Today let’s talk about mindshare. I wrote about it before but I never feel enough was said, and definitely not done. One of the best examples of increasing domain midshare collectively I can think of is Associated Cities. What are they doing right? If you visit Richmond.com, one of Associated Cities partner sites, on the bottom of the page you will see the following:
On short, they are doing two things here:
1. Helping one another grow
2. Teaching/Reinforcing with their users that a regional .com domain is where to look for when searching for local information.
What happens if one applies this concept to other categories, such as car related domains, food related domains, sports related domains, etc? And what if we all participate in it with our domains, as I wrote before, reinforcing the type-in behavior? It won’t just affect our bottom lines in terms of more clicks/visits, but it will exponentially increase the value of our properties. Is this a good concept we should be involved with and if so, why then is this still being ignored still by parking companies, the ones who control our domains for the most part?
Part 3 is coming up tomorrow. Have a great day!
Sahar
Great stuff, Sahar. Great to see you blogging again.
Let’s be honnest, if I am searching something in Boston for example there are mainly 2 reasons:
- It’s my city and I am searching locally, so I don’t care about visit another city.
- I am planning a trip, a relocation, … then there is almost no chance I should be interested to click another of the listed cities.
I don’t know what is the official speech at Associated Cities to introduce the interest of these pools of links but I mainly see two reasons:
- Improve the link popularity of sites participating.
- Compliment my site: If the listed cities are big/popular then indirectly it’s like say to my visitors: “Look my city site is part of the best city sites!”.
…
The same concept on parked pages is maybe an error:
Parked pages are simply farms of sponsored links, so invit the vistor to click a link to visit another parked page can only lead on having visitors be more reluctant on be active when they land off on parked names as they may think they have been abused by the site that suggested a “fake” link.
Look likes an intent to introduce “Parking Pages Arbitrage”.
I agree with Francois about how users would react to parked pages linking to other parked pages.
I’m not a big fan of parking myself, and before becoming a domainer, I, at some point hated parked pages!
“What happens if one applies this concept to other categories, such as car related domains, food related domains, sports related domains, etc?”
You may like my idea then Sahar! If you know what I mean..
my bestS,
Ritz
Francois,
Among the other very important and valuable reasons/ benefits for/ of Associated Cities wise “member aggregation” approach is more easily signing up area advertisers; where the perception/ reality of “bigger is better” is highly valued.
With this approach, even a “small” (geo) site/ company can be a “big” one.
Francois,
Sahar is just exploring a concept.
Maybe you wont look at another city.com right now, but next time when you are planing a vacation in Richmond you might visit richmond.com
Here is a great example:
http://www.CheapYellowPages.com
http://www.cheapelectronics.com
http://www.cheapresorts.com
most of their “sites” are parking pages…
and while we are at it, can anybody tell me which parking company is providing their parking pages?
In relation to city sites it has been our “duty” to connect the dots of perception. If a visitor finds Richmond.com and likes what they see, it impresses the mind to think that a city site has what a visitor is looking for. The more developed geos the better the branding of that concept to the public.
The search engines have been fulfilling a need for a long time in offering relevant content within its rankings. The more impulse domain names that can deliver acceptable content the more the public will seek them out. Development on that scale has taken years and justifiably so. It is a lot of work but it is eventually what will brand/stick with the public.
Search engines did not need a domain name. People wanted them. People preferred names to IPs. 1-800-Flowers or 1-800-356-9377. When you develop a great domain name its like someone picks up on the other end of the phone. There will always be a need for directory assistance but I prefer to remember and dial direct?
All of this is what I call building “Brand Networks”, not just “linking schemes”. In these linking schemes all members of a network should be listed and found easily in some sort of Alphabetical order. We all know AssociatedGeos.com, Associatedstates.com, Assocatedcountries.com, Associatedcities.com is a great idea, it just needs to be improved . Look at all members sites and the way they do the linking schemes, this varies from one to another and some make it better and easier to find than others. What good is a linking scheme if it is not promoted properly, equally and fairly. I suggest we organize all our names by State in alphabetical order and then list Foreign Countries and list by country once our membership grows more overseas. Look at the following member sites as an example, click on the logo as well, some link from logo some do not, some list a few cities in the footer, some more, some use just a logo and list no cities. If you need to find a foreign member you get the sense their are none/few being mixed in with all the USA cities. We can improve what we have with just a few simple alphabetical layout improvements. Certainly we can do more with Banner ads and increased promotion for each of our sites. Portland.com is doing this and has set the lead for others to follow. Portland.comDenver.comNashville.com What has been discussed on this blog as well as others like Geodomains.com, Simplygeo.com, Geodomainer.com already, is being done by some of us and will continue to grow, not only the Geo space categories but others as well. However as we all know the powerful single names can wrap up an entire category with all info with searchable databases once developed like Dogs.com, Cats.com, Horses.com, Fishing.com Wine.com, Doctors.com, Dentist.com, Lawyers.com etc and really do not need perhaps a Network or linking scheme. Further the biggest money makers in our Geo Domain industry like Miami.com, Boston.com, Lasvegas.com, London.com, Hawaii.com, Orlando.com are not members of AC/AG. Certainly if we had a better game plan perhaps they would join us. Cityclassifieds.com Network—–Like Lasvegasclassifieds.com, Chicagoclassifieds.com , Associatedyellowpages.com Network—-Atlantayellowpages.com, Alaskayellowpages.com etc Enthusiastsports.com Network—-80 sport names like Fishing.com, Golf.com, Tennis.com, Soccer.com, football.com, Baseball.com etc What a powerful Network if these 80 owners could come together Mailordercatalogs.com Network——10,000 of them .Bottom line— Do we all need to be part of a linking scheme, perhaps no, but if done right in a very big way, it can only help. Is it working well like it is ? I will let others answer that question for themselves. Can we do much better than we are and have some sort of equal rules and linking schemes and added promotion that all of us have to abide by as members ? Portland.com has already improved on this, can we do even more to drive people between our cities ? YES Is it in all our benefits to do this and perhaps be equally important as a banner ad on our home page, answer for me is YES. Just a simple banner ad perhaps that says “Click Here For Other World City Information” certainly can’t hurt. Linking Schemes and Networks are great but without proper Advertising and Marketing they will not be so effective.