Developing A Geo Domain – Part 4

We’re almost done with the “Developing A Geo Domain” series out of the Domainer’s Magazine, October issue. The last two parts of the series go into the marketing and monetizing of your Geo domain. This particular part of the series is specifically discussing the marketing aspect that comes with developing a Geo domain. Be sure to go back and read parts one, two and three if you missed them.

Marketing Your Geo domain

One of the most important elements of Geo domain development is establishing its marketing vehicles. For Geo domains composed of a city name, country name or state name, type-in traffic should be significant so less rigorous marketing is required (albeit still advised). The following is a rundown of the marketing tools that you can use to promote your Geo domain site:

Search Engine Optimization

This is what you call “free” marketing because, if successful, SEO will bring you unpaid-for traffic or traffic that reached your site by virtue of your prominence in search engine results pages.

There are two types of SEO that you should look into. One, discussed above, is on-page SEO and involves keyword optimization, optimizing site architecture, internal linking, regular content updating, etc. The other type is off-page SEO. This deals primarily with backlinks building and search engine and directory submission.

Paid Online Marketing

You know the drill. You can pay for placement in paid directory listings and sites that belong to advertising networks. This can be a resource-drain, however, so you should use this only if your calculated returns are worth the advertising investment.

Social Media Marketing

Posting instructional or tourism videos in video sharing sites like YouTube, becoming an active participant in industry- or locale-relevant blogs and forums, bookmarking your site through Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon (among others), creating a profile in Facebook, MySpace and other social networks, posting updates through Twitter and Plurk, etc will create additional avenues through which interested parties will become aware of and reach your site.

Online Joint Venture Marketing

If you have a Geo domain on a specific industry niche, you can partner up with owners of domains corresponding to the same place but focused on different industry niches. Likewise, you can also partner up with domainers who own Geo domains corresponding to a different place but on a similar industry niche as yours.

For instance, if your Geo domain is CityNameLawyers.com, you can draw up a joint venture marketing plan with the owners of CityNameDoctors.com, CityNameHotels.com, CityNameRestaurants.com, and so on. You can also partner up with the owners of AnotherCityLawyers.com, ACityLawyers.com, SomeStateLawyers.com, and so on.

The great thing about joint venture marketing is that you pay less than is normally required for the amount of reach you gain. You will also gain links from sites that are relevant to but not in competition with your site; that should translate to a boost in your site rankings. Of course, be careful in choosing your partner sites. Steer clear of sites with irrelevant or non-quality content, and do not deal with sites that look like link farms.

Offline Joint Venture

This is similar to the above strategy. You will find local businesses that wish to reach the same audience that you do. You can trade an ad spot in your site for a spot in these local businesses’ offline ads (in traditional media or in their sponsored events). This way, you’ll have offline reach without spending offline advertising dollars.

Offline Marketing

Geo domains are particularly suited to offline or off-the-web advertising. You can take part in or sponsor local events such as concerts, community meet-and-greet affairs, job fairs, seminars, workshops, seminars, etc.

You can sponsor such events in the place to which your Geo domain refers if your target audience is mainly local. You can sponsor the events in the places that are the major source of your site’s traffic if your target audience is composed of tourists and non-locals.