Domaining & Address Bar-Driven Traffic

First up is Matt Bentley, Chief Strategy Officer, Sedo.com. Matt talks about the economics of domain traffic. He talks about the old way versus buying traffic versus PPC and Adwords. An example is wifi.com. If wifi.com has 15,000 visitors you could buy that traffic; talks about 10 percent conversion ratio, and PPC. Advertisers could cut out the middleman (wifi.com and Google) and go directly to SEDO or the domain owner for the traffic. Cutting out the middleman, advertisers could pay less for the traffic, and in the case it could be as cheap as $1500 for 15,000 visitors. Another option, option 2, is to buy the domain name outright, perhaps for 350,000. You would see the ROI in 2 years and the domain is an asset. You would have the domain 'forever'. If you sell the domain later, domain names are going up in value about 30 to 40 percent each year. Watch for keyword generic domain names. Watch out for domains that would have a spectrum of uses. Dealtaker ultimately purchased shopping.com and was able take a big advantage of that generic domain. Why would marketing want to buy domain names? Consider the traffic, the vertical, and the brand. Books.com is owned by Barnes & Noble and redirects to the Barnes & Noble site. Next Up is Jon Lisbin, CEO and Founder, Point It!, Inc. Jon talks about the dark side of domain names: - click fraud - cyber and typo squatters (currently there is a Dell lawsuit, Dell going after companies for typo squatting). - domain tasting and domain kiting - lack of transparency In Yahoo! Search Marketing, you can now block up to 250 domains for having your ads show on them. Check to make sure that changes you make to your account actually are taking effect; sometimes you will make changes but they will not have taken effect when you log back in. Jon mentions domain arbitrage and the companies buying clicks and sending them to parked domains. There is a bright side, if you contact your Rep you could get a goodwill credit; Jon notes an example of getting a goodwill credit of $2500. Yahoo! recently told its ad partners that they no longer accept arbritrage traffic as of February 2008. In Google AdWords, a client noticed $25k in questionable clicks from domain parking pages. To get an AdWords to stop showing the advertiser's ads on domain parked pages, a Google engineer must block the domains. Jon notes an example of it taking several months in order for this to happen. The bright sideis that you can now block all domain traffic on Google AdWords, apparently. Jon offers the following tips: Monitor referral traffic. Use Google Analytics. Request refunds. Next Up is Janel Landis, Senior Director of Search Strategy and Development, SendTec Janel talks about the growth of this business; the relevancy of traffic, typo domains, and opting out. Janel recently took 3 generic keyword phrases and put those keywords in the address bar along with .com: - homesecurity.com - investment.com - bookkeeping.com There can be a high volume, show ads. Is it quality traffic? Sites offer no content, only option is to click ads. Typo domains. Janel talked about turbtax.com and taxcutt.com typo domains. Typos hover on the cusp of trademark infringement. Capturing all typos is virtually impossible for trademark holders. Opting out. Understand the traffic and track your referrers, the URl to the conversion. Don't guess at what is and what is not working. Opting out of Google; keep brand terms opted into domains. Opt out of non-branded domains. Opting OUt of Yahoo! Search Marketing: analyze your data, find out what works and what doesn't work for you. If certain domains consistently deliver quality traffic, then don't opt out. Wrapping up this session is Monte Cahn, Founder and CEO of Moniker. Monte introduces himself; Moniker.com is an ICANN accredited registrar. - ICANN regulates domain industry - Empowered by the US Dept. of Commerce - Following regulations, innovative entrepreneurs invested in domain names - Many investors risked over $100,000 per year in an unknown future, domains - Domain revenue sources were not known. PPC is ultimately CPA. Domain sales will be $500 million Domains contribute about 15 percent of Google and Yahoo!'s search revenue. Revenue drives domain profiles. The worldwide domain industry is healthy: - 146 million domains are now registered - 12 million new domains were registered Q3 2007 - By 2010, there will be 240 million domains registered - 87 percent are live, 74 percent are renewed - There are more than 240 ccTLDs - ccTLD registrations total more than 54 million The top ccTLDs are as follows: .de .cn .uk .nl .eu .ar .it .us .br .ch Internet usage worldwide is growing, especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America. The secondary domain market is healthy. Porn.com sold for $9.5 million. Vodka.com sold for $3.0 million. What makes a good domain name? Naturally generic, easy to remember (passes radio test), clear and concise, commercially oriented. SEO parameters of domains: Links, linkability, keyword research, check archive.org wayback machine or previous history of content on domain. Site age helps. There can be double meanings to domains, so watch out for them. According to a recent study, Direct navigation Conversion converts twice as much as search engines. Pharmaceutical companies have been buying the "diseases". An example would be asthma.com. Redirect traffic to your own brand. Healthinsurance.com is a lead generation site. Getting a domain name, do a trademark search. Have a valuation done. Use a domain escrow service, you can finance domains. Stealth buying services are available for domain acquisition. Questions and Answers: Strategy for tracking? use analytics to track referrers..parking companies have stats, as well. What is the definition of Direct Navigation? The act of typing a domain name into the web browser. Bill Hartzer is the Search Engine Marketing Diretor at VizionInteractive.com and blogs at www.BillHartzer.com.