Domain Owl

The trade of domain name marketing has its own norms and practices. There are several classes domain names fall in to for the newby domainer to understand.These names are not absolute nor are they technically inappropriate as used by any domainer. Yet knowing these classes can introduce the idea of domain specialization to those looking to enter or “corner the market” in some niche of the domain business.

Traffic domains are domains which are bought or developed strictly to bring clicks and eyeballs to whatever sites they happened to be forwarded to. Country code domains are those which feature of the newly crafted sub-TLD (Top Level Domain) classes, such as .de or .us.

Copyright domains or squatter domains are those which borrow heavily from an online or click and mortar business or franchise. These domains can be very high risk and are subject to “disco” or disconnect notices from the hosting company. Cease and Desist letters can also be received if the website development infringes too closely on the practices and brand of the original copyright company.

Some domainers risk legal problems by “squatting” or hosting a website with material or copyrighted images from the original site, brand, or company.The vigor with which the owner companies pursue these rights varies. the concern ultimately is that no copyright becomes infringed upon. Domains with websites concerning the well known brand, product, or person infringe on that copyright.

The  various levels of success these types of domains have can be attributed to luck or strategic placement of websites and discovery timetables. Yet the resale outlook for such domains is never quite as sunny as owners would project. Copyright searches and Google searches of past uses of domain name words and products before buying mark an experienced domainer.

The rapid promotion of these sites can bring traffic and even ad revenues, but such revenues are subject to fees and fines and even disconnect problems with your hosting company. These are also referred to as “copyright” domains. Domainers buying and selling these domains risk all their development effort against sudden legal action by the copyright holder.

Numbers domains have the numerical meaning or association that makes them pertinent to some website types, like zip codes, telephone numbers, area codes, and street addresses. Keyword domains fall into a class of premium names made up the basic marketing and Internet keywords. These terms are used informally among domainers to suggest the interest a prospective domain buyer might have for certain domain portfolio listings or domain auction sales.

Generic keyword domains or product class names like “tech”, “green” or TV: names allow for easier discussion and categorical inclusion. Domainers can ask for bids or look for trades with domains form that category or class. Toy domains and other types of domains are those which point to a certain demographic category, like kids, adult, sports, movie, “tube” and form domains tend to have the keyword or an associated domain type of site associated with them.

The issue with acquiring such domains is that untried domains of general terms are either spoken for, viciously expensive, or too generic for real imprint and SEO aggregation. These can be known as “generics”. Combining the class characteristic can form an intense multiple of dense domain value, such as short, keyword domain with existing traffic.

Keyword names or generics can require a lot of seeding, marketing, linking and promotion. These can be names that a certain domainer investor wants to concentrate ownership in. Feasibly, a domain owner with a deep property aggregation in certain keywords can capitalize when new startups or companies go looking for a name that must accord with those keywords or terms.

Revenue domains are the domain names every domainer is looking for. These are domains with such a strong SEO value and lookup potential that almost any site attached to them, or any forwarded url, will yield volumes of ad revenue and sponsor offer participation. Domains with higher claimed qualifications for revenue should have associated statistics and ad revenue metrics that support the sale price or auction reserve price to some extent.

Type in domains and typo domains are domains which will derive a large part of their traffic from names whose spelling is very close to a popular website. If the name of a website is popular and well visited enough online for Internet users to remember it and type it in, the misspelling occurrence will happen often enough to drive merit worthy traffic to a landing page or paid parking entity.

Short domains are domains of any type or language caliber that are four or five letters long. these domains capitalize on the trend in domainer thinking that assumes a short domain will get more traffic, be easier to remember, be more quickly brandable, and be easier for people of all global perspectives to use. Short domains may or may not form a word or synonym, series of letters to form an acronym and include letters and numbers.

Geo domains are based on state, city, country or place names. these assume a development associated with an actual place. Since a physical geological location will have an address, street name and number, zip code and associated state or region name, the date applications to support geo names have also developed apace. Geo names can support a website about that place or simply retain that value for another buyer in the future.

The type or class of any domain name will bring with an assumable set of characteristics or data points that some portfolio managers or domain name buyers are looking for. These classes will be shorthand references other domainers use to talk about them. A domain portfolio can be assorted holding names from every niche or a concentration of names belonging to one class to appeal to the big ticket buyer. Working with these categories is an everyday domainer skill.

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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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