Domain Name Wire reviews Name Media’s GoldKey service.
This is the first in a series of reviews about Name Media’s domain name parking services.
Goldkey made a splash when it came onto the domain parking scene. Domain forums were abuzz when Goldkey’s domains started showing up in search engines thanks to a unique inter-linking system. Alas, the fun didn’t continue as search engines caught on.
After the buzz subsided, many domainers still found Goldkey to be a great parking service. Name Media, parent company of BuyDomains and Afternic, snatched up the service and added it to its growing stable of parking services.
This review is of my experience setting up and optimizing the domain FruitCobbler.com on Goldkey…
After logging in, I added the domain FruitCobbler.com to my account. I decided to let GoldKey select the best template for my domain automatically.
Within moments, I received a confirmation email that the domain name was added to the system and approved. I changed the DNS for FruitCobbler.com to GoldKey’s servers and waited to see how the domain would be optimized. I didn’t customize anything, and here’s how GoldKey presented the domain:
The top of the page includes “related searches” including ‘Cobbler Fruit’, ‘Cobbler’, and ‘Fruit’. These related searches are also presented on the left column of the page. A different set of “related searches” including “coconut” and “pomegranate” are the on the bottom of the page below a search box.
The page title was automatically set to the first three related searches: “fruitcobbler.com | Cobbler Fruit | Cobbler | Apples”
Goldkey also automatically generated meta tags for the domain as follows
“description” content=”fruitcobbler.com”
“keywords” content=”Cobbler Fruit,Cobbler,Fruit,Apples,Fruit Tree,Banana,Fruit Basket,Peach,Tomato,Coconut,Tropical Fruit,Pear,Dried Fruit,Date,Blackberry,Mangosteen,Pomegranate,Blue Berry,Mangosteen Fruit,Lemon”
“robots” content=”index,follow,all”
“revisit-after” content=”7 days”
If the search engines don’t kick out the domain for being a parked page, these keywords and the robot tags should help the domain get indexed.
Combined with a picture of fruit, Goldkey’s auto-optimization did an excellent job. But I wasn’t completely satisfied, as the picture wasn’t specific to fruit cobbler. So I decided to take Goldkey’s editing tools for a spin.
Goldkey’s optimization tools are extensive, allowing you to customize just about everything about the domain. For example, you can change the landing page from the version above to a 3-column lander with additional pictures on the right side, as seen below:
That alone is quite impressive, as the landing page is beginning to look more like a real web site.
Next, I decided to customize my keywords. The keywords GoldKey created automatically are solid, but I wanted to focus more on cobbler. I added “Apple Cobbler” and “Cherry Cobbler” as keywords. Goldkey reviews keywords for trademark infringements, but usually within the day (In my case just a few minutes). Unfortunately, my inclusion of “Apple Cobbler” triggered additional keywords related to Apple iPods, so I had to adjust the keywords manually for that.
I also created a custom logo for the domain. Name Media’s research shows that adding a logo increased click-through rates by 2%. Since logos can cost $100 or more, it only makes sense to do this on high traffic domains. However, I use a simple program called The Logo Creator, which you can download for $39.95, to create good logos in under 5 minutes.
Next, I added a custom slogan “Your resource for Fruit Cobbler” and changed the page’s display name from fruitcobbler.com to “The Fruit Cobbler Site”. I edited the site’s title, added a meta description, and header and footer text.
The landing page was looking good, but I didn’t think the graphic was targeted enough. I picture of fruit doesn’t exactly say “Fruit Cobbler”, which is more of a dessert. GoldKey lets you add your own pictures to landing pages, but only with a specific landing page design. So I switched from the three column design to the editable picture template and uploaded a picture purchased from iStockPhoto. I found it difficult to integrate my logo because all of the color choices for this template included colors as a background for the logo, and it didn’t look right. So I removed the logo.
That left me with a simple but optimized parking page:
Overall, setting up and optimizing domains with GoldKey was easy. It would be nice to add custom photos to any of the landing page templates, but some parking services don’t even let you upload custom pictures, so perhaps I’m being picky.
As I wrote in my intro to my reviews of Name Media’s parking services, I’m not evaluating them based on revenue. For full reviews of parking services, check out ParkQuick.com.
ParkQuick says
Great review, Andrew. I’m especially interested in your opinion on how GoldKey differs from ActiveAudience. I can barely tell them apart. If I was color-blind I probably couldn’t tell them apart at all.
ParkQuick says
Okay – I should have said “If I were color-blind…” – but somehow it sounded better the other way.
Andrew says
Yes, and perhaps I should have reviewed them both at once 🙂