Elements of a Successful Geo Website

Elliot Silver
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12

I am frequently asked what it takes to have a successful Geo Website, and I think there are many aspects of this. As far as I am concerned, the number one thing is to have the primary domain name, as it breeds trust, can open doors for advertisers, requires little or no explanation, and it helps with SEO. This said, there are other factors that can contribute to a great Geo Website.

Tourism – People want to learn about many things in a geographical area. Some people are looking to visit and they will want to know   travel information such as hotels, train schedules, flights, museums, activities, and other tourism information. Where it’s possible to do so efficiently and accurately, process tickets and reservations, as this will be “sticky” and bring the visitors back again. Use affiliate relationships where necessary/possible – especially if you can’t do this on your own.

Local business – Many visitors to the website will either live in the area or be looking to move to the area. You should provide local information such as restaurant listings, service companies, and other business information to make it easy for locals to find things. Use your site as a local would – ie searching for a real estate agent or taxi, and make improvements where you need it.

Events – Event listings are great because it’s content that’s given to you by organizations who are acknowledging your site’s reach. This is an opportunity to engage local organizations and businesses to discuss mutually benifical trades. For my sites, I am a media sponsor of a number of local events in each city. It takes time to build supporting pages, but it costs very little and builds your brand. Visitors also come to the site to find this information.

Unique Content – To get better rankings on internal pages, you need to have as much unique content as possible. Long tail keyword SERP position is important, as this will drive non-direct traffic to the site. If a Google-searcher is looking for a park in the region, you should rank in the top 10 for it. Unique content will help boost your rankings. It may cost more, but it’s worth it.

Good Site Architecture – I am not a SEO expert by any stretch, but I know it’s important to set up your site to enable Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search bots to crawl it. The site should be easy for people to navigate, and it will generally be just as easy for bots to navigate and rank your site. This will help with your site’s SE placement, which will drive traffic. A successful Geo Website can’t rely alone on search engine rankings, nor can it alone rely on direct navigation traffic. Both are possible and likely if you start off on a good footing.

Build Your Brand – With a city .com name, you are already miles ahead of the competition since you essentially own the brand. If you don’t own the city .com name, you need to do whatever it takes to get your brand out there and to build community awareness. If people don’t know about your site, they probably won’t find it.

Photos – People want to see where they are going or moving, so it’s important to have great photographs. To save copyright infringement and legal trouble, I would recommend hiring a photographer from the area for a couple hundred dollars and give a list of photos to take. Make sure you work out the details about ownership of the photographs. I used Craigslist once with success and once with a bad situation (don’t ask). In the end, I found that my photographs and the photographs I had a friend take were best.

Social Media – One of the newest elements of great geo websites is the social media integration, where comments are allowed, people can post links on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, forums, and other interaction. The more visitors are engaged, the more they will visit the site and advertisers. They will also help you determine what should be added to the site or removed.

When you have a great geodomain website, you own the city virtually. While the city/region might not like it, they realize that they can either become partners or enemies. I have a decent relationship with my two biggest cities, and although we aren’t working hand in hand exactly, we do have a good relationship because they know our goals are aligned.

Based on experience, I wouldn’t recommend meeting with city leaders until your site is launched completely and has a large following. However, I do think that working in conjunction with the city has its advantages and can be beneficial to your site’s success.

I am sure I missed some things here, so please pass along your feedback. The next topic (I think) will be monetization.

Long Tail Keyword Phrase Search Volume Increases

Elliot Silver
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18

I don’t have a lot of long tail keyword domain names, but I do have some, and I really like them. Mike mentioned a statistic today that I think shows why long tail keyword strings .com domain names are valuable and will continue to grow in value – especially with a mini site built on it:

According to a Hitwise survey, “searches of five to more than eight words in length increased 7% from last year.”

This doesn’t necessarily mean that people are typing the full keyword into their browser, where many browsers like Safari automatically add a .com to the end. However, it does mean that when people type a long tail keyword phrase, there will generally be less competition for search results.I don’t advocate buying super long – long-tail keywords 5+, but if that segment is growing, I would bet 3-5 word searches are growing as well.

As I explained to someone who asked about the difference between long and short tail keyword phrases, if you look up the short tail phrase “Counseling Jobs” in Google, you will get 456,000 results. Now, if you look up the longer tail phrase, “Drug Counseling Jobs,” you only get 770 results.

Although a longer tail keyword is searched less times than the short keyword phrase, there is much less SERP competition. If you develop a mini site on your long tail keyword domain name, chances are very good that it will be in the top of the SERP (depending on the actual keywords of course), and if this happens, you are likely to increase your traffic.

Personally, I like the 3 word long-tail keywords best, but this Hitwise survey does seem to indicate that people do actually search for longer tail keyword strings.

Working Hard – or Hardly Working

Elliot Silver
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14

There is a stereotype about domain investors that they don’t work hard, but they do party hard while hardly working. This might be true for a lucky few, but this is false for most.

These days, I spend most of my time developing my websites, making phone calls with local organizations and businesses, writing on my blog, domain consulting, and sending emails to acquire domain names. I am probably working more hours now than I was while I was working at AIG and moonlighting for myself! The purpose of this (of course) is that I want to keep my overhead low. It’s the same reason why I work from home instead of renting (or buying) an office.

The best things about it are that I love what I do, I can work from wherever I want, and I can make my own hours.

The worst thing about it are that I always am driven to work more and to get more done, although that is something on which I am working – as my wife told me when we were out for dinner with friends last night, my work life balance is improving (certainly good news that she notices!).

For anyone with the desire to get involved in this industry on a full time basis, you should know that just about everyone I know is working long hours again. Many had stopped after they had acquired great names in the late 90s and early to mid 00s. Long hours are back once again, but we are building stronger businesses. For some of my friends, long hours means 4 hours a day, but that’s longer than 30 seconds a day 🙂

Great New Template from My Designer

Elliot Silver
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7

My primary web designer, Mike McAlister of Six One Five Design, has released a new website template that would be perfect for personal or business use. Mike didn’t ask me to post this – and I am not getting compensated in any way for posting this, but I found the link and thought the design looked pretty sleek.

Two weeks ago in my newsletter, I recommended a source for free web templates – FreeCSSTemplates.org. I subscribed to the theory that when building a mini site, keyword driven content is king so don’t sweat the layout – and don’t pay more for something that doesn’t matter much? I am changing my mind on this thought process because Mike’s template (and others featured on the site) look nicer than the freebie I chose, and perhaps a more professional looking site will yield more authority and click throughs.

IMO, you can’t really go wrong by paying $15 for a great looking template template, and Mike’s is now featured on ThemeForest.net. Others seem to like the template as well, with it receiving 54 ratings, averaging 5 stars (of 5). As of this morning, it’s been purchased just 222 times – which is a great number, but I am sure is much less than the freebies.

I’ll Take the Bait

Elliot Silver
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33

I’ve been in firefighter mode the past few days, especially today with Newburyport.com, so I haven’t had a chance to post anything substantial. I’ve been busting my hump for the past several weeks meeting with people for advertising on Lowell.com & Burbank.com, which has been difficult.   Ironically enough, after launching a foundation of a site on Newburyport.com just over a week ago, I already have an advertiser lined up for when I fully launch.   Needless to say, I am working overtime to get the site launched and generating revenue…

Anyhow, I just saw a post from Mike Cohen, and I will take the bait on it. I know Mike can have an abrasive personality when he posts on blogs and forums, but he has privately given me some good advice over the past couple of months related to my developed websites. Granted some of the advice hasn’t been adopted by me yet due to time constraints, it has been helpful to me and has generated new ideas. Mike says that he is going to share something that will help you, and I am going to take him at his word.

Sure Mike is also an advertiser, but I am not being paid to write this or post a link.   I am very interested in learning what he has to say about development – and am interested in seeing what he has to share with others.

Another Mini Site Developed & Launched

Elliot Silver
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49

For a couple of hours this morning and a couple hours this afternoon, I built a mini site on my own: BullRidingHelmet.com. Knowing some html and having a VPS hosting package made it much easier for me to do this, but I think it’s something that most people with a few hours of time to spare can do on their own.

Mini site companies are great resources for people without the time or html knowledge, but for those who have the time and html coding knowledge, building a mini site isn’t too difficult. For those who have the time but not the html knowledge, it could be worth it to buy a book or read about html online. I am no genius when it comes to coding, so if I can do it, you can, too.

In my weekly newsletter which will be mailed late tonight, I outlined the steps I took to create my website. Hopefully this will be helpful to those who are interested.

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