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Google

Strong Argument for Ad Sales

A comm0n response to an advertising inquiry I’ve made numerous times for my websites is, “we already do our Internet advertising on Google.” Sure, Google can be a very effective source of leads, but it can also be expensive and might not send the most targeted traffic, depending on the Adwords campaign.

One of the best ways to close an advertising deal on a website or blog is to discuss the direct navigation traffic. It’s important to point out to a potential advertiser that direct navigation traffic can’t be purchased like traditional media buys. Visitors to a particular website that directly navigate, generally do so because they know what they want, and they either know they can get it at a particular website or they assume this. Companies who want to reach out to these visitors need to advertise directly on that website. In my brief experience, I have found this to be a compelling argument, and the same can be made by any domain owner whose domain name receives type-in traffic.

I was thrilled when traffic to TropicalBirds.com grew to over 90% search engine-based. It meant that I was doing something right in terms of SEO, and I was happy that people were visiting because of it. However, an advertiser could easily buy some of   this traffic simply by advertising on Google. However, direct navigation can’t be bought because it completely bypasses Google and Yahoo. IMO, this is a great deal closer.

Great Google Lab Features

I was on Gmail today and saw the Google Labs button was red, indicating that Google has some neat new products and features under development they want to show off.

Here are my favorite experimental Gmail features, although I haven’t used all of them yet:

Muzzle
Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends’ status messages.

Mail Goggles
Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the “General” settings page.

Forgotten Attachment Detector
Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so.

Undo Send
Oops, hit “Send” too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

In Web Development, There is One Certainty…

No matter how big or small your website is, and no matter what domain name you decide to develop, there is one certainty… Google will play a major role in the success of your website.   Google’s algorithms are constantly adjusted slightly (or not so slightly) in Google’s effort to provide visitors with the most accurate and meaningful search results. As a result of their adjustments, web developers must adapt in order to keep their sites ranking well.

As Aaron Wall blogged about on Wednesday, Google made another adjustment, which seems to favor established brands in search results.   Aaron is a well know SEO expert, and I use some of his tools for research purposes – both in development and even in domain acquisition strategy.   He offers some interesting observations about Google’s latest adjustment and how it has impacted brands online.

Likewise, Mannix Marketing also offered some good information about Google’s adjustment as well as a history of past changes and the impact that it had on websites.   Mannix Marketing are real pros when it comes to web development and SEO, as can be seen by some of their websites, including Albany.com, LakeGeorge.com and Saratoga.com.

I believe that if you build a website with valuable information on a category defining domain name, you become one of the brand leaders by default, and the more you continue to update with good information, the more trusted your site will become.

I Love Canada!

I never thought I would say (write) that, but it’s true. I LOVE Canada. Well, maybe not Canada or Canadians per se. I don’t have anything against Canadians of course, but that’s not really the point.

Ok, so what IS the point? Well, after some diligent analytics and analysis, I noticed that Elliot’s Blog is the #1 result of 29 MILLION+ results for the term domain blog. Now I am not that full of myself to think that I have the BEST domain blog, but at least in Canada, for today, I am #1!

Elliot's Number One

Back by Popular Demand: Google Analytics Webinar

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Last week, Buy Domains offered a free webinar called “Analytics for Your Small Business Website” and over 400 domain developers and businesses joined the discussion.   Due to a scheduling conflict (DomainFest), I was not able to attend, although it was something I wanted to attend.

Because of the large demand and the fact that many people couldn’t attend who wanted to attend, Buy Domains is offering a second webinar.   This isn’t going to be the recorded version from last week – it’s a live webinar. The details are as follows:

Date: February 10, 2009

Time: 2:00pm EST

Cost: FREE

To register for this event, visit the event registration website.   I will “see” you there.

Google Takes on Parking Companies

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Subscribe to Elliot's BlogOn their Adsense blog this morning, Google announced a new way for domain owners to monetize undeveloped domain names. “Adsense for Domains” is now available for some domain owners, and it can be found in the Adsense Setup tab in the Adsense account. Essentially, domain owners can load their domain names into the Google back-end, provide keyword hints, choose link and text colors, and change over their DNS to Google specified servers.   It all seems pretty easy.
There are going to be differences between what parking companies offer and what Google will offer, and some of which can be gleaned from the quick start guide.   For starters, domain owners will not have the luxury of adding graphics to their landing pages. Additionally, it is doubtful that Google can offer the same extraordinary level of customer support that is given by most parking companies.
The bottom line on all of this will most certainly be the bottom line to domain owners’ bank accounts. By getting rid of the middle man, Google should be able to pay more than parking companies, which would be very problematic for parking companies.   Unfortunately, if Google becomes THE parking company, they could make their own rules, lower payouts and ultimately harm domain owners in the long run. This is an interesting development that will have long lasting repercussions on the domain industry.

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