How many Domain Names do you have lying around doing nothing?

What's in a name?

Everyone is buying up domain names like crazy these days. Many people have 2 or 3, some have 20 or 30. Personally I have 3. I probably should have more, but I never really got into the domain buying game. The question I want to bring up is - what is everyone doing with those domain names?

Many of you are just letting them sit, doing nothing in your GoDaddy account or Dotster account. What good does that do you? Nada. Even if you are planning on selling it, you are doing yourself an injustice. Those domain names are worthless just sitting there year after year when you could be building a page rank and driving more traffic to your website (if you have one).

SO - what do you do about this?

If you have a website and the URL is relevant to your market - you do a 301 permanent redirect on all of your URL's to your current web address. This can be found under the forwarding options in your hosting account. Usually free - but can be as much as $10 a year.

An important thing to note - if you own a website called widgetsforcars.com - then on the 301 permanent redirect page, it should let you set up a title and meta tags for that particular URL. Do not waste the time setting it up if you don't fill in these boxes. Go look up the particular keyword and see what the most relevant popular keywords are for your URL. Remember, the highest searches keywords are not necessary the best keywords. I will post more on Keywords in my next post.

What does this do for you? It adds to your SEO for your site and brings more traffic to your site for searchers looking for your product.

If you don't have a website, or your URL is not relevant to your current website - then you need to set up a free one or purchase a domain reseller account. There are many free hosting sites out there. Search Google for Free web hosting or Domain Reseller. GoDaddy has an excellent Domain Reseller account that will set you up with a web page with a shopping cart and all kinds of features.

What this will do is allow you to make your URL's active and therefor valuable. First if you are selling domains - you have to get the word out there. You need to tell someone that the domain is for sale, otherwise they will just think it is taken and being used. By having a landing page you are establishing the domain in the search engines and therefore making it more valuable. A simple page with Google Adwords ads showing up on it for relevant "widgetsforcars" will not only bring you money for being an Affiliate, but will establish the site as relevant to the "widgetsforcars" subject and help it rank in the search engines.

Google says:
"AdSense for search allows website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages. "

You can sign up here.

Not only does it display ads for you, it keeps Google coming back to your site regularly to check it out which means it is indexed and added to Google.

Now imagine you set up this site, added some good keywords into the Title and Meta tags. Put the words : This domain is for sale. Email you@youremail.com to make offer. Then added in the Google Adsense below that. Tada - you have a fully functional domain that you spent an hour putting together and then you don't have to touch. It will be all set for the search engines, available to potential buyers, earn you money from Google Adsense, and over time accumulate a Google Page Rank which in turn will make it more valuable when you sell it! (A site with a PR of 5 is worth more money than a site with a PR of 1.)

So what are you waiting for? Go out and dust off those inactive domains and start using them to help yourself!

Char Bennett
Website Design
Search Engine Optimization
Link Popularity, Link Exchange

copyright 2008 Charra Bennett