Search Engine Optimization

This short article discusses two ways in which smart operators are making money from the domain names of others. Neither method is, in my opinion, unethical and can lead to a sound income stream.

Introduction

Do you know what the one thing is that online businesses need, a topic that seems to occupy more space in ebooks, conferences,blogs and fora than any other topic?

If you said, "getting traffic", you are spot on. Traffic is obtained through a variety of ways including search engine optimization, linking, advertising, running competitions, blogging etc. But, as noted Internet marketer Ken Evoy reminds us, it's not simply traffic we need, it's targeted traffic. That is, traffic looking for our products or services.

This article discusses two ways in which you can leverage targeted traffic from other peoples' domain names.

Method One

Say for example you have an online mortgage brokerage operation. You are looking for a constant stream of people comparing mortgage fees and charges who might sign up with you and earn you your commission. However, your firm is small and most of your traffic comes from advertising, which is expensive, and referrals from existing customers. You know that there are numbers of large financial institutes in your region who provide mortgages and you'd like to tap in on some of their prospects.

Here's what you do for method one. Use a domain name identical with the domain they have, but change the suffix. For example, if the firm's URL is amazingbank DOT com, buy a domain called amazingbank DOT ws or with some other suffix that is legally acceptable to your country of registration. You will need to make sure the name is not a Trademark Registered Name which it is illegal for you to use and your domain name registration authority should advise you how to do that in your country.

Next, set up a redirect page on your site. This is a page in a sub-directory called index.html which, when loaded into a browser, redirects users to the home page (also called index.html) of your main business site. And guess what? Because your domain name is almost identical with the financial institution that gets all the traffic, you will get a good place in the search engines.

Numbers of people who do a search will click on your link that will highlight the word mortgages. Others will type the incorrect domain name leading to your domain, the redirection page and eventually your home page.

What will they see? A whole lot of information about your mortgages ... just what they were looking for.

Before you do this, it will be a good idea to check out the Google Page Rank of some of the sites in which you are interested. Do that by installing Google Toolbar (free from Google) and then visiting the site. Google Toolbar shows the Google Page Rank in the toolbar. The page rank refers to popularity. Obviously the more popular the site is, the better it will be for you to mimic.

Method Two

A variation on method one is this method that relies on people making typing mistakes. Instead of typing CNN DOT Com to visit the well known media site, a small percentage of people will type CNM DOT com. You provide a domain called CNM DOT Com and pick up some of the mistake makers. However, you do need to provide a product the same as the site you choose to imitate or else people won't stay long.

So, find a major player who sells the same or similar products or services to you and register a domain name similar to theirs.

Before you do that, visit Overture or use some other method eg, the free software program Good Keywords, to find out how many searches each month are made for the original site and the misspelled derivations. Choose a domain name that reflects the one people are mistakenly entering and every time they enter it they will get your site or any site to which you redirect them. It could even be an affiliate site or someone else's sales page.

Summary

Using either of these methods will increase your targeted traffic and because the traffic is targeted, many of your visitors will buy your goods or services. If you were starting from scratch and wanted to know what type of business to go into, you could research some existing, successful businesses and check out the common spelling mistakes people make. If there were numbers of common mistakes, you could create as many domain names (these are generally very cheap) and redirect all of them to your home page with just the right products or services people were looking for.