"Domain Parking is a thing of the Past!"
We've all heard that sentiment before and I'm sure some of you have written it off as another non-issue simply because you are continuing to receive steady pay-per-click (PPC) income. But... let's not hastily ignore this line of commentary just because we are still seeing steady income today. The future will be a lot different for domainers and Internet marketers. Algorithms used by search engines for displaying their search engine results pages are changing on a daily basis. In order for search engines to make certain that their results pages contain the most relevant search results they have to constantly change the factors they use to rank these web pages.
One of the biggest changes that search engines have made is demonstrated by how much they factor in quality web page content; this factor is steadily rising and will continue to use a much higher weighted value. When users look to search engines for answers to their daily questions they want to receive relevant results and real answers, not additional questions. Users do not want to have to continuously dig through pages and pages of links in order to find their answers. Instead they want to click "search" knowing that the top resulting web page(s) will contain the answers they seek.
You and I are well aware of the basic content on the average parked web page. These web pages contain nothing but links that eventually guide users to the answers they are seeking. A parked page is not going to rank very high in terms of content; this is one of the reasons stated for why "Domain Parking is a thing of the past." Because of their lack of any "real content", parked domains are falling off the first few pages of search engine results pages in search engines such as Google, Yahoo! & MSN Live Search. Developed websites with quality content are steadily overtaking the top spots in search engine results pages. If you don't believe me, search for any basic keyword and you will find that websites with quality updated content such as Wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia, are finding their way onto the first page of Google.
As parked domain names continue to rank lower and lower in the search engine results pages, domain name owners need to figure out a better way to monetize these domain names. Even the domainers at the top are now realizing that developed websites are becoming the key to monetization for their domain names.
Rick Schwartz describes this situation rather well in his "last blog post":
"The industry is maturing and splintering and becoming more serious and becoming more desperate. So the dynamics of the cottage industry that gave birth to what we do is no more. The orbit has gone to higher levels. Those in other orbits have to work hard to escape the gravity of whatever orbit they are currently in to move to the next level. The safety of mediocrity has to be overcome by the challenge of what the future promises."
So what is the domainer of the future to do in a situation like the one that we find ourselves in today? Well, I believe it is time to take a serious look at our domain name portfolios and make some hard decisions about the domain names that we own. If a domain name is only as good as the keywords that are located within its name and that domain name is not easily developed into a money-making website, then I believe now is the time to sell.
An example of one such keyword rich domain name is "securedcreditcards.net"; this name may be producing a steady ppc income today, but I know that its monetization model will not continue to receive results as search engines strive to produce better search engine results pages for their users. This domain name recently sold at GoDaddy's aftermarket website, The Domain Name Aftermarket (TDNAM), for $5,560. The website for this domain name currently contains nothing more than sponsored listings. This type of development may be good for natural type-in traffic, but search engines are realizing that their users do not want to click on a link from one of their search engine results page only to find exactly what is already located above and to the right of the page they had just navigated away from, namely, MORE ADS! I believe that traffic for domain names that are solely based on their keywords is near its highest point and now is a good time to sell such names at the current selling rate of 5 to 10 years of revenue.
The next step is to develop those remaining domain names into complete content-rich websites. Websites that Internet users will be able to utilize for exactly the purpose they had searched for. If your domain name contains keywords dealing with secured credit cards then provide users with information about what a secured credit card actually is. Educate your visitors and provide them with venues through which they can apply for these credit cards. Use affiliate links and partnerships directly from your website so that users do not have to continuously search through pages and pages of links in order to get what they originally came to your website for.
The future of domaining involves a complete domain development process involving website design, search engine optimization, link building strategies, and high quality content development. That's what I believe and I am fairly certain that others will come to this realization too. We at Capable Media™ have begun re-designing and re-developing our websites with these thoughts in mind and we believe you should too!