Domain Owl

Goal setting is important in any business enterprise. But when resources and ongoing fees are involved time is of the essence. Organizing your time with respect to domain management and domain development should play a role in appraising. Here are  five things to consider when making a development plan for a domain you own or when looking an extra name acquisition or a renewal for an existing domain name.

1. Estimate Daily Time Contribution

Too many domainers try to make new websites on the fly, skipping steps and cutting corners. These shortcuts are taken for reasons of time. Better sites in more critical stages of development will get robbed for this “extra child”.If there is a better time to put pressure on yourself or your team for launch mode, then reschedule the buy or delay the domain development project start date.

Set goals for future domain value, progressive page rank, Google SERP result position and ad revenue which are realistic in scale to the time devoted to that single website. Have a completeness in your domain marketing plan and business agenda that provides elasticity for best decision making for development resources like hosting, link promotion, and content planning.

2. Handoff Support

Look for ways to get exterior contributions made to the site without you logging in  for a few days. This gives the domainer a break and allows them to get some perspective. Handoff support can mean that the domainer can absorb a new technology, attend a trade conference, and or spend time with the family/staff without being a slave to the mobile phone. But the overall site development impetus is not lost as a hidden cost.

3. Dot to Dot Domaining

This is like the fast-track product development model, with a twist. By quick hitting on everything from website design to web hosting to SEO building to content spinning, a site can be up in no time. Improving the site is always an option. But many ops forget the elastic nature of the web and stall a site launch over endless “tweaking”. Fast tracking a domain to a site can free up time for real required development, such as link building, product fulfillment, or communication with clients and customers.

4. SEO Strategy

So many theories abound on how site optimization for search engines works today it’s almost a lucky guess. The basic domain development model that never changes is to build a site with unique content and individual participation options for eligible site visitors.This should not be overly ambitious and should be based on research.

Theoretically the search engines should assign premium values to such a site. But the plan for the site should include benefits and rewards from user participation and content authoring, not just dollar signs.

Understanding the relationship of your site’s SERP ranking and the stages of development it must pass through is key. Search engines don’t like colors or Flash or any particular theme. But the calendar has to have a start date to establish beginning metrics. Hanging up site launch for some hidden x-factor that will punch your site to optimum results is unrealistic.

Site SEO begins on day 1 of your site, and it can never begin if you have no site up. Reworking a site map later is a task for a rainy day. But getting the message out should be a full time job if you have researched your site purpose well. Many anterior networks of marketing and domain promotion require site urls and a domain to register them properly.

5. Deputation

Learn to deputize. Holding on tight to the project until it screams for mercy annoys all your team members. Unless you can let others lead, learn to assign areas of responsibility to others and allow them to grow into positions of accountability. This imputes distrust and a tendency to implode and play drama queen. Nothing says trouble like this.

Everyone has a personal boundary in a collaboration. When it is crossed, some individuals try to save the situation. Others become angry. Some may actually leave. Every domain development project should have assigned backup areas and cross training to prevent an entire site from depending on the wellness, attitude and availability of one single person.

If you think alienating contractors is a never ending privilege, guess again. Those horror stories about people taking off or quitting in the middle of the project usually involve clients who make demands so over the top the provider gives up and flees. All the brainstorming and all the communication has just walked away with no intention of coming back.

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Reading a book about Google was inevitable. This book was an eye opening primer in basic domain wisdom. But the knowledge inside the tome “What Would Google Do”‘ goes much further than any one online market segment. Written all the way back in 2009, much of the simplistic approaches to online business can be tooled especially to a domainer profit model.

Making smart mistakes, joining networks, and concentrating on delivering best product and nothing less is a welcome refresher. The concept that “life is  a beta” may be a soft sell to hard nosed domainers. References to the Google economy and the concept that middlemen are doomed may be up for debate or at least a half-hearted shrug.

The idea that “free is a business model” and that “nothing can compete with free” is being proven right now in realtime clicks and mortar stores with Panera bakeries. Neighboring eateries can’t compete with pay as you go prices. And Panera polishes its franchise with every chopped price. Google didn’t write the book (NPI) on business success but they do enjoy co-opting the brand.

Being collaborative is nothing new, neither is the concept of making mistakes well. Most industry advice books, especially in the tech related fields, emphasize trial and error. But this can be expensive for the everyday domainer. Thinking inside the gift economy, grabbing the freeware of the open source portal, and embracing the gift machine that is the Internet are all included.

Jeff Jarvis in “What Would Google Do” encapsulates and expands on his blog material from buzzmachine.com. If you are stranger to the blog this is all new news. Google and the Internet are indeed social media.And Jarvis explores several cases were the internet media is exploited incorrectly for public relations and profit motives. Jarvis preaches against being “evil”.

But somewhere the case is lacking that Google is guardian, the last bastion of a business seal of approval. The perception that a business operating outside the Google envelope needs to be “reformed’ may meet askance by several industry watchers. But Jarvis’ approach has brought new life to old company models. Is any business Google proof? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Domainers can best use this book as a tool to learn to think three dimensionally about to puncture and exploit captive domain traffic markets. Jarvis suggests giving control, respect and organization to customers, (which I seem to be alone in wishing more mobile customers of websites were on the receiving end of).  Information is power, but the idea that FaceBook is a “fake’ currency is intriguing.

Domainers can read this book and enjoy how Jarvis road maps certain domain markets and reveals potential domain name investment values to invest in. For a domain speculator to buy geo names or real estate names is nothing new, but it’s nice to hear a SEO expert say so too. Jarvis reports that the real estate market online is ripe for explosive development, and he’s right.

The application of Googlethink may not always heal. The case studies are contemporary, however, and deal with extremely relevant and updated business profit models such as airlines and “vanishing” newspapers are food for thought. Turning the customer experience around can make a domain (and its corresponding website) pay.

But a book spent evangelizing Googlification and Googlethink is not necessarily captivating reading. The success story wears thin because readers can’t start their own Google in the basement. Some readers may wonder how much of Jarvis’ advice can relate to markets where Google does not dominate, such as insurance and law. But maybe that’s for the next book.

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I read an article recently in Rolling Stone magazine about some computer hackers and the “crime of the century”. In trying to blog about it, I found an interesting conundrum: The top (series of) search engine result(s) from searching for the article was a blog review of the article by another blogger, not the magazine author. By Google searching the article title, the top page of search results was not the source, but the review.

Rolling Stone is proud to announce digital issues, but the title of this one article or searched keywords did not render a result even at the Rolling Stone site. This means that every mention or Twitter or email or Digg gets related back to the first online result, the same blog but not the copyrighted origin. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as stolen SEO.

Thus the source website yielded the SEO to the blogger. The blog author gave due credit and links to the source but the blog entry remains the top result for another author’s work. Yet it’s a mystery why the originating publisher would pass up an opportunity to get search result traffic. It’s hard to know the thoughts of a webmaster that stalls SEO discoverability and direct search engine referrals for putative digital subscriptions.

Stolen SEO should be a crime, but the individual leaving the door open are the source originators themselves. How many times have you found yourself using the Search bar at a given site, fruitlessly entering qualified terms, but not getting anywhere? These are the “light bulb” moments domainers and webmasters should tally in their tickler file of websites to build.

Target is a good example. I don’t go to Target.com because the search engine does not render results for products I know they have. Google searching should work, unless the clickthrough link pulls that scummy trick of landing the searcher at the landing page of the site, to begin the search all over again. IMOHO that is NOT a good search engine result. It creates work for shoppers.

How is this an opportunity for domainers? Domainers win when they conceive of a website that solves a problem and provides visitors with sticky content. Nothing could be more sticky than the search result for the item the web browser is looking for. One of the lamest excuses for imitation is that it’s flattering, but decades of Microsoft success prove you can’t “own” an idea.

If the store wanted to accessibly sell lawn chairs, it would maximize keyword efficiency.  But Target has left a window open for enterprising domainers. They can make a site featuring only those items inside the niche and save the shopper time, typing, and trouble. Any site that tries to encompass too broad an encyclopedia or catalog risks alienating visitors by this response failure. The elision of likely keywords from surgical results leaves the door open for enterprising web designers.

By shrinking the ugly cycle of scanning page of items after page of items at the store site, and waiting for all this to render, a site master can marry a city name or store name with an item to shop for and make a killer domain out of keywords they can optimize until the cows come home. This opportunity is available in markets heating up right now, like online coupons from sites like Dukky. Maybe users don’t want to wait for the next campaign and want the coupon now.

Why is this a domain development opportunity? Because a website owner of “Targetlawnchairs.com” could make a bunch of listings on the site and link them to the densely buried Target.com product listings. Surfing a densely niche targeted site for lawn chairs available at Target stores allows online discoverers to skip Search restarts and navigate back and forth through a million results.

Collecting information from online Web sources and redelivering it to the web visitor is not exactly rocket science. But it is webmaster science. Domainers can execute reasonable answers to online search query problems  and compose a likely site, and shrink the type in cycle for grateful web users. The traffic should tell the tale and  bring revenue and clicks.

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When website technology makes the cover of TIME magazine, the webmasters who skip taking note and continue on their geeky ride to stardom suffer. Collaborative filtering is what Netflix and Blockbuster have been doing for years with our movie choices. TIME’s article assumes that consumers and listeners are such spineless jellyfish their taste in music is a non-static dynamic one Pandoresque taffy pull away from new consumerism online.

Webmasters have seen this kind of taste making before, usually linked to consumer side reviews or specification linked technology elements. How you buy a computer online or how you buy an Ebay object show massive marketing heave in complementary response to every click. Vacuum cleaners and diapers get the same treatment from sites like Target.com and Kmart. Online consumers have learned to accept this collaborative response as a constant.

The owners and programmers of Pandora.com have a gleeful exuberance and gosh-gee-whiz exuberance of a winning website at the top of its game. Opening Pandora.com’s box would seem to be fun, I haven’t had the time nor the inclination. But to change up the model of the appeal of a Pandora business plan is a challenge all webmasters can relate to.

The domain is the brand, the starting point of a functional online destination. Creating a “Pandora” for computers and suggesting netbook or Ipad choices could also be the next big collaborative software requiring a recommendation engine. It could also be a shopping list item for domainers cruising the dollar domain threads or the dropping and deleting auction site lists.

Forming domain names to eventuate as Pandora-like portals for other consumer items or objects thus becomes a valid domaining goal. The name Pandora itself does not pertain to music or technology but rather to classical mythology. That the broad arc between those dynamics has been bridged shows the stamp of an impressive marketing campaign. The user clickthrough and site visit frequency ramps up the SEO value of any such site.

But what about the rest of us who haven’t chosen wannabe music fans as our target market? Lots of web surfers don’t want to be informed about their taste and neither do they  want suggestions about what the webmasters think they are supposed to do or buy or click next.  Generally these type of pointing fingers take the form of affiliate ads. YouTube and Tivo aren’t as sales oriented in the recommendation engine tactics so the pain isn’t felt as much.

The key market for Pandora would seem to be people too dumb or impatient to discover music for themselves. I guess if it doesn’t slay you in the first ten bars, you won’ t be tempted to buy it or know it or learn it. Pandora has transformed music appreciation into a game of “Name That Tune”, where consumers can turn thumbs down on any ditty they don’t cotton to.

Pandora.com has an intrinsic value in that it slyly siphons content from the corpus of music created worldwide across history. That is a very large target base of Internet browsers to tap. And they didn’t pay for the development.  iTunes mined the same demographic, with its  lead samplings and suggested additional tracks and artists.

The core value of a recommendation engine is its database of users. Pandora taps the musical tastes of users who have ranged through its site answering questions, scanning titles, and selecting artists. This type of data works through the filtering model and products likely pathways of additional similar choices. But the associative (SEO) model still works too.

It is hard to argue about the success and popularity of Pandora, but it confounds the logical webmaster in me to do it. FaceBook was just such a site, and now an industry of privacy and security software companies are making bank doling out protective code to people who give crib notes on their lives to people (Friends) they haven’t spoken to in decades.

The domain market contains many expansive opportunities for those with ideas and commitment to their collaborative projects. The domain model like Pandora.com as a suggestive filter or recommendation engine has merit. The broad range of objects this might apply to could start another domain gold rush in recommendation engine domains. Toys, books, kites, model airplanes, surfboards, a portal for anything can be created with such a model to work from.

Now that the public and online Internet user base has developed a taste for having their choices filtered back to them in the form of additional product or item suggestions, any domainer can identify their target object and build a ‘Pandora” of their own. There are no limits, from game playing software to Barbie clothing. The Web (and TIME Magazine) has spoken. If you build it, they will come.

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