Domain Owl

Blogs are meant to be read. But where are all the readers? Readers can be people holding mobile phones, tablet users at the gas station (or in traffic), laptop users tapping at the library, students researching at the library, or Window 7 phone users trading apps on the screen in a coffee shop. These people Google, download and save to their hard drive or flash drive all the time.

This is the pool of computer users who may find their way to your blog.  The need for end users and site participants is on the mind of every webmaster. Where does these visitors come from and why don’t more of them stay at the blog site longer are the questions people want to know the answers to. This is a very simple recipe to get ideas about what subject matter to come up with for blog posts. Providing detailed, well written, accessible text content is what readers want. These posts give users the  answers they need.

Unless a blogger has a guaranteed reader base visiting daily, the majority of visits will come from search engine queries. If a webmaster has no visitors at the blog, it’s because no density in topicality is driving any results to a position high enough for anyone to take notice. This is the function of keyword density, and there are all kinds of ways to sneak it into a site in a manner that yields results.

Deep linking to other posts is a blog practice many bloggers ignore or seldom use. Installing the plugin with most popular archive blog post tiles can help do this. Links to other related posts, squeeze pages, and newsletter blasts of indexed blog entries can’t hurt. Squeeze pages are text and HTML pages composed for an exit process for the site. If different content is on the site, if there is a product offer, or if coupons or other limited time activities are possible, this is the place to let exiting visitors now.

Why plug in a most popular articles index at the front page column level? If a reader is skimming a blog post, they may skip over the next column and see something they want to read. Just by posting this indexed list of articles with links can be an article posted in the comments section of many sites online. Readers will appraise a site to see if it is a good place to revisit. A jumble of related titles lets them know more text is nearby without another search.

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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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Buying travel domains is an acquired taste in domaining careers that demands a certain hard driving point of view about domain name investment. But when you are traveling it’s the perfect time to assess whether or not that city has adequate website coverage. On the ground line of sight estimations about what information web seekers and search result finders want will be visible immediately.

Travel domains are domain names that correspond to content involving certain niches of geographical destinations or advice or travel fares and routes of certain intended demographics. Train trips, bus rides, city attractions, and restaurant reviews make the grade for topical and SEO friendly content. A local writer or native content contributor usually has the edge on any other researched writing, plus tips for local travel and buzz.

Travel searchers want to know what to do when they walk out of the hotel, what is the best and most fun thing to do or where to go to, and how is the best way to get there.  Yet often travelers are guided by available material from a hotel room or lobby brochure, which has been provisioned by advertising and licensing agreements. The visitors want to have a good time, they don’t want to drill down into fact checking.

It is surprising how many cities have geographical place names exactly corresponding to the municipality name, yet have little actual appeal to either the people that live there or the people that travel there. This is because many webmasters design a site that is unfriendly to the actual user yet pencils out in an academic or monetized site plan. The site may bring traffic, but may not be usable enough to go viral.

The usability of a site is related to its discoverability. The users of a good travel resource will be much more likely to convey the url to others on the plane, in the lobby, in the travel bureau or in the office. The types of details can range from movie showtime availability to driving time to local kid’s attractions. But some of these things can be populated by search results and RSS feeds.

Sometimes the travelers wants better data. They might want to know the best local place for gravy fries, a hot towel with a haircut, or a massage. But opening the hotel menu sometimes gives a queer slant on the blocks away restaurants and venues. Even someone staying in their own city might look askance at the offerings placed at the desktop of every guest’s room. Travel sites solve this problem.

Links can help provide quick reviews of the local offerings, especially when the hotel has free internet service. Sometimes just asking the concierge can yield some good results about weather, driving conditions, medical facilities, childcare, salons and more. Sometimes travelers are looking for niche dining and attractions to tell the folks about, and sometimes they want familiar branch locations of places they know without risk.

Making a viable travel domain site should include something no other sites   for that destination has. Local bus lines, museums within walking distance, hot or cold weather specialty venues might be of some interest. Travel makes people a little more open minded about how they spend time. People who might never go bowling or ice skating might get the urge by seeing a feature ad on a prurient website.

Promoting SEO for your travel domain may mean getting quoted and twittered about your updated content. People like to mention where they got their information when they blog about travel or vacation antics.  The article sites that allow links back can drive inbound link metrics up, and the outbound links can belong to local businesses and sites under review.

One of the most frustrating things to see happen when a travel domain is under development is the profit-colored glasses take over intuitive site design. Travel sites are really about content, they aren’t meant to compete with game sites or shopping portals. By allowing potential visitors to the travel destination to get a peek at what’s waiting for them, they will come to the well again and again.

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As a daily chore of one of my many blog domains, I tune in daily to see what comments and feedback my daily posts receive. I tend to refer to the Akismet pie chart regarding the integrity of the comments and whether or not they are spam. And since this domain blog concerns savvy domainers and link promoters, I would like to offer some constructive advice about seeding domain links in the comment field as a promotional tool.

The whole point of attracting comments to a blog or site is to generate reaction and stimulate thought. Many domainers use the opportunity to promote their chosen domain by leaving a link, yet they do sometimes in a manner designed to render their entry a deletion. This would seem contrary to the goal of intended link inclusion. Here are a few tips to remember when submitting intended links for traffic and referral indexing.

1. Niche Out

If you are going to promote a niche domains, post it at other niche domain blogs or sites. These forums will be much stickier attractors than a different subject and keyword based site no matter how many links you generate. Work with your keywords and find massively visited sites likely to get a breakdown of the total traffic. This part, totaled from hundreds of sites, can be the growth of a huge fanbase.

2. Number Up

One day’s link building and seed campaigning won’t get the job done. A thorough and systematic saturation of a category of sites with matching keywords to your site’s will be the goal. A growing numerical measurement of links should be the target data object. Alexa.com is a good way to map this. Record your site’s Alexa.com referrer site growth by day. With a steady campaign of submittals, the bots should be grinding the metrics in your favor.

3. Stay Relevant

It must be the case that too many bloggers simply bulk approve all their comments or don’t know how to employ the Akismet tool. But a serious blogger will weed through the spam and kill what does not belong. That is why I am surprised when surfing my blog comments on a domain blog to see so many unrelated urls promoted.  If it doesn’t help the webmaster or the poster, why would it feasibly get approved? And why post a completely unrelated question about anything there? Wasted effort that will get deleted.

A travel domain, mixed with a posted Hotmail address alias, with a comment about a topic unrelated to either is not exactly SEO fodder. The goal is to seed the blog field with as many acceptable (and preferable) comments as possible. These will get the destination blog noticed by the search engines, for the right reasons, in turn promoting better ranking for SEO results. This will putatively drive hits to the seeded link.

4. Spin a Page of Web Links

Web Links functions to show all the compass points of an individual webmaster’s personality. Political discussion might sit side by side with cartoons. Action movies might sit side by side with a religious affiliation. These links can make a ‘professional” site look more personalized and less coldly prone to sheer traffic tricks. Individualized site factors like this make a visitor remember the site as more unique.

5. Get Personal

I have heard so many fellow webmasters and bloggers display pride in their sites and blogs, yet very few of them will engage on a 1-to-1 basis in forums or video wars on YouTube. Video responses on YouTube channel fan specific traffic to specialized entertainment product. This is exactly the audience your website wants, recreational hits with no preplanned purpose to their clicking. Providers of online entertainment like video, music, humor, satire, or commentary generate a cultural following on the Internet.

Instead of spending all day writing blog posts, feature your best posts on the front page of your site and spend the rest of the day campaigning for visits. Get into discussions on forums online and generate respect for your usership. These will be the type of visitors bookmarking your age and passing the link along. Link new memberships with fun avatars and lively posts so browsing users ever after will take notice of you.  They’ll see your link and wonder what the site of such a person could be like.

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I was surprised to read the Writer’s Digest list of the Best 101 websites for writers and not see my very favorite and most profitable writing site there.This is Associated Content. There is no better training tool for online content writing on the Internet, and AC pays real cash money for writing and performance payments. Paid training for learning how to write efficiently and in an optimized, SEO friendly way for websites.

AssociatedContent.com is an income producer, a revenue channel for websites, a link directory in sum and an article directory someone else pays to host and promote. Yet, in the Writer’s Digest compendium of top sites for writers, this site is not mentioned. This is a gross oversight. A website oversite, if you will. AC is the best tool online for a writing career, without education qualification or gender or race entitlement.

Google and other search engines make the rankings from some formula based on links coming into your site. The links from articles at Associated Content do the same job. But AC studs its pages with SEO spiking features that cry out to the SEO powers that be. How can any webmaster not want their links to be featured in articles there? It’s like a domainer’s dream.

Associated Content articles and text is actively shoved in front of as many traffic building tools and campaigns as humanly possible. Write it once, submit with tags, and the site revolves and churns the content ad infinitum. Associated Content wants to own the search engine result market. AC constantly game changes its site plan and site architecture to keep text and media content depth fresh.

AC can actually pay people in a business plan strategy to buy domains, build ideas, host websites, and promote their domain url sites cost free. How is this resource not listed in an article of 100/101 best websites in Writer’s Digest? The most important feature on any site is its content. And AC teaches with tutorials and trial and error submission how to succeed in writing for the online writer’s market.

AC pays for text. They pay for video. They pay for images.  They pay  for audio. AC buys How-To articles and personal stuff. But AC articles pay one time payments and partial payments over time. That’s money that can pay your hosting fees and advertising costs, as well as other costs. That’s cash that can cover your hosting and domain and privacy and traffic burst fees.

Question:  When was the last time you evaluated what links are coming into your site? Their PR and search ranking and SEO profile shades your every search result. Marketing a website at AC practically pays for itself, while establishing an online basis for content work. Very few resources online offer this kind of qualitative and quantitative benefit.

How much of your time spent on promoting and marketing the website involves creating new incoming links? Imagine saving the work and passing it off to someone else, while earning money. And why garden for new content browsers when you can submit your content directly to a site with millions of daily readers? AC is made of links. Smart webmasters use AC, and ignore it at their competitive business peril.

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The content part of any website has become the chore many webmasters like to deal with last. Importing flashy graphics, inserting complicated scripts, playing with logo designs and flirting between banner concepts can delay the text element decisions and work until very late in the game.

Many webmasters consider a site practically finished with a new template, an RSS feed, a banner a custom logo and host of plugins to wrap around the daily posting. But what’s missing is the product quality in the most important site element of all: the content.

After being hired by domainers and webmasters the world over for the last six years, I have some observations to make about the attempts to improve a website via original text infill. But so many webmasters attempt to fill their site with odds and ends that make a visitor simply shrug and click away. Then they follow up eagerly to see all the income they’ve accrued.

One tool I urge webmasters to use often is a mixed schedule of content which harvests news and information online about a given topic or set of keywords yet allows a savvy webmaster to render its content in a unique manner. This means surveying Google search results and news sources of updated reports about individuals or companies of interest, as well as notable milestones in related subject to the website.

Domains require an acknowledgement that the written word and the reading function imparts some value to the recipient audience. The tools used to analyze content can show metrics and functional uses text blocks can be put to. A tool such as Copyscape.com can show the originality of an article or feature story. Even to Google a few liens of content can locate content poachers effectively.

A site like Textalyser.net can reflect multiple attributes of a text contribution or text file. The density of the text and readability of the text can be examined. The repetition of keywords and key word phrases can be reviewed against traffic and search engine discoverability results. Free tools like this are golden.

The complex features of  the way the web looks at text is revealed at Textalyser. Lexical density and SEO values impart a high level analysis than grammar checkers and spell check scripts. But seeing where a few more instances of certain keywords might help can make the difference over about  a hundred articles and posts or so.

A bouquet of content is desired. but slapping articles from other sites and news makes a dull search result and a highly redundant page. But the first paragraph of any kited news story should be an abstract that can be furnished to the Excerpt field. Likewise, a custom encapsulation of the story as the excerpt field still yields unique content values.

When working with abstracts, summarize the content. Search result browser want to briefly scan what they are looking at. Shorter sentences work better, and these abstracts make excellent posts to links you place elsewhere on the web with links back yo your site. These can display in the text blurb portion of the Google search result and direct readers who want readable information t your site.

Product reviews can work well for a website if they are readable and impart some value to the reader. Product reviews can answer the following set of questions and voila,a hundred words of content just sprang into being. Was the device easy to use or hard? Were the directions difficult or simple to understand? Is the warranty or returns and exchange policy a dealbreaker? What rebates, coupons or savings are available and where is the best place to buy the product?

One of the best pieces of content a webmaster can add to a site is a site review of another site. Outbound links to the the pertinent features and attractions discussed kills two SEO birds with one linking stone. These types of features can generate spirited comment and debate. Opinion is one of the biggest gifts the Internet can offer, yet many webmasters structure their site content as though the New York Times was editorializing the content.

Making a website hum means adding new ingredients daily into the machine. Domain values hinges on readability, participation, and traffic. Stop making the content addition the heavy lifting of administrating your website and make manipulating the front page of your site the new turn of the river. The feedback and traffic statistics will surprise you.

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