Domainers have been enjoying some additional attention these days, and that extends to a session at SES San Jose 2007 where they discussed tips and the power of the domain address bar.
SES: Let The Domain Drive
(Our on-scene murdok staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose 2007. If you can’t be there, you need to be here with murdok this week, for videos and reports.)
The Domaining & Address-Bar Driven Traffic session arrived in the wake of a couple of massive domain-oriented deals over the summer months.
Business.com sold for an eye-popping $350 million, making Answers.com’s Dictionary.com buy for $100 million look pedestrian.
Monte Cahn of Moniker said the whole domain market has been healthy, with 10.7 million domains registered just in the first quarter of 2007.
Entrepreneurs will want to keep some of the points made today in mind when building or rebuilding their online identities. Everything starts with the domain name. A natural, generic brand can lead to heavy search volume, and that equals mindshare with the prospective audience.
Go for clean, concise, and descriptive domains when building a portfolio. Revenue generating opportunities exist for CPC, CPA, CPM, or direct-traffic deals. The latter will want to choose from the most relevant domains, which makes Cahn’s suggestions important.
Jon Lisbin of Point It acknowledged a ‘dark side’ to domaining. He mentioned click fraud, cyber- and typo-squatting, and domain kiting or tasting as problems.
Andrew Beckman offered an interesting point about competition for traffic. Secondary search engines have been buying domains as a way to find quality traffic for their advertisers, as they strive to thrive in a Google dominated ad market.
In some ways, domaining provides a look at the future. Sean Moriarty of Yahoo Search Marketing said parked domains have been evolving, and becoming full-fledged Internet sites.
