The number one way to get search engine traffic to your web site.

Want to know a search engine optimization technique guaranteed to get “loads of traffic” to your web site? How to get “laser-targeted” visitors? I’m “going to spill the beans”.

It’s not the SEO secret Google doesn’t want you to know about. In fact, Google’s Matt Cutts has even publicly discussed this fantastic, white-hat technique to get better search rankings. You just missed it.

I’m about to disclose this secret, and I’m not going to charge you $97 $47 for an eBook (but my advice also doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee and I’m not going to show you a screenshot of my Clickbank account).

Ready. Here it is:

Create compelling content.

That’s right, folks. You didn’t hear it here first. Google has been telling you this for years, but if fell on deaf ears.

Here’s how this incredible system works. You create a web site, make it usable and valuable to web visitors, and build it up over time. You don’t farm out article writing to someone in India. You don’t copy articles from article directories. You don’t splog. You don’t stuff your meta tags. You actually create your web site with your visitor in mind.

Then a funny thing happens. People start linking to you naturally. It’s not like you can ask Microsoft, TechMeme, and TechCrunch to link to you. But if you create compelling content, they will.

There’s really only one drawback to this not-so-secret SEO trick: it takes time. You actually have to care about what you’re doing. But unlike other “tricks”, you won’t find that Google one day decides to drop you from its index.

New domain registrations fall.

New registrations of domain names were down 15% in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008, and down 14% from the first quarter of 2009, reports VeriSign (pdf). The overall base of registered domain names ticked up 1% to 184 million compared to last quarter and 14% compared to the same time last year, thanks mostly to increased country code domain name registrations.

VeriSign blames seasonality and the economy for the drop from Q1 to Q2. However, strict anti-tasting measures probably played a larger part in the decrease. The measures went into effect in April.

.Com remains the most popular top level domain name in terms of the number of registered domains, followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany), and .net. .Cn saw its overall base of domains registered fall 8% quarter-over-quarter, as the ccTLD registry raised the price of registrations significantly.

Vacation rental company files domain arbitration cases.

HomeAway.com in Domain Dispute

When I go on vacation with my family, I usually try to rent a vacation home. Not only is it affordable for a family, but it lets you live with the locals. To find vacation homes I usually turn to HomeAway, Inc., an Austin-based company that has raised over $400 million of capital to do a roll up of vacation rental web sites.

So I was disappointed this week to see that the company filed a domain arbitration case for the generic domain name HomeAwayFromHome.com. HomeAway has several registered trademarks for “Home Away from Home”. Two of them were filed recently with first used in commerce dates of 2008. However, the company also acquired or licensed a trademark that was registered in 1999. But HomeAway, Inc. wasn’t founded until 2005.

A HomeAway representative said the company filed the complaint after trying to contact the owner of HomeAwayfromHome.com numerous times without success.

HomeAwayFromHome.com is registered to Frank Schilling’s Name Administration, which receives perhaps hundreds or thousands of unsolicited queries every month.

On the same day HomeAway filed the dispute for HomeAwayFromHome.com, it also filed one for VRBOcleaner.com. HomeAway owns VRBO.com (Vacation Rental By Owner). The registered owner of the domain runs a small home cleaning business that does a work for vacation home owners that list their homes on VRBO.com. She said that Home Away contacted her about the domain, and she decided to give it up. She thought she was supposed to cancel the domain with the registrar, but of course that means it can’t be transferred to Home Away. Therefore, Home Away filed the UDRP.

Although that case will simply require a rubber stamp from NAF, I wouldn’t be surprised if a panel found HomeAway guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking for HomeAwayfromHome.com. That might be better than the alternative for HomeAway; if it somehow convinces an arbitration panel that it should hand over this generic domain, it will surely end up in a court fight.

In that case, it might need to use its service to find a nice vacation rental in Cayman Islands.

Using a domain name to drive a message home.

Wednesday evening I was relaxing at a Mexican restaurant in Austin, sipping a Mexican Martini and reading The Onion. (That’s as close to perfect enjoyment as you can get.) An ad in The Onion caught my eye.

The ad was for DWI lawyer Charlie Roadman. Roadman is also a musician and defends a lot of other musicians on marijuana charges. His ad (pictured below) reads “What a DWI Defense Attorney Wishes You Knew”.

One of Roadman’s points is that “a DWI can cost more than 300 taxi rides”. Since the alternative to getting a DWI is usually forking over $25 for a taxi ride, this seems like a strong point to remind people of when they’re making the decision on driving home after drinking.

So what does this have to do with domain names? In addition to his domain name RoadmanLaw.com, Roadman also advertises 300TaxiRides.com.

Another crazy domain name dispute.

A company has filed for arbitration on the domain name Project.me at World Intellectual Property Organization.

Confused? So was I. Claiming rights to the term “Project” seems like a stretch.

I did a little research and here’s what I’ve come up with. All searches for the complainant, project.me GmbH, lead to a software company at Projectme.eu. I emailed the current domain registrant to see what’s going on. As he explained it, Project.me contacted him to try to buy the domain. They couldn’t agree on the price, so Project.me (the company) filed the UDRP.

It’s a very long shot that they’d prevail in this case. It would take some luck getting an arbitrator who’s asleep at the wheel. The bad will may be harder to swallow; Project.me is active in the social networking scene.

Project.me did not respond to a request for comment.