Parking Domains For Later Development

One interesting thing happened when I “parked” a domain using the LaunchPad theme. I had no content (not that is shows any) and I had no links to it anywhere.

I came back to it (http://IndependentSchoolNews.com) after a few months and saw in my toolbar that it had a pagerank of 2. No content, no links, no nothing…just an option to signup for RSS or email subscription.

While I don’t have much experience I don’t think I’ve experienced the Sandbox either…at theSchoolsGuide.com I started ranking immediately, many times on the front page of fairly specific searches. All the content was at first placeholder duplicate content…

Perhaps the sandbox only exists for certain keywords often used by Adsense speculators?

A good tip I read recently.

Domains like http://www.www-mykeyword.com can be good purchases. Because obviously you don’t need the www. Which means your domain looks like

http://www-mykeyword.com. In a search engine listing it’s quite easy to not see the hyphen and think it’s a top level domain.

Based on my experience, this advice about parking the domain is absolutely spot on. That is what I did for my ScreenRest site last year, but I’d forgotten until I read your article!

When I started the software development I registered the domain and put up a plain HTML “coming soon” message with some of the key words listed. Over the next few months I forgot all about it and was absolutely amazed, like David, that it had managed to reach PR3 with less than 20 words on a single page. When the product was finished I was completely out of the sandbox. The funny thing is that when I set up the site properly, with all the content, the page rank fell for a while.

Thanks.

Wow, Caroline. I’ve paid for information that wasn’t nearly this good. This is great advice that will save many people lots of time and energy.

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I was wondering what plugins you use and how do you “Submit the RSS feed to directories”

If you’ve discussed this already and I missed it, my apologies. Could you point me in the right direction (a page on your site?)

Thanks,
Sonia

Great post as always!
I do something very similar. I call it “baking” my domains.
I do everything you mentioned above, but when I am ready to actually put time into the site, I move it to a completely separate hosting account from the one I have had it “baking” on.
In my opinion, this looks like a pre-owned domain to Google.

I am prbably just wasting time in doing that extra step, but it also serves as an organizational tool for me.
I have one hosting account that houses my “farm team” of sites that are just “baking” and I have another hosting account that holds my “starters” …like a baseball team. The “starters” are my active sites that I am building and growing.
nuts huh?
AL

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What’s your opinion of .us domains? Will google penalize them?
So you’re doing multiple sites for each niche. I know I had read that before but forgot. So you’ll be doing some linking back and forth between the two? Will google know if they are no the same host and penalize you for that?

Allen

I’m not sure why you are not promoting your content on here as much? You’re already up to 3000 subscribers why not just keep going and quickly get to the 10,000 mark. I know it is easy to add subscribers now since you have all that content out there but I’m sure you could move a lot faster with this blog unless you are just going to make money off your other web sites down the road.

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There’s another reason to grab a good domain name even if you know you won’t be able to work on it for awhile…it keeps someone else from registering it out from under you!

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Or you can just buy pre-owned domains in freshdrop’s close out bins: you pay an extra $5 on top of the regular registration fee and Ive got 7 year + old domains that way

Hi. Gr8 information, but caroline one question that crops up in my mind is how do you think about the content for 3 websites at the same time. I mean if the content is not original and not the best then the chances of the site being successful get reduced tremendously. So when you say you have plans for 10 websites, will you be writing the entire content yourself or will you be tying up or outsourcing it?

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Hi Caroline, when I first saw your title, I thought you were actually “parking” your domains in the way the term is usually used. What it means is to use a service that places ads on your domain, and you get paid a portion of the profits. If you have seen some spammy-looking ad-filled pages, with no content, that is probably a parked page.

The reason I was concerned, is that Google does not like parked pages, so it is not a good idea to do that to start off.

But the way you are doing it is a good thing. You actually have content on the page related to your keyword. So Google can index your page and you will have a head start on the sandbox.

So, good idea. I just would not call it “parking” because that might confuse people.

Now you’re cooking, Caroline! Very good organizational skills at work here. You’ve explained the way to get several domains started at the same time without wearing yourself out or overextending their content munching tendencies.

Keep up the good work! This is what we’re searching for here beyond news of your own successful enterprises-strategies the beginner or intermediate niche marketer can put to easy use.

@David, yeah I think the sandbox is for sites that Google deems as being dubious or untrustworthy in some way. Not all new sites go in it.

@Clog, but doesn’t the extra word weaken the SEO benefit of having the keyword at the beginning of the URL? I’d rather append a word at the end than at the beginning.

@Derek, PageRank and the serps rankings are in constant flux. Every time you do something to your site, the rankings can fluctuate and they can fluctuate even if you don’t touch it because other sites are changing so that’s what I’d expect to see.

@Shane, wow you need to get a refund :) But thanks!

@Sonia, no you haven’t missed it – all that stuff is coming up!

@Allyn, I don’t know much about domains and the relevance of where they are hosted. I know people talk a lot about having different class C domains but that is still something I need to look into more fully.

@Allen, no idea on the .us domains. Yes I do intend to link the relevant sites together and already have to some extent but because they are hosted on the same account I think Google will know they are related so the links wont be all that strong. Something I will look into later once I have a bunch of sites all completed.

@Franklin, please enlighten me as to how I can speed my way to 10,000 subscribers, I’m all ears!

@Lissie, yes that’s something else I will investigate later but for now I’m interested to see just how viable it is to make a business using just new domains.

@Rama, right now I am writing all the content myself. I’m not going to outsource until the project is making decent money. I have a later post scheduled that will go into details about exactly how I do the content research.

@Pat, ahh thanks for the clarification! I don’t know what to call it really, any suggestions?

@Gloria, hehe yes organisational skills are my strong point. Doing the grunt work not so much lol :-)

@Caroline

I don’t think keyword order in a URL makes a huge amount of difference. Obviously it’s a nice to have the keywords in the main part of the URL but not it’s definitely not essential. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure when concentrating on a keyword with no/little competition it makes it easy to jump to the top. Check out the URL’s for this top 10 result.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=search+engine+optimisation&btnG=Search

It’s all about the links to the site in my opinion, these guys/gals listed here are either experts or very lucky to get where they have for that term.

…….. and not one of them has search engine optimisation in the domain. ;)

@Clog Money: Google does give a noticeable boost to sites with the exact keywords in the exact order.com these days, but as you said, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. It’s very nice to have, but not essential.

Hi Caroline: Good to hear you news. Let`s invent a term so as not to use parking – I like Allyn`s baking term . . . .so the post should be: “How to Slow Bake you Domains!!!”

Now that`s us cooking with gas :-)

Can`t wait to hear/see your stats!

Maybe some of your visitors would like to check out a new site I am working on for a friend of mine (see link). He is an artist from north London working in Scotland and does landscape paintings.
If you like the work pass on the site address. Take care!

Very Nice Article about Domain Names,
.org is very acceptable and usable as well, and much more widely known now. I would use it if you are using the DNS name for something public domain or wiki related.

In the entertainment biz, I am also seeing a lot more popularity with .tv, so if you run entertainment sites related to television, .tv has a nice ring to it, that sometimes attracts people even if way less common.

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@Shane You are indeed correct, and I agree when there is little/no competition phrase ordering will make a difference. It would be interesting to build a site with an exact keyword phrase in the URL. Then another site with no keywords in the URL, point a few links at the URL with no keywords but with the anchor text as the keywords in the random order, and see which site ranks better. The site with the keywords in the URL or the site with links going to it but with random keywords as the anchor text. I guess as a third site you would point the links with the anchor text to the exact phrase you are trying to match, and see if it takes less links to get it top than the site with the random phrase.

Hi Caroline,
thanks for the great info.
I’ve just found out about a product that helps you create Wordpress 2.6 niche sites for adsense or affiliate programs, quite quickly. It’s called Firepow. Do you know it at all? Do you think it would be a good investment?
Thanks again
Sophie

@Scottish, hehe yeah I quite like that term too :)

@Dragon, yup those are viable depending on the niche. But if I was doing a site about entertainment of some sort then I wouldn’t want to put it on a .org domain for example.

@Clog, yeah but as Shane says, the Google algorithm is complex and there isn’t any one single piece that has more weight than all the others put together so its just a matter of doing the best you can with what you’ve got.

@Sohpie, yes actually Andrew has given me a free membership to Firepow for me to test. I’m playing around with it but I’m a bit reserved at the moment. I’ll be keeping an eye on new developments though as he is making lots of changes.

Caroline, this is fantastic! I have several domains and plan to set up blogs with some of them. I do however keep procrastinating because it feels like each one will take weeks, but this posts shows it’s not that bad… I just need to get off the RSS reader for a few hours and get on with it!

I’ve just found a new product which is really exciting called Article Marketing Automation – you can add a self-hosted WP blog to their network and you will get content placed on the blog: using the categories/keywords you select. You can also submit articles for backlinks to be placed, for which you need to pay a monthly sub, but just adding your blog to get keyword focussed content is free! There’s a review on my site’s link. I am busy installing blogs on all my “havent got around to doing anything with it yet” domains LOL

@Ian, yup the whole process of going from registering a new domain, doing the whole setup, writing an initial article and bookmarking and everything else I mention here takes me between 1 and 2 hours.

@Lissie, that sounds a lot like WordPress Direct. I have some thoughts about auto-generated content. I think it has a place, but I don’t think its a good idea for general use and I’ll explain why in a later post in this series.

Excellent post as always Caroline.

On coming up with domain name ideas, I’ve run across a couple of sites that help.

http://www.nametumbler.com
http://www.nameboy.com

NameTumbler gives many options for endings, word types etc.
NameBoy is not quite as functional, but does show the (current?) status of the domain.

No doubt there are others, but these are the ones I like.

Greg

Its pretty much my anniversary too. I didn’t quit a job – I had been travelling for about 6 months before. I had a deal with my partner – you support us I’ll get this online game sorted by Xmas – LOL Fortunately he is very patient!. I have a low-stress part-time job now which takes the pressure off but although I am still not making your average I finally feel the pieces are all coming together and now its just a matter of a whole lot of work.
I am know that whatever happens though I will never work in corporate IT again: you don’t kinda realise how bad stuff is until you leave sometimes LOL

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Hi Caroline,

I just wonder about the articles of the sites. You focus on one main keyword for main site but the 10 articles you write. Should they be focused on related keywords with maybe 20-30 searches a day or you just create related artciles that is not searched?

I have recently been learning about theme bleeding and the silo structure. Im not really getting it all but it seems to have a smaller very focused site will make it easier to rank than a bigger more general site on the subject.

@lissie
I hear you there that corporate IT sucks. Im about to take the step myself but i guess im a wimp, waiting and waiting. I think if you have a bit of buffer it could be worth to quit your dayjob to finally get to focus on internet marketing. Even if you can start it part time, when i get home i feel tired and my head is not in the best shape. Even if i can put in a few hours im not sure im that focused.

Waking up at 9am and sitting with a cup of coffee all focused on internet marketing would be really nice and could boost it up a lot. Sorry for this long post and thanks for a great guide Caroline.

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@New Gadgets, click on the picture at the top of this post which will show you the project page and have a look at the earlier posts in the series which explain the process in a bit more detail. But the short answer to your question is that with keyword sniping the entire site, meaning every post, is targetted towards one single keyword.

Silo structures are quite complex and unnecessary for a simple AdSense site. They would be suited for a much larger site in a niche that you already know to be profitable.

Thanks for answer Caroline. Still I couldnt find the exact plan or maybe im stupid.

Just to make sure.. if i make a site around the keyword: home remedies to cure cancer ..

Then article 1 would be, cancer cure 1, aso.
Or rather try to get the keyword in the title of the articles?Like this: top 3 home remedies to cure cancer.

It gets pretty difficult if you target longer phrases but I guess that the whole site should be built around that keyword and give google the best content resource for that exact phrase. In this way we will be able to outrank big sites that have underpages ranking.

I’m sure you’re right about Google paying more attention to older domains, but it all seems a bit pointless. Presumably the reason is because there is a higher correlation between new domains and spam sites. But what is to stop spammers from doing exactly what you have done – pre-register a whole bunch of domains and only use them once they’ve had time to mature?

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@New Gadgets, just keep reading the project, I’ll go into full details about every aspect.

@Rod, nothing at all but that’s Google’s problem. If Google still prefers older domains then older domains are better than newer domains, simple as that really.

Hi Caroline,

I read this post with a lot of interest because I purchased a domain name three years ago and it has just been sitting, waiting for me to find time to deal with it. Just recently I decided to build a blog, instead of a website, with it at the beginning of the year.

After reading this post, I think I’ll go ahead and set up the site and let it mature for a few months.

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Nice post again ;-)