The Supply and Demand of Local Domain Names

I want to share a few thoughts with you about an experience I had in auction a few weeks back.

I’ve been consistently engaged with a countless number of expiring domain auctions for nearly 4 years.

Day in and day out, I engage or watch at least a good 200-300 expired domain name auctions of the nearly 100K that expire daily.

There are quite a few GoDaddy expiring domain auctions on a daily.

I’m quite surprised at the number of geo domains that pass through the expiring auction gauntlet without a bid, and then those that pass without being purchased as a buy it now or closeout domain.

I mention geo domains, yet I want to speak directly about the geo keyword domains.

I’ve written a quite a few articles on geo and geo keyword domains as a primary digital presence.

However, today is somewhat different based on my last auction experience.

I won’t go into the financial side of this expired domain auction purchase as it may impact the future sale of this asset.

But I digress…So, where was I at?

Oh yes, imagine how shocked I was find PortlandCleaners.com nearing the end of auction with only 1 bid. I placed the winning bid with less than 5 minutes remaining in auction.

I waited what seemed like forever for the auction to expire, hoping no one would see the value I saw and the auction activity.

No one saw the value besides the person I bid against. Why was this?

Can you see the value at first glance?

Knowing I live in Austin, Texas, some of you might think that I’m crazy to even had placed a bid on such a domain name.

After all, what business do I have bidding on a geo keyword domain and I’ve never been to Portland, Oregon, right?

Well, if this is you thinking such a thought, then give me a minute or so to expound on why I bid on this expiring auction.

One of the first reasons I bid on PortlandCleaners.com is the fact that it can represent 14 locations.

That’s right, there are 14 states with a city named Portland in the US: Maine, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, North Dakota, Indiana, Connecticut, Michigan, Arkansas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and Kentucky.

This thought of location multiplicity never enters the mind of some while slipping the mind of others. I have to keep at the forefront of my mind when I see geo keyword domains in auction.

The very city I live in has multiple states containing Austin: Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada and Oregon.

Geo is not the only one with value in multiplicity

I’ve shown you the value in geo multiplicity that PortlandCleaners.com possesses, but did you catch that the keyword “Cleaners” also holds quite a bit of value as well.

The keyword cleaners can represent so much. It could dry cleaning, dry cleaners, window cleaning, house cleaning, residential cleaning, commercial cleaning and the list goes on.

Shoot, I was just getting warmed up too, but I think you get the point.

Nevertheless, the keyword “cleaners” could represent each type of aforementioned service.

So, what does this all mean and why is it important to your business?

I’m glad you asked. It’s all about supply and demand.

Here’s a fact for you. There are many local-centric or Portland-focused cleaning businesses across 14 states. How do I know?

Easy, I listed nearly 200 cleaning businesses in a spreadsheet that are ranked on pages 3 to 10 in Google alone.

Most of these cleaning businesses didn’t have a clue about PortlandCleaners.com being available in an expiring domain auction.

Yet, most have chosen to go the long way to grandma’s house, put kindly, in their quest of having a digital presence that ranks well in search engines.

And if not paying for SEO services, then they are paying hundreds and thousands a month using PPC or local marketing and advertising services.

And what domains are these businesses marketing and advertising as their digital presence?

Probably something along the lines of JoeBlowsCleaningServices.com, or a perfect brick of a domain to say the least.

Can you see the value, benefit, credibility and importance of a geo keyword domain?

The benefit of branding one’s primary digital presence as PortlandCleaners.com reduces, if not eliminates, what’s paid in marketing and advertising expenses. And that’s just one benefit albeit a major one to consider.

But like I stated, this game is all about about supply and demand, and there is only a few winners, if not a single winner.

There are at least 200 cleaning businesses, probably even more, all trying to get customers for their local Portland market.

Yet, there are only a few domain combinations worth using and available to address being the most credible cleaning business in Portland.

• PortlandClean.com (GoDaddy registered and parked)
• PortlandCleaning.com (DomainNameSales parked and for sale)
• PortlandCleaners.com (mine for now!)
• PortlandHouseCleaning.com (registered)
• PortlandHouseCleaners.com (registered)
• PortlandCommercialCleaning.com  and PortlandCommercialCleaners.com (available at time of writing but quite long and a bit limited in use towards the target market)

True, you could get creative and use a different extension or hack a new domain name altogether (i.e., cleanersportland.com, portlandcleaning.company, portlandcleaning.co).

PortlandCleaners.com rolls off the tongue so well unlike CleanersPortland.com.

Here’s my point about alternate extensions and hacks: It’ll never truly measure up to the value of the one .com domain it’s trying to emulate. Plain and simple.

Where does this leave your local business?

Are you going to forever strive to capture your local market with [email protected]?

Remember, the money you *continuously* spend in marketing and advertising could be the one-time investment in a locally-focused geo keyword domain that *continuously* gives you the lions share of your local market.

Go and type your locally-focused geo keyword domain into an auction and see what comes back. I typed Portland and the gem of a domain PortlandCleaners.com was displayed.

As Hannibal would say, “I love it when a plan comes together.” How about you?

That’s all for now. See you around…

Next Step: Learn How to Develop and Flip Geo Service and Keyword Domains.