I just got back from the Targeted Traffic conference that was held in New York this past week. It was my second time attending this conference. My first time was earlier this year in Vegas. Although I saw many of the same faces, I found the focus and interests of most people to be much different.
It was earlier in the year when Google began cracking down on web sites (and parked pages) in their AdSense content network. Of course, they now assign a quality score to web site pages in an attempt to estimate the click-through value to advertisers on a given web site. Although that made for a real boost in quality traffic for an advertiser, it truly hurt the bottom lines of many domainers that depend on the revenues their parked pages provide.
So now that these domainers' pocket books have been affected, they're taking a very serious look at how development can increase their revenues. Unfortunately though, most seem to be looking for an easy journey through development that will increase their earnings without taking up too much of their time. Let's face it, many of these people own thousands of domains. Properly developing one domain is tough enough.
There were two main solutions at the conference that were getting the bulk of the attention, and I can't help but be concerned for the domain owner's well being if these avenues are utilized. The two companies I'm referring to are WhyPark and EVO Landing. Both of these business models are based upon attracting traffic from search engines utilizing glorified content scraping tools. Sure, it produces results in the short term, but some people are quickly realizing it's not a viable long-term solution.
What's wrong with these types of fast content solutions?
I made a post about EVO Landing that I would highly encourage people to read. Essentially, Google seems to be looking at these sites as pure duplicate content and in many cases is banning them from their search index. Given that Google damn near monopolizes the search market, getting banned from their results has got to be about the single worst thing that could happen to your domain. And as best as I can tell, WhyPark sites aren't doing much better... unless you're willing to add in your own unique content on top of their "scraped" information. But if a domainer is going to take the time to do this, why not just create a site that's purely unique content and not take the duplicate content hit from Google?
Another solution that scares me...
There was also some buzz about mini-sites. A mini-site is a web site that houses only a few pages that each hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 words per page. There was a company offering mini-sites there at $250 per domain. Most developers refer to these as MFA (Made for AdSense) sites. Google has been cracking down on these in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as well. But just like the content scraping solutions, they tend to offer a boost of traffic right after they're live and slowly trickle back to near worthless traffic numbers. Although Google doesn't seem to ban these types of domains, it sure seems that they're getting suppressed (in my opinion/experience a worse scenario).
The problem with all of this is that domainers are domainers. Most of them are speculating on the value of an individual domain name, regardless of what kind of traffic it receives from search engines. So like lemmings, many of these people will follow these solutions for short term gain. I personally spoke with many people at the conference and the idea of being banned or suppressed by a search engine was so far over the heads of so many attendees that those conversations were often one-sided. Basically those conversations were me explaining to a domainer that Google does ban domains and that it truly can have a negative effect on the value of their domains.
What should domainers be doing now?
Don't get me wrong... I think domain development is a great idea... if it's done properly. That being the case, someone who owns a few thousand domains can't possibly take the correct paths to development. My suggestion - pick only a few of the gems out of your portfolio. FOCUS on developing those... ONE at a time. Learn from the situations you face along the way. Once you feel comfortable with the process give ONE more a try. Don't be in a rush. Learn from every hurdle you overcome and every stumble you get back up from. As for those thousands of other domains you own - keep them parked. There's still good money there and chances are it could get better as Google gets better at providing proper quality scores.
What will future TRAFFIC conferences be about?
Eventually, many domainers will walk down the paths of development. We're talking about a pretty savvy group of people here who tend to learn and quickly adapt to their business environment. My guess is that many domainers will get a feel for just how profitable a well developed domain can be and they'll start looking for more premium domains to tackle. The only problem is that they'll quickly become aware of how important search engines (Google in particular) are to that business model and they'll begin demanding better knowledge about the history of the domain they're considering buying. Is this domain already banned by Google? Is it being suppressed by Google? Have past development efforts been attempted? How did those work out?
I also see more attention being placed away from development and focused on selling domains to the appropriate end users. That is a science all its own and there are still many domain holders that have yet to explore the options available to them there.
In any event, the future is sure to prove interesting. It always has in the past.
