Adam Stetzer of HubShout discusses domaining and SEO, and how they fit together.

By Adam Stetzer, Ph.D.

[Editor's note: It always amazes me how far apart the SEO and domainer worlds are. The two combined could have tremendous power. All traffic - whether type-in or organic - is valuable. Adam Stetzer, president and co-founder of SEO firm HubShout, explains the basics of SEO and how it can be applied to the domain industry.]

Guest-writing for DomainNameWire is a departure from my usual audience. Coming to the domainer world as an outsider, I like to think I can bring a fresh set of eyes and observations to those knee-deep in domain name parking. From what I’ve learned, the market for domain names has seen ups and downs. With the economy as a whole in a severe recession, the market for domain names is also currently soft. I’ve also learned that the majority of traffic for domainers comes from “type-in” traffic – a term that didn’t exist in my lexicon before Andrew educated me. It’s called “type-in” because people literally type it into the URL address window of their browser. I know, this is old hat for those reading this. But it’s sometimes refreshing to remember that information you may take for granted is completely foreign to those on the outside.

The current issue for domain name parkers is one of dropping ad revenues. Specifically, lower earnings-per-click and tighter rules from the large advertising companies (i.e., Google). Again, this is what I’ve gathered from the little research I’ve done. Intuitively, I would think another issue currently facing domainers is the finite number of words. The dictionary is only so-big. Really. First we ran out of single word .com domains. Now two-word phrases are becoming hard to find. Unless some the newer suffixes really take-off, I would think that domainers will hit an issue related to long names. I have a hard time believing that the type-in traffic is any good for a three-word domain name.

My trade is SEO. And of course, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. So my first reaction is that domainers should be embracing SEO as the next-generation of domain name parking strategies to increase revenue. As I understand it, people who buy domain names as an investment tend to do so in bulk. They then hold these assets with the hopes of appreciation as well as some level of revenue for the years while they hold ownership. The parked domains I have visited usually have very simple content structures and are really not built for SEO. To me this seems like a huge missed opportunity.

A little history on SEO

In the late 1990’s, SEO was firmly in the charge of the technical crew. The clever webmaster soon learned that if they stuffed keywords in all the appropriate places on their sites, the search engines dutifully categorized their sites and sent free traffic. As in all free markets, an easy lunch doesn’t last long as new players are attracted to new revenue opportunities. As more and more websites were brought live on the Internet, the on-site SEO techniques were discounted by the major search engines due to heavy manipulation. Google, in particular, lead the charge to redefine the rules of SEO in pursuit of the highest-quality user-experience for their searchers. And this has been a game-changer.

In a similar fashion to the domain name parking industry, the scale of SEO has grown exponentially. There are currently between 45 and 80 million active domains on the Internet (depending on who you ask). There are approximately 250,000,000,000 (billion) links on the Internet. By now everyone within a stones throw of Internet marketing knows that links reign supreme as the core ingredient for good search engine rankings. Several high-profile SEO analytic shops have developed tools to help the search engine optimization community understand why certain sites rank better than others and which links are most helpful. There are copious websites that purport to offer you the secret to great rankings – some of them are even useful. Here are a couple bottom line conclusions about the evolution of SEO:

1) SEO is no longer a one-time event. The days of saying “my site is optimized” are over. SEO has earned a position in the ongoing marketing efforts of most major websites.

2) You are but a drop in the ocean. The scale of the Internet is so huge that the notion that a site can be put up and traffic will just appear from the search engines, even with great content, is fairly laughable.

3) Off-Site SEO is now as important as on-site SEO. While unique, end-user-focused content will always be king, even my lawnmower needs a prime before it will start. In this analogy, the content of my website is the fuel that will create the user-experience, but SEO is the prime that allows the entire mechanism to start by bringing traffic.

4) Link acquisition is a critical component of SEO. There is wide acceptance that the number and quality of the links to your website drive performance in the search engines.

How can SEO help Domain Name Parkers?

If you digest the current state of affairs for domain name parking and SEO, there seems to be a mutually beneficial marriage brewing. The domain name parkers are facing declining revenues and, I believe, will have to reconsider the content they put on their websites. The days of a single-page, adsense-heavy, pages are probably numbered. On the flip side, the SEO guys are out there trying to hustle as many links for their customers as humanly possible. They especially want links from sites that are related to their client’s business as these are much more powerful for search rankings. I know that I see the world through SEO-shaded glasses, but these two components seem to fit together wonderfully. The domain name parkers should think seriously about putting useful content on their sites and the SEO guys should start offering content to the parkers.

Two big companies fail to impress domain arbitrators.

To big companies — merchandiser Sears and credit provider Diners Club International — found themselves on the losing end of domain disputes yesterday.

Sears lost a challenge for the domain names my-gofer.biz/info/net/org and mygofer.info. Sears has been using the trademark in commerce for a delivery service. But the domain owner, Dann J. Flesher, has been using the my-gofer.org domain name for an actual business unrelated to Sears’ use of the term.

The other domain names were registered at GoDaddy, and Sears claimed that the links on the parking pages there were competitive to its service. It also claimed that the domain name was listed for sale, citing a link to GoDaddy’s “Domain Buy Service”. Of course, this link was just an ad for GoDaddy’s service that helps people buy already registered domain names. It’s impossible to know what the Sears lawyer was thinking, but he either didn’t understand what he saw on the parked page or tried to pull a fast one on the arbitrator.

Diners Club International lost a case for ContactDiners.com. Here again, the complainant pointed to a parked domain name at GoDaddy, which was automatically placed by the registrar. The domain owner said that he had a history of purchasing “contact” domain names and was not targeting Diners Club. He is the registrant of ContactShoppers.com, ContactTourists.com, and ContactGolfers.com. But Diners Club didn’t get past the first UDRP requirement, as the panel found the domain name was not confusingly similar to its trademark for “Diners”.

Two entities square off in Canada.

Wal-Mart Canada Corp. is squaring off against a union — in cyberspace. According to a story on Dow Jones Newswire, the retailer filed an injunction against United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) to try to stop them from using the domain name walmartworkerscanada.ca.

UFCW Canada national president Wayne Hanley said the injunction request is an assault on freedom of speech and its ability to communicate with Wal-Mart workers.

Maybe so, but UFCW apparently doesn’t have a problem using the same tactic to squash opposition. In 2005 the union lobbed a lawsuit at four former union members that left and formed a reform group. The reform group used the domain name ufcw.net for its cause, and the union prevailed in its fight.

Help fix an improper redirect.

In a post earlier this month, several commentors pointed out that Wikipedia redirects the terms “Domainer” and “Domaining” to cybersquatter on its site. Although some of these people tried to remove the direct, it keeps popping back up.

The entry for “cybersquatter” on Wikipedia starts with:

Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

This is an accurate description of cybersquatting, but not domaining.

It should come as no surprise that a site mostly controlled by self-righteous techies would try to pull this one. But getting it changed is difficult if you don’t understand the nuances of Wikipedia. A discourse has started (thanks to Max Menius) on the site to try to change it, and another Wikipedia user said that proof from reliable sources is required to show that domainer does not mean cybersquatter. In a common sense world, you’d turn that around and say “where’s the proof that they are the same”. But not on Wikipedia.

It looks like some proper advice has been provided on how to get this fixed. But if there are any Wikipedia experts out there, I’m sure your help would be welcome.

Yale professor wins domain name case. Was it the right decision?

I came across an interesting WIPO domain dispute today for JosephSchlessinger.com. The case was brought by Joseph Schlessinger, a professor at Yale.

The case initially caught my eye because, even before reading it, it was clearly brought by a person claiming common law rights to his name as a trademark, yet I had not heard of the person. It gets more interesting when you go to the web site, which criticizes the professor for both allegedly stealing research and for sexual harassment.

I can certainly see why Schlessinger wanted this web site taken down, but is UDRP the correct mechanism to do it?

First, I’m perplexed at how panelists decide that a person has achieved significant enough popularity to have trademark rights to their name. The random selection of a panelist seems to be more important than how well known the person actually is.

Second, it’s fairly clear that the web site at the domain is a gripe site. I can’t see anyone being fooled into thinking that Schlessinger posted defamatory information about himself.

Perhaps if the domain name owner had revealed who he (or she) was and why he had a beef with Schlessinger he would have been able to win the case. But isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t people have the ability to anonymously criticize? If any of the statements on the web site are factually incorrect, the courts are the correct venue to challenge the web site.

You can read the decision here. What do you think?