Quick Guide: Double The Value of Your Premium Parked Domain

What is a great keyword driven domain without a base of natural search engine rankings?  An asset sitting at less than half it’s value.  There are a number of domain buyers out there looking to pick up a great domains that they will then:

Add unique content.
Build inbound links.  Use the above strategy to rank organically [...]

What is a great keyword driven domain without a base of natural search engine rankings?  An asset sitting at less than half it’s value.  There are a number of domain buyers out there looking to pick up a great domains that they will then:

  • Add unique content.
  • Build inbound links.  Use the above strategy to rank organically in the top search engines and harvest the “free” traffic.
  • Use a combination of Adsense, banner ads and lead generation techniques to monetize the website.

This strategy laid out above and explained in more detail below can add significant value to your premium domains AND surprisingly also adds a lot of value to many buyers in the domain market today.  Giving your domain a head start towards top search engine rankings is of value to buyers because it can take many months for links to “age” and a domain to earn trust in Google.  Also, when your domain starts rankings for sought after keywords it gets on buyer’s radars.  By following the steps below you are adding value to your domain today while helping the buyer close the window on getting a return on their investment.

Step 1.  Remove the current “parked domain” service technology and replace with unique content. The current parked domain technology is not adding a lot of value.  To attract natural links (see Step 2) you need unique content.  Who wants to link to a ad driven landing page with no content?  It’s not going to happen very frequently.  Instead, build unique rich content on the topic of your domain name and give it a fighting chance!  I suggest 500+ words and the content should be well researched and reference (with links) other authoritative websites that are related.  If you are not up for writing your own content you could post the job you need done at a place like RentACoder.  RentaCoder is one spot where you can list the work you need done and have content writers (or programmers if you need one) bid on your work.

You can start with content for the homepage.  The theme of that content is easy enough as the name of your premium domain will guide the content.  When you are ready to add additional pages of unique content you can use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to give you additional ideas on related top keywords you can target with sub pages.

Step 2.  Get inbound links to your domain! Start the clock on top search engine rankings.  The challenge with this is it can take many months for a traditionally parked domain to rank in Google.  If today’s premium domain owner can add some unique content and start building links to their domain they in affect “start the clock”

  • Easiest: link to the domain from another one of your relevant websites or your personal blog.  Get a business partner or friend to link to it from their website.  Note: need this to be from a site that is cached or can be found in Google.
  • More work: build content on other websites that contain a link back to your website.  Sites like Squidoo.com, EzineArticles.com, Hubpages.com allow you to publish unique content that can contain a link back to your domain.
  • More cost: Purchase a directory listing in such places as Yahoo Directory, Business.com, BOTW, and others.

Step 3.  Keep doing what you are doing (meaning making money!)  Your domain may be making some cash today even without any natural search engine rankings through a parking service that has placed ads on your site on your behalf.  Take the space back and place Adsense in strategic places on your pages.  Because you have already added quality content to your domain Adsense will take care of making sure your site is showing relevant ads that are paying a nice rate.

So please use this guide to increase the value of your premium parked domain while raising the profile of your domain by making it found in top search engines!

*Follow up note, my friend, Aaron Wall, has done a great job articulating the basic strategy I laid out above in a nice graphic which I included below.  It’s important to note that this strategy works for ALL websites,  it is just that premium parked domains happen to be one of the biggest opportunities for this game plan:

Seth Godin: Sliced Bread

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

Anthony Parinello: Your Price is Too High