22 June 2010 ~ 1 Comment

Google Hacks For Domainers

One website domainers need to get nice and friendly with is Google. There is no more important website in the world to domain name traders and webmasters than Google. The trials and tribulations of how Google attained internet market dominance is a moot point. The fact remains that in today’s domain name market nobody can afford to do without Google tools, hacks and SEO optimization maxims.

But so many domainers skip very important Google tools and heightening SEO rules when composing their websites. The inclusions of tags on images, the use of alternate text, the proofing of the website on cross browser versions are only some examples. Ranking algorthythms operate on so many lines a webmaster practically has to be a wizard to master them all.

Submission to Google itself is a step many webmasters skip. The signing up for ad codes does not always equal full categorization in the Google universe. Page directories and indices of certain types of sites are also included in the Google page ranking index. But so many webmasters forget this and think that one Google ad submission equals total Google bot exposure. Such is not the case.

It’s not enough just to have Google adsense. There should be a Google map and many diverse types of sits tying in notices and links to the source site. Without decent attempts at development and distribution or related and topical material online, no SEO game plan can be considered worthwhile. The marketing plan must include all the facets of Google, not just the Adsense code inclusion in site HTML.

The SEO optimization wars claim many website casualties. This can be in part due to the fact that over ambitious domain name owners aim for the top hundredths or thousandth of their category without any game plan. Without a search engine result growth plan there is no basis to tie expectations to.

Google shows the way just by returning search results for terms. What kind of site is the result made of? What type of text is the key term noted from? What spiders and bots are scrubbing your page daily? The site absorbs all these data points. Feeds by themselves might be “light”, but together with an integrated hybrid of original content and text the seo value is there.

A type of snobbery can pervade the world of webmasters and domain name owners. News scrapes and press release rewrites are not “good enough” for these webmasters who need premium content or nothing. Yet these same webmasters can barely churn out 200 words a day! Investigating the way Google displays search results can show new domain name owners and seo-minded webmasters the path to seo greatness.

Any Google search will show that millions of different types of sites and keyword instances can feed into a search engine result that produces that website or a page on that website. The gateway to internet success making websites and promoting domain names is interpreting what Google is doing. Finding the threads are available for free at Google.com.

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09 May 2010 ~ 3 Comments

No Parking on the Dance Floor

parking

As a regular domaining administrative chore, I have to go into my Godaddy domain manager to release domains for transfer or forward them to an url, or regulate their DNS records. I am not picking on Godaddy, I just happen to have a a large amount of domains there and I was reminded this morning about a topic in domain name management I feel strongly about.

One of the unhappy reminders that a domain is making no return on investment is that the dollar sign in the GoDaddy domain manager does not have an impression. The Godaddy parking product is a service that cost money to make money. While that makes sense from a certain point of view, those who know that Google Adsense also offers a similar service for free little understand the added value their premium buys at Godaddy.

Like many domainers, I view the value-add from a Godaddy service as a convenience when snapping between accounts, juggling hosting logins, and tickling domain name administration responsibilities. Of course, the service to enhance a domain’s profit from either GoDaddy or Google Adsense means little if no net profit comes to each domain’s money making channel.

Domain placement inside the ad serving revenue systems is critical to the dollars and sense monetary return of any domain investment.  I find the Godaddy cash parking solution an interesting test of Adsense feasibility. If it (the site content, keywords, and links) will pass the Godaddy CashParking qualification standards, it’s probable that Google also will accept the content construction on the domain, and vice versa.

Each revolution of the domain development cycle remains more concretely value -adding than any other domain marketing service or promotion item. Four keywords and some links and a graphic or banner thrown in and the domainer is the proud owner of a (yawn) template formatted parked page. Yippy skippy, sound the call to hounds. Alert the media. (Let the yawns be heard from Peoria to the Three Gorges Dam).

The profit over time to recoup the domain acquisition includes the registration fee, hosting fees, and any subfees like auction premiums and premium auction purchase prices. Add in the sliver of a monthly hosting cost divided by number of total of domain sites hosted at that hosting company and you’ll have your derivative monetary goal and revenue target.

For the domainer who has thousands of domain names languishing, the parked page is simply time management. But the parked page was never meant to be a permanent solution. It was only supposed to be a short and temporary detour on the information superhighway.  A lay-by, a soft shoulder in heavy domaining weather when the webmaster’s plate was full. Parking was supposed to be what webmasters did when their site was a flat tire and needed to go into the shop.

I am always disappointed to see parked page because it seems to me a domain name worth buying has a site worth making lurking behind the domain name transfer. Parked pages are models of domain development which hinge on the barest modicum of content, for my money almost a haphazard shrug of a site. To me the challenge of domain development and site potential for site use, for sites of all types, is to expansive to default out of.

There are so many things people go to the Internet for. They want education, they want advice, they want entertainment and employment. They want to be entertained while being educated, and they want to be advised about how to shop.They want to know more about things to buy, how to buy them, and who to buy the from. And they want to know the best information they can get, on every topic under the sun moon and stars.

Every name has a page waiting to be developed to spring forth. People want to do what they always liked to do, with broader scope and greater choice. Online users of the internet want to be educated about how to shop and want to know how to be employed shopping online. They don’t want to read the books, they want to read excerpts and snippets and online reviews and comments about the books. They want to read about the writers of the books and Google them incessantly.

Every subject imaginable has  a market, a website, a links directory, an article repository, a shopping portal or a video hosting destination model that can adapt to it. Dare I say it, even a blog! After reviewing all that potential, do four keywords and some links really do the project justice? Does a competent webmaster want to display some lookalike template that tells visitors “Continue snoring, go away”?

And why on God’s (for the moment) green earth would you pay for it?

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28 April 2010 ~ 11 Comments

Google Provides SEO Inspiration

DomainOwllogo

Google is often regarded as the mountain domainers aspire to ascend. But a secret few domainers realize anymore is what a valuable research tool Google still is, especially for domainers. Finding new avenues to promote a domain can start by reviewing where the domain link already exists, and what other information is attached to that link.

Got a domain? Try Googling it.  This is pure web research that cuts to the heart of any domain. The resulting cache of sites and listings for the domain name should provide ample ideas for linking, bookmarking sites, and publicizing other names in  the webmaster’s domain portfolio. Yes, it’s as old-school as it gets, but try it. Domain research can still yield new ideas and concepts. Google your domain. See where that query leads.

I Googled Domainowl.com and got a result at something called RankArea.com. The entire database record for my domain name was blank, but there was a sweet index of compiled DomainOwl Tweets and posts.  Maybe they need a prodding via email to complete this listing? This makes a nice summary page in a broad prose format should I ever need one. RankArea could be a valuable link and a reference url. I bookmarked it.

I Googled DomainOwl and got a neat result that landed me somewhere called ServerSiders.com. They had a lot of information about the technical side of DomainOwl, and I made a note to keep this site bookmarked as a domainer toolbox reference url. I want to check out how my other domains are reported there. Here is the capsule summary they had online:

The site is using the Apache web server. The programming language used on the site is PHP and the main language used for the site’s textual content is English. The site was launched on Friday, April 9, 2010. Domainowl is using the javascript libraries jQuery, pngfix, WordPress Content and Wp-includes. The server that hosts domainowl.com is located in Wayne, United States. The server is located on the 1&1 Internet AG network. Domainowl.com is using Google Adsense for monetization. Domainowlcom is published using the WordPress blog software, which is written in the PHP programming language and uses a MySQL database to store its data.

By using Google to suss out likely sites using my domain, I also discovered more about the OWL ontology and vectors of owl based clipart. This is an improtant source of graphics for the domain webmaster hat I wear. When can you have enough owl based clipart? Answer: Never. Into the bookmark cache that link goes.

I also found out that OWL was a technical term of code used to format handled objects. I am not sure exactly what it means but having large amounts of resident text online in HTML that connect the word “domain” to “owl” can’t hurt. This entry goes into my tickler file for rainy day research. Thus the bookmark cache is growing for marketing related sites and ideas to market the DomainOwl stable of domain originated products and services.

Next top result was something called Listorious. I found it fascinating that there was a indexed entry of all current “echoes’ of the DomainOwl posts. Clearly you could scan Listorious and see where your posts are hitting online at one site, without even logging into your blog. There was differently structured entry for DomainOwl at Listorious:

Listorious says Domainowl hasn’t created any lists. But only do I intend to change that statement, but in doing so learn how I can populate the Listorious site reference for all my online domain sites. This was an action item that didn’t even exist fifteen minutes previously, but it will close a marketing loop in future, in a place where Domainowl already has traction online.

Fifteen minutes of searching sites and reviewing results, and a set of cached bookmarks to edit results and submit information to for all my domains as the material comes ready. Serversiders.com, RankArea.com, and Listorious.com were some of the top Google results with my domain searched. Enhancing those linked bits of site data can only help my domains stay SEO friendly in the long run.

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23 March 2010 ~ 1 Comment

China’s Miniskirt of Google

dino

China continues to go rogue on Google, accomplishing both the most massive redirect crime in internet history (legally) and giving the biggest entity of SEO dynamic driving all development worldwide. The doings of Google and the Chinese government on this issue has made headlines around the world and not just for domainers.

But how valuable can a Google ranking be if it elides all Chinese internet traffic? Is Google still Google? China is a big place. That is a lot of inputs missing from the matrix. Many articles extensively trace the invisible bureaucracy of China and examine the role of Chinese business practices in yet another milieu of international trade.

Both Google and China are the biggest titan players in their respective milieus and yet each is attempting to give the most profitable opportunity and most advertising revenue creating power on earth the finger. That’s not small potatoes, and China has an ambitious start in its national internet derby for world dominance. China may hope to attract international customers by closing its door to Google search results, but it’s not clear how.

How efficient can a Google result be if the operator knows one fifth of potential word traffic is missing from its mathematical result? Can Google operate in a world where a huge tranche of its results are known to be missing? How can China set up a competitor search engine brand to vend internal China internet search result oriented traffic?

What does it mean that Google is being turned off in China? Well, it could be the start of a newly mechanized internet model, perhaps the first without the premier decision maker mover and shaker in the online world involved. But will Google learn to do business missing one of the most populous nations on Earth? If you ask Chinese experts,

Cross-pollinating the whole mess is the mobile phone connection, which can drive mobile Internet traffic.The China Google model for defeat seems to stem any input to a search engine driving value from inputs. So, is Google getting brushed off the world stage in China, or is Google getting away from the constriction of Chinese business tactics while they can?

The news reports stemming from these activities both by Google and by China are confusing. is China standing up for its rights or is it crimping the style of the Internet’s leading pioneer? How can a government decide to blanket is citizens in censorship? How can public use of the sites convince Chinese regulators otherwise?

The world is watching. And clicking.

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05 March 2010 ~ 0 Comments

Goog Smacked

DomainOwllogo

I was discussing the recent headlines regarding Google and typo names and for me the dominant term was PPC and typo, for him the dominant phrase was “$500 million”. That’s a planet full of money Google is raking in. What are they doing with it, exactly?

Typo traffic used to be a sideline for domain namers. Typos were names that sound like big names and popular online destinations. Domainers took a risk buying the names because you never knew when the dreaded C & D letter might arrive. But the sites would accrue traffic because humans have a tendency to misspell when working the address bar.

But $500 million is a lot of money to be changing hands without some whistles being blown. if the big money in domains has putatively transferred to an all-typo model, then get crackin’ regging those typos. Hand reg, main reg with your hosting company, or buy the typo from another domainer. See if typo domain markets are your domaining bag.

Kick the tires on a typo today and see what happens.

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03 March 2010 ~ 1 Comment

Screech Point

owlscreech1

Typos are Big PPC value, to the experienced domainer willing to risk their hosting account. Big meaning $500 million. Copyright jumping and typo squatting has been going on for some time, but the startling statistics used in this latest report reveal that Google is comfortable deriving PPC ad click revenue before the squatting pocket gets eviscerated.

Edelman and Moore allege that “for Google, typos may equal big business”. This is not news for domainers who have watched the auctions for years seeing trademark and copyright eligible names derived revenues, while other domainers receive prompt cease-and-desist letters.

So. The onus is domainers to behave morally, even when their compatriots are deriving hefty adsense and Google PPC revenues. If this the tone Google means to take with all their ventures? The researcher conclude  “That tells us that PPC funding is *causing* and *exacerbating* typo squatting”. This is serious news for domainers.

Is there a market for PPC revenue in domaining and page hosting related to exploited domain name value without a typo squat? Because if not, Google has a lot of explaining to do to verify their profit projection metrics. And critics of this research point to a  legal wrangle the authors of this report have had with Google.

Is there a witch hunt for Google? Or does the media online behemoth need some sharp and inquiring minds into their business practices? If Google is the next Microsoft, some changes should be made before they own the Internet. Or perhaps, according to some domainers, it’s already too late?

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