Geo Target Domain Names – A Good Investment

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 22, 2007

Searchers are becoming better at search itself. What do I mean? The person that has been using search engines to find what they are looking for is using longer tail keywords or more narrow keywords to find their destination site (that’s the obvious.)

If I’m going to look for health insurance, I’d type in ‘Miami health insurance’ or ‘health insurance plans in Miami,’ etc. Google is putting a lot more weight these days on domain names. Geo targeted domains would also look favorably on the searcher.

Moniker just had their Geo domain auction. It’s really interesting if you haven’t heard an auction before and gives you a pretty good idea at the geo domain market, a very good idea actually.

Here are the results:
beverlyhillsrentalproperty.com $600 hackensack.com $20,000
centralmissouri.com $3,000 maltaillinois.com $250
oakland.info $5,000 shorthillsnewjersey.com $1,000
dallasrealestatebroker.com $2,500 ameliaislandhouses.com $1,500
ftpierceflorida.com $1,000 sacramento.org $24,500
lagunabeachhouses.com $10,000 fountainhills.com $15,000
kazakhstan.net $15,000 colombianews.com $5,900
perth.com $200,000 ewisconsin.com $3,500
marylandbeachfront.com $250 sanfranciscocalifornia.us $4,000
congo.org $7,000 beverlyhillsrealestate.us $1,500
southparkcolorado.com $600 ebrooklyn.com $2,250
seattlewashington.us $2,500 santamargarita.com $1,250
murrieta.com $19,000 santaynezcalifornia.com $1,000
fresno.us $4,800 molokaihawaii.com $600
roads.us $3,250 northdakotanews.com $4,000
territory.com $52,500 213.com $33,000
honduras.biz $300 408.com $33,000

This auction sold all cities, etc…but if you are building your domain portfolio, I strongly suggest investing in geo targeted keywords. They will help your SEO and PPC efforts, guaranteed. If you want to look at domain auctions, check out:

Moniker
Domain Aftermarket
Sedo
AfterMic
Dotpound

Google Going after Pay-Per-Posters

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 20, 2007

While Google engages in PageRank warfare against its algorithmic enemies (sites that sell links,) the latest to see the wrath are pay-per-post publishers (maybe advertisers to…) Months ago (if I can find the post or on some guest post) I blogged about how the pay-per-post business model would be VERY hurt by Google’s move on going after link sellers. Is this actually a surprise to anyone?

The pay-per-post business model depends a lot on Google’s pagerank. Obviously, a post on a pagerank of 5 would cost a lot more than on a pagerank of 3 and so on.

Techcrunch reports, “IZEA (the new holding company for PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is not surprisingly calling foul on the move, claiming that it’s part of some sort of censorship conspiracy by Google. Better still Murphy claims that it’s part of Google’s attempts to deny competition because PayPerPost is a “a very attractive alternative” to Adsense.

Murphy goes on to claim that TechCrunch should be punished because our occasional posts thanking sponsors (like this one) is nothing different to what PayPerPost bloggers do.”

Here is one thing I learned a long time ago…NEVER BASE YOUR BUSINESS -MODEL ON GOOGLE. Pay-Per-Post needs to have or should have a different pricing structure for bloggers maybe based on traffic to blog instead of pagerank…BUT here is thing. Many advertisers use bloggers as an SEO strategy.

I think we’ll see a change soon within pay-per-post and how it may change its business model regarding pagerank. If you want to advertise using a service like pay-per-post or reviewme, use it for branding and marketing purposes, not SEO, it might come back to haunt you.

Week In Online Marketing Podcast Nov. 12 - Nov. 16th

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 16, 2007

Tune in to this the Palatnik Factor’s Week In Online Marketing podcast as I talk about the recent top social network sites and blog platforms, AOL’s new acquisition, HD Youtube, and more.

Listen Now!

Top 10 US Social Network and Blog Site Rankings for October 07′

Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 16, 2007

The top 10 US Social network and blog site rankings have been reported by Nielson, reports MarketingCharts.

Last week, Myspace made an announcement about a new advertising platform for advertisers which didn’t really get too much buzz…I wonder why? Facebook is IT right now with all its buzz but Myspace still ranks as the most used and visited U.S. social site with more then 58.8 million unique visitors in the month of October…not counting repeat users! You’re not marketing on Myspace? What are you waiting for?

Surprisingly to me, or maybe not, since it is a Google product, Blogger remains at the top of the rankings for blogs with 34.1 million visitors. I remember the first blog I ever created was actually through Blogger, but really, it’s not that great…they could do a much better job…come on…it’s Google.

Though Myspace was the most visited social site, rankings are still very positive for Facebook with an increase in visitors to 19.5 million. This new statistic shows a positive growth of 125% from last October (2006)