 5th and 6th age of my most used bus schedule.

What if I made a website that featured the bus arrival times and schedules for my local bus stops in an easily mobile-navigable format for simplistic mobile phone users to track and access? It sounds like re-inventing the wheel. But if the data owners don’t like their wheels to be accessible to riders, someone else can showcase the wheel and its dynamics.

Navigating an Adobe brochure on a cellphone with a screen size the size of a Lorna Doone cookie doesn’t work for me.  But checking the schedule of the MTA bus route 183, MTA bus route 96, and MTA bus route 222 maps tos a series of clicks which culminate in (you guessed it) the entire multipage bus schedule download. This is awful to tab through on a numeric mobile phone keypad.

But what if a local website hosted these schedules in navigable form so that mobile users could grab their  data while waiting curbside? Furthermore, a fun marketing idea might be to print stickers with this url and slap them on the bus stops so people would get the idea. Instead of worried faces and unnecessary delays, bus riders could access schedules “on the hoof”.

If a vendor or internet source online offers data in an unpalatable format, there is no law that says you can’t repackage that data on your own site and garner the clicks. By identifying bad websites and poorly accessible data, webmasters of would-be mobile features can target a repackaging strategy and spread the word. And domainers promoting these sites may see some tasty traffic.

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The first step after obtaining a domain name is to make the website. Once the website is launched, marketing becomes the primary business function. Marketing a website encompasses awareness building,  targeting potential users, tracking landing page and clickthrough page visitor traffic, and effectively encouraging active participation in site activities by those users.

Sites that are meant to build value in a domain need metrics to support that value growth. Metrics that are used to estimate domain name value are site traffic, user demographics, and external links. Domainers can choose which activities to invest their time in to grow site visitation and web awareness of the site’s content and mission. Sites with a diversity of approaches can reap concrete benefits from domain promotion and content marketing.

One of the best ways to popularize a site is to optimize the SEO. This phrase has become an industry wide term in domaining circles that can mean different things to different operators. Sometimes the content on the website is shared to other sites via news feed or RSS utilities. Or the abstracts to certain content pieces might be fed to other external sites with links to the rest of the article text at the destination site.

Some websites derive profits from visitors and participation at the destination website in certain volumes. Resident code monitors online visitors from these sponsors or advertisers. The data from these operations is consolidated into monthly earnings and/or traffic reports. Website administrators can run independent site traffic reports as well.  Specialized traffic reporting software can also be used from vendors online for this purpose.

Webmasters who are aggressive about growing their site participation and SEO appeal will review the traffic reports for valuable user data.  If indications are good that blog entries with pictures fare better for clickthrough to the main article, the webmaster knows to expend valuable bandwidth per entry for that feature. If readers avoid articles with too many statistics, the editor knows to simplify the text to garner more continued pageviews.

Unfortunately, many “black hat” domainers and site operators encourage click fraud and cloaked links. While this may bolster temporary traffic numbers it does little to build affiliate revenue or domain value. Starting flame wars with other bloggers and site visitors also can show little long term site value. The site domain name and/or the main keywords can guide the choice of affiliates, such as “candy bar phones” or “romance novel” ads.

The Search Engine Optimization derives online traffic and grows domain name value by drawing power from comprehensive density of keywords, originality of content, external backlinks, and link quality. Getting a site in the thick of the information superhighway takes work. SEO tips and tricks are everywhere but very few of the replace basic common sense.

Understanding the basic workings of these necessary site features is the responsibility of every webmaster. The web standards and best practices should be the model for all Internet website development and marketing activity. Search engine ranking factors can determine the resale price of the domain name. Hence the drive for site composition quality.

The diversity of link sources matter. The host site keywords should be a guide.  If the parameters of the search terms for the linking back sites are significantly altered from the base keywords, the link has little value. If the site keywords and search terms for the external links are extremely different,  the link may detract from SEO tabulation results. Sacrificing link quality for happenstance traffic is short sighted domaining.

The popularity of the sites where external links are found matters. The text which is linked as an anchor in posts, urls, or comments at external sites leading inbound matters. These dynamics are what conscientious webmasters and aggressive domainers work to maximize the effect of per site/domain. An assortment of links between like-keyworded sites can work to a domainer’s advantage.

To do that, working with keywords is required. Site key words for any domain name or term can be found using online sites or domain name analytic tools. But the words that connect to nay domain may not be appealing category or article title words, or they may be too abstruse or foreign to interest browsing readers or scanning Internet surfers.

Domainers and webmasters depend on registrar engines and SEO instruments   to provide valid keyword data.  But the most commonly used keywords generated by analytics and traffic bot trackers may be awkward and difficult to incorporate into categories and posts. This is where the site writer and webmaster need to work together to capture discoverability and stickiness elements within fixed and updated content.

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When looking into the domain name markets, few domainers in the beginning stages move past the dot-com, dot-net and dot-org markets. The kaleidoscope of names available in the domain world is too wide to absorb. But crevices abound in the internet domain market due mostly to the perception by some domainers that they are already mastered by a specialized few. Dot info names are a unique commodity that can be resold for profit.

This is not now the case. Due to the level of broad expansion of sub-TLD and global geo domains worldwide, the dot-info space is now a conventionally old school top tier domain property. Big money has traded hands for some top level premium dot-info domain names this last year alone. And the end user scenarios for any.info site is lively and active, not the close ended porthole of useless data some domainers might have pegged it as once upon a time.

Today, the dot-info suffix attached to any generic domain name can automatically be assumed to be a destination site for related subject material. Indeed, domainers and site designers can craft websites just like the directory portals end users want to find. The keyword formula inside a .info domain name works very well. Paydayloans.info sold for $24,000 in March of this year.

Thus, any dot-info domain becomes an instant “pedia” authority and online fact archive.  Mastering the data on any topic is significant, yet an online archive or condensation of subject material will always be of interest to researchers, educators, first adopters, and curious learners.data today must be updated constantly and refreshed using all the wide scope of perspectives modern technology and linguistic arts allow.

The competitive market for buying a dot-info domain reflects its powerful ability to transit mere “name-dom” and become a widely frequented site in no time.

Dot-info names are very easy to recall and for end users to hold in their minds when typing in the browser bar because the “information” goal is something of an understood assumption. The expectation behind any word typed into a browser bar with dot-info after it would be an information site for that topic. Of course, not just any .info name will resell in the five figures. But the legerdemain that sequences a .info name into a global portal has to start somewhere.

Where it starts is at the domain name owner level.

When the Internet was born, the concept of using a domain name in conjunction with an address bar and a browser url was all the technology they were able to handle. The trifecta of the dot com dot net dot org was a holy trinity few could ever see past. Even as the lower sub-TLD domains emerged, each land grab and real estate rush was greeted with a conservative

The dot-info domain has taken a licking. It has been the poor ugly mistreated stepchild of the top TLD domain market for so long some old timer domainers think it will always stay that way. But they could be missing out on a golden opportunity. The dot-info website is a standard point of departure online for wikipedia or encyclopedia type defining sites with facts and details about the subject keyword or dictionary domain name.

As many important men in history have remarked, you can never have too much information. Yet today the Internet would be sound proof that too much information is what causes certain websites and domain results in search engine listings to be delineated by visitation, keyword density, deep linking, and broad referral instances Web wide.

The secret ingredient that can boost a name from a drop list dullard to a golden nugget of domain name treasure is the platform behind it and the development the domainer puts into launching a site for it. One application, one meta tagged header entry, one list of density guaranteed keywords, and some linking and article seeding backlink strategies, and the domainer is off and running.

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In speaking with a client today concerning making his website, the entire campaign to get traffic and new business for his company unfolded. But the customer remarked,  that he was “just talking about a website”, but what I was talking about was marketing and advertising. I had a hard time not falling out of my chair. Where in the online business world, or even click and mortar commerce, did he think the two were supposed to be separated?

This client owned a small contracting business and had a FaceBook page. He was awake to the Internet possibilities.  But the effort to get the website up was “ongoing”. Big red flag: the client didn’t even have a domain picked out yet. This told me that no timetable or launch date had been set. Without these milestones, website projects and domain sites wither and die. Domains get registered by competitors because the project team waffles around.

One of the biggest reasons a website never happens is that the domain marketing effort is devoid of strategic initiative. The necessary decisions about form and intent never get made. Without a game plan the project simply never has a shape and becomes an endless talking point that ever materializes. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the client both scoffed at a coherent marketing plan and had no site up yet. The two tend to go together.

One of the ways to evaluate a potential website’s strengths and weaknesses is to see what kinds of options to participate visitors and referred readers will perceive when the landing page loads. Can they call, email, to stop by the office? Just the integration of company data to directories of local business was probably not even done.  A broad campaign to saturate the site with discoverable keyword elements and SEO related geo data was indicated.

Without anything online, there is nothing to market, discuss, or promote. Practically any business today that does not have a website feels very fly-by-night, not the vibe a customer is looking for in a construction contractor. This type of site can be as bare-bones as possible and still serve its purpose. Very little flash and flimflam features need to be added. I suggested the client author both write a blog detailing past projects with photos, and contribute to his own keyword rich forum describing construction issues.

Astonishingly, the client told me his brother was a web designer and was “working on the website”. This is another red flag. Websites are professional advertising tools, not weekend hobbies. Unless the strictest standards of professional respect are brought to bear, nothing will result. The world is full of back burner website projects that never see the light of day. That a family’s livelihood depends on this site production makes the situation acute.

The company name hadn’t even been searched for the associated domain name yet. I could tell at once that the “brother” was extremely ambiguous about the project and controlling his brother’s commercial success by suppressing progress. These are sticky dynamics where nothing but the truth will serve. I told the client to get his domain secured with capable hosting.

The client was wearing a company t-shirt with lots of text almost constructed like a minisite front page. The construction services, I told the client, had an appeal for immediate geographical users. These would be prospective customers who would be looking for companies to do work locally.  These,  I told this client, would be looking up the services using keywords and local city names or even possibly zip codes to find workers.

I advised this client  to emphasize his Spanish and English bi-lingual service and outline all the contracting services his company did with a short paragraph or two each. These would be a valuable SEO incorporation of important keywords relative to the search engine descriptors browsers would use to find local project help. I told him the information on his t-shirt, expanded into sentences and paragraphs, would make an excellent website.

I also suggested he link to another minipage where images and short descriptions from past projects could show people without reading how the company worked and what kinds of projects he did. This type of simple task compeltion would both lead to the meaning of the domain, but support its keyword and topical subject matter. We discussed a domain name with the geographic suffix if the company name dot-com was taken.

These steps immediately focused the domain buy and initiated a sketching out of the domain name in the customer’s mind. Every stage of the text construction and the content writing would now lead back to the domain name. With an independent hosting buy and a website project under personal control, the client was now individually responsible for his domain and construction progress for his new company website.

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