Domain Owl

Active domainers are watching the auction sales and seeing massive big ticket name sales this week and thinking about putting their Internet names on the block. But the best value estimator data for domain name sales comes from traffic and backlinks and pings from other websites of equal or greater page rank. Assuming a website is of low page rank or remains somewhat undeveloped, any linking activity will benefit the name value.

See the previous post regarding the top websites online in terms of web visitor traffic. These sites, each one of them, is a SEO weapon you can use to promote any website or domain name link. Most of them are open account and free use sites. That’s a free ad on websites of top page rank at which you can put links of your choice on. This list of top websites should be a shopping list of places to cement web links to your targeted domain.

When a domainer with SEO goals reviews the traffic referrers for a specific domain name, they should check through this list for that domain name. Any of these high volume urls that do not appear in the web traffic list go to the top of the to-do list for that domain name. Hand picked url planting works infinitely better than mechanized backlinking because the traffic is organic and naturally occurring. Yet so few domainers actually do it.

Why post your link on these popular websites? A host of good reasons. Those monster traffic websites will channel bots and visitors to your sites and hike your page rank along with the millions of dollars they spend ramping up their own. If you place an ad write a review or list an item with a proper link back to your store, that’s a promotional that can only help your site. These actions are often only briefly screened or scanned before publication.

No domainer should list a domain name at a drop list, online auction or bidding d threawithout consulting some of these sites. No domainer who claims an aggressive approach to value building can afford to skip this step in domain marketing. Even targeting five of these websites and systematically incorporating their website url over a period of three to six months will show tangible page rank improvement.

Buyers that domainers want to bid on their names will do this review. They will wonder why an aggressive price is asked from a domainer who clearly hasn’t attempted the sale marketing efforts they themselves would use. Right the most savvy of domainers are using serious strategies to target end users for traffic, product sales and site name value increase for domain resale.

Time to review your domain name strategy. Per domain name, check through this list, using a graph chart or Excel spreadsheet. There should be a pattern of websites represented by the websites used for promotion. This report should be used as a visual reminder to market websites. The density of scatter dots on a list of domain names and the cross listed pivot list of popular websites should tell their own story regarding the domainers’ real efforts toward domain name promoter.

Some webmasters might look at this list of domains as a lot of work. It is, and so is domaining. But for the professional domain name investor willing to properly put the time in, page rank and traffic can increase. The statistics of this increase in SEO value will be available for any potential buyer to review through various analytics or domain value estimators.  And then domainers can cultivate buyers using qualified data that gives new buyers inspiration to bid, with greater success and enhanced networking response.

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The downside of the Internet is that often the few who have no scruples don’t hesitate to exploit the online sale portal network when possible. It’s an abuse of the Internet age that sales of tropical birds, protected wildlife, and substances like coral and other natural flora and fauna are vended illegally.

According to recent reports, the Internet has emerged as one of the greatest threats to rare animal and plant species, fueling the illegal wildlife trade and rare substance market. From medical uses to ornamental display, the Intenret has made it easier to buy everything from live baby lions to wine made from tiger bones.

A body of concerned conservationists and law enforcement officers made statements to the media Sunday. But for a long time the domaining community has known that rogue vendors and scammers are a  law unto themselves. Even hosting companies allow a 30-day disconnect when notified of such illegal material sales.

The Web’s impact was made clear at the meeting of the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. Delegates voted overwhelmingly Sunday to ban the trade of the Kaiser’s spotted newt, which the World Wildlife Fund says has been devastated by the Internet trade. Iranian newts have been sold so volubly online their number has shrunk to one fifth its natural population(200).

“The Internet is becoming the dominant factor overall in the global trade in protected species,” he said. “There will come a time when country to country trade of large shipments between big buyers and big sellers in different countries is a thing of the past.”

What happens when a country like Japan decides to cement its economy selling bluefin tuna and Mediterranean coral? The internet becomes a portal to vend goods in a manner that defeats ecologically sound practices and methods. To think that the Internet has supported tiger farms and tiger deaths because internet vending has encouraged tiger encroachment is stunning.

The IFAW has done several surveys of illegal trade on the Web and a three-month survey in 2008 found more than 7,000 species worth $3.8 million sold on auction sites, classified ads and chat rooms, mostly in the United States but also Europe, China, Russia and Australia.Many such sites, even Ebay, can let such forbidden or illegal sales through the cracks.

Most of what is traded is illegal African ivory but the group has also found exotic birds along with rare products such as tiger-bone wine and pelts from protected species like polar bears and leopards. Such sales often take place under false labels and mislabeled import statements.

A separate 2009 survey by the group Campaign Against the Cruelty to Animals targeted the Internet trade in Ecuador, finding offers to sell live capuchin monkeys, lion cubs and ocelots. Conscientious domainers should police themselves and support a community of moral and ethical trading and move toward a community of standards which voluntarily do not cross globally established cultural and natural species protection norms.

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Many new domainers coming into the market scoff at the mile high tombstones of the big domain sales. But one reason domainers watch the auctions is to see what kinds of money are flowing to what types of domain projects. The corporate money is what every domainer dreams of. And it still flows to certain names optimized for key domain name markets.

The announcement of the auction at Sedo of a name sale for six figures doesn’t happen every day. But Metal.com sold for $165,000. That’s big money for the long domain investor. Sedo continues to vend big money name sales worldwide. And trading up continues to be the smart advice to long term industry domain name professionals. Because the right name will find its corporate home.

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