Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

There is a big shift in web design going on and it is changing the way I think about web architecture. I was in a client meeting last week discussing the messaging of a  site redesign that covers several product categories, a number of vertical markets and multiple languages. The challenge is that a searcher entering this site is likely to only be interested in one of the options. The client is a language services company. A searcher may be interested in technical document translation for biotech in Mandarin and French. If they come to the site’s Home page seeking this information they are going to have problems because you can’t offer all these options on one page without creating confusion and the resulting likelihood that you will lose them. Or can you?

What happened in the meeting was interesting. Rick, my client, is a good web designer who understands these issues. He put a graphic up on the screen that he had built to help him sort out the way to organize his Home page. It was a Site Map. No marketing message, just a treed outline of the site done in text. It was not his intent that this would be his Home page but as we discussed it, it made real sense to reconsider the whole concept of Home pages- why not use a Site Map as your Home page content?

For the visitor the benefit is obvious: A simple, easy to read guide to the entire site. Just skim and click to get your answer. For the company the benefits are huge: At one glance you see the range of services and experience and you capture the visitor’s attention by making it dead simple to navigate to the exact info they need. No confusion, super usable, great from a SEO point of view.

The next level is where it gets interesting. Each page linked to from this Site Map is now a Home page for that subject matter, the top level of a microsite devoted to Translation> Biotech> Technical Docs> Language Choices. This would be built on a database that pulled the information from each ‘bucket’ into a page customized for the visitor. If it wasn’t exactly what they want they can get back to the Site Map with a single click.

This model, if constructed properly, would be extremely search friendly both for organic and PPC. It changes the static corporate web site into a dynamic information source (with lots of call-to-action sales built in). But what about branding you say?

Who cares? The top level domain has the brand (if it doesn’t then that domain and the brand need to be resolved now). The visitor isn’t seeking a brand experience, they are seeking a specific solution as evidenced by their search terminology. I’d also argue that the breadth shown on the site map is a brand-reinforcing message in itself. As a user I like the direct approach that skips the marketing message on the Home page which is all too often a distraction rather than an enticement.

I’m going to be having a serious discussion with my designer this week about our impending redesign of our corporate site. I think killing the home page in favor of the user might be a very good idea.

As recent observers and participants in the domaining world, but long time Internet marketers, we’re constantly surprised by the disconnect between pure domaining and search-friendly content development. Many type-in traffic domainers admittedly don’t care about search and are happy with the virtually content-free world of parking. This is fine if your model is thousands of names generating incremental revenue- it adds up nicely. However for a lot of us, particularly those with development skills and content (writing) abilities, there is another approach and it requires a basic understanding of the search model.

Search is based on two concepts, intent and relevance. The searcher broadcasts their intent by the keywords they enter into the search box. If you have the most relevant content match to their intent you rank higher on the SERP (search engine results page). This is the basis of SEO. So your first step is understand the intent of the searcher who is headed towards your site and make sure that if you rank and they click that they see relevant content. Parking pages won’t cut it in most cases. One common measurement is that there should be at least 600 words of relevant content including headlines, bullet lists and text (not embedded in images) on the landing page for your URL.

Now we understand that for a lot of people the prospect of writing 600 words is scary. But that 600 words is going to drastically increase the conversion rate for your site and the traffic stats. It also ensures that contextual advertising like Adsense will be a lot more relevant, increasing revenue. If you can’t or won’t write, hire a writer. While I am a writer, I have a lot of other things to do so I put an ad on Craigslist offering $25 for 600 words on a specific topic. I had dozens of responses and we’re not in a major market. That’s peanuts for something that can turn a url into a valuable commodity.

Writing is step one. Edit the writing to get your keywords into headlines, break up blocks of texts into lists or bullets and keep paragraphs and sentences short and sweet.

The next step is relevant monetization. Again ‘relevant’ is the key phrase here. The beauty of Google is that they reward Adwords advertisers for relevance by giving better positioning to ads that perform better. As a publisher (and that’s what you are if you take this path) then you want Adsense ads that closely match intent. Good content makes the difference. These ads will enhance the value of your site to the visitor.

Now for the next incredible breakthrough for domainers: API access to Amazon Web Services. With Amazon’s API (application programming interface) you can place Amazon content on your site and generate affiliate revenue, while maintaining that content as your own site content. You can choose what data to display (reviews for instance) and use keywords to automatically display products without manual selection. This means you can create shopping sites with a template and automatically populate them with relevant product offerings. Add your 600 words of advice and serve up the site on your domain.

If you’re efficient you could put these things up very quickly and see results that are much more valuable than any parking service. And once you’ve developed a portfolio of these automated content sites, you’re got a real marketable asset.

Gray Wolf notices that having a hyphen or an apostrophe in a search keyword may kill Google Sitelinks in the results.

Another reason to not waste your time with hyphenated domains. Sitelinks take up a lot of valuable above-the-fold territory on a SERP (search engine results page).

“Internet traffic and domains are the prime real estate of the 21st century. This market has matured, and individuals, brands, investors and organizations who do not grasp their importance or value are missing out on numerous levels.”

- Quote from Steve Forbes‘ press release announcing his keynote at Traffic East 2007

It’s worth registering at one of the domain parking/auction services like Sedo just to watch the bidding action on domains available through their system. If anything, this verifies my belief that we are entering a rapidly expanding price bubble for domains. The current bidding list is filled with nonsensical domains with non dot com top levels that are going for 300 euros and up (Sedo has a UK centric market though they are in the US also). Any 3 letter dot com is in the high four figures to low five figures.

When you consider country codes and languages there are innumerable combinations to buy and sell, however the lack of many dot com type-in domains on this list tells me that the market for them is far from peak. We’re seeing lots of marginal activity and I have no doubt that dealing in these oddball URLs can be very profitable. After all, selling something you bought for a few dollars for $400-500 is a very nice return, especially if you can do it consistently.

This kind of trading is probably the domain equivalent of day-trading in volatile stocks. The value of this kind of trading to the market as a whole is that it serves to stabilize prices over time and create a real market as traders arbitrage small changes in value. Of course we do not yet have a means of shorting domains so the stock market metaphor has limited relevance.

For the areas we’re focused on (dot com type-in and category domains) a longer time frame and more development is important. Every new domain gets parked until we can do something better in terms of content and optimization. The best ones get more serious web presence and more advanced monetization along with PPC campaigns.

As I’ve mentioned before, the challenge here is to know what to sell and when. For type-in dot coms the answer may be never, as long as they generate revenue and retain relevancy. In our case our business plan has a number we are reaching for before we get out but we’ve also discovered that business plans are subject to change!

The big unknown factor is you, the world. When domains become everyman’s (and everywoman’s) game, as I think they are, then everything changes. The pros will face an interesting dilemma called ’stay in or get out?’. Fortunately it is not a zero sum game- we can do both if we manage our portfolios intelligently.