I look at so many web projects where there has been lots of different but similar websites created by the company for different angles of their business, yet they are all marketing pretty much the same message.  What tends to happen is these sites all kind of have the same look and feel but are selling the virtues independently of a particular product or division of the business.  I guess the idea behind this sort of strategy is to spread yourself out over the Internet - try and make a bigger sales web.  Unfortunately, I believe that this sort of strategy is missing one essential point in search engine and internet marketing.  That being the value of a site is in it’s perceived authority and at the end of the day it’s number of links.

For example, those that follow this blog will know that one of our team, Mat, owns and operates Experience Queenstown.  Mat regularly acquires strong Queenstown based domain names that are no longer used by their owners (that is, they have been left to expire).  For example, he owns a lot of good taxi URLs.  Mat does not try and develop a whole new site for each domain (or set of domains) he purchases rather he redirects all the URLs to their relevant pages within his Experience Queenstown website - thereby building up the overall number of links to his site and therefore the sites authority.  The perceived authority value of Queenstown taxis does not just go up, but also the overall value of his site in all things Queenstown related (somewhat illustrated by the infamous Google page rank algorithm).

This is however an SEO strategy and in most cases the stuff I come across involves businesses that are running 5 or 6 domains each with only a handful of pages for each of their products and companies all linking together, just for the mere purpose of feeling like they have more stuff out there on the web.  For example, I saw one such site that has it’s sort of corporate home page, then it’s got it’s coaching products which sits on a completely separate URL called something like Bobscoaching.com, then it has it’s corporate solutions which sit on a URL something like Bobscorporate.com and so on.  Each URL home page has page ranks of about 20 or 3.

I don’t agree with this sort of strategy.  I believe that in this case all sites would be better off being combined into one corporate site and the other URLs permanently redirected (see post on 301 redirects) to this one domain.  I believe that this could raise the Google page rank to 3 or 4 and would give the site much more overall authority in all areas.  The overall site would now have more incoming links, it would be easier to maintain, introducing fresh content to one area will have a positive impact on all areas of the business and so on.

It is common practice in the travel industry to start a new website to try and sell the same thing differently - but at the end of the day, you are doing no one any favors.  The money you invest in building the new site would be better suited to developing the message and the marketing programme of the existing site and increasing its’ overall position in the search engines.  It is interesting to see the likes of HostelWorld have recently let some of their regional domain names expire in the interest of pursuing their primary domain only.

Finally, I think it is important to think about this when buying domains.  I see a lot of people buying domains because of the name of the domain thinking this will be the most important thing - sure it helps in part in the mystical search engine algorithm, but at the end of the day the real value is in the perceived authority of the website content itself and therefore it’s inbound links.

This is such an interesting area and at the same time very confusing for all involved. In fact, it is a regular source of hours of debate amongst us guys at Xebidy, no less so the other night at 11 pm after a BBQ and far too many beers at my house.

Mat Weir our lead developer is our guru on expired domains. He buys them with some regularity to use to promote a number of sites he personally develops and promotes. He recently acquired www.queenstowntaxis.co.nz, a fantastic domain with lots of links, to promote his www.experiencequeenstown.com website, after the domain had expired of course - the problem is that Queenstown Taxis is still heavily in use by the previous owner - on their business cards, or their vehicles, everywhere. And they want it back.

Now, my understanding is Mat has done nothing wrong, he has not purchased the domain name to resell back to them nor has he purchased the domain name to trade on their business name or confuse the market, in fact, he has purchased the domain name to promote his business legitimately.

This is quite different to the well-quoted Qantas situation in Australia in which when domains were first really becoming important a couple of guys purchased the www.qanatas.com and tried to sell it back to Qantas at an extortionate rate. In this case a court ruled that they had to give it to Qantas for the same $50 they had paid for it. The ruling was that they had purchased the domain name with knowledge that the name belonged to someone else and that they were therefore attempting to profit on someone elses fortune illegitimately.

I have also seen another recent case in Australia where a large Australian touring company let one of their domains expire and a small operator in the same area purchased the domain and built a site on it. The court in this case also ruled that the domain had to be returned because both companies were operating in the same area and therefore the second company that now was using the domain was confusing the market.

I don’t know what is fair and what is not. Firstly, when a domain expires it sits in a type of state of limbo for about 3 months to give the original owner a chance to renew. So it is not a case of it expiring and then the next day someone else owning it. Secondly, when a domain expires it is available to everyone, surely it is open market. I agree with the Qantas situation where these guys had no other intention but to profit off Qantas. But what about the tour company story? They clearly did not have an intention to profit off the other tour company (I don’t know how public this whole scenario was so I don’t want to be going around saying company names at this time) simply they intended to promote their own business with a domain that was good and because of its’ history and links had good Google rankings. Is there anything wrong with this? And what about Mat, he has purchased a domain to promote his own information website in a completely different market. He has pointed the domain to his page about Queenstown taxis - this is fair is it not.

The one thing I do know is make sure you have got your domain management in order. If your domains are looked after by your web master or similar make sure they know what their doing and that they have in place the processes to know what is happening with your domains at any point in time. If it is managed in house make sure that person is onto it. And, finally until it is clear keep your eyes peeled for good domains that you might be able to acquire to promote your business.

I used to buy lots of domains, and still have lots that I am gradually letting slide as they come up for expiry - too much hassle for me when I have enough on my plate here. In the past you would buy domains on the chance that they would become valuable either for your own business or for someone else’s. But the advertising revenue model has completely changed that!

Domains are once again valuable and the resale market is ripe. www.freecreditcheck.com & www.creditcheck.com sold last month together for US$3 million and www.seniors.com sold for US$1.8 million and www.blogging.com raised US$135,000. Apart from Seniors which even after three weeks still has notification of the auction, these are all legitimate sites, and I recently read a very interesting article on Sitepoint on How to buy a operational website, do it up and resell it. In Queenstown someone is selling Driftnet.co.nz - a supposedly last minute booking service for NZD$5,000 that is not even fully operational.

But it is the advertising revenue model that is most interesting. Domains are being snapped up for both their names and their past trading history (in particular, how many links they have) to build Google Cost per click ad sites. Trust me, I know of one such entrepreneur making a pretty penny per month from a handful of pretty ordinary sites.

It is a fascinating model - not to mention the implications for SEO of buying strong page ranked domains with lots of links. Definitely something to look into!