Today I received a $50 domain inquiry for a top 3 word .com.

I’ll take a few moments to share a few thoughts for domain buyers and sellers.

I’ve received a few offers on this same domain over the last year, so I knew that I was not going to rollover and blindly accept this offer without doing a little research.

Just based on the previous domain inquiries and offers, the lowest price I was willing to accept was $25K.

As I do with every domain and right from the start, I also checked to see if the other domain extensions where registered, available, or developed.

And to my surprise and advantage as a seller, all other domain extensions were registered and a few had fully developed websites belonging to thriving businesses.

So I did what anyone should do, which is performing a few business searches to be sure that those businesses were legit.

I recently was invited to an Entrepreneur Summit sessions held in Round Rock, Texas by a close friend and business partner.

I always find it an intriguing challenge to hear from business owners looking for ways to launch, sustain and grow their businesses.

Having had a chance to address a small group of entrepreneurs about how to grow their businesses as it relates to SEO and domain names, at the table was a photographer, baker, imports/exports operator, and an online retailer.

I didn’t learn much about the online retailer as he wasn’t too forthcoming with his business or business model.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed answering internet marketing and business strategy questions about the photographer, baker and imports/exports operator.

We talked about and discussed many aspects of launching, sustaining and growing their businesses. I’ll attempt to highlight some of the questions asked and addressed in our short time together.

Things have definitely been moving at a fast pace around Kickstart Commerce, especially pay-for-performance SEO (white hot!).

Customers that signed and executed agreements nearly 6 months ago are finding profitable success in generating greater website traffic and new customer relationships.

Their rankings have not only increased, but their website is listed for multiple listings and a variety of keywords on page one and two of Google. That’s right, the big kahuna of search, Google!

One of the reasons I make mention of the pay-for-performance SEO customers is that the commonality in their success is domain name and high-quality content. Yes, there is more to SEO than just domain name and high-quality content. The focus on domain name and high-quality content is what sets these customers apart from their competition and highly visible search rankings.

Again, a good bit of present day SEO and future SEO will depend on high-quality content being shared by real people finding value in that content, generating and boosting greater backlink profile and link building value. And one way to build and boost your website’s link building value is ensuring your website has a solid foundation in regards to a domain name.

It’s easy to write high-quality content, if your website is information driven, and place that high-quality content, or any type or quality of content on a long and not easy to remember domain name. Can the website rank? Why, yes it could and can rank.

But the real question, will the customers remember the website without having to go back through their varying search steps?

With search engines closing in on 20 years, it’s safe to say that we are still in the early years of search although there have been many advancements along the way.

We’re just now turning yet another corner in search as social and mobile search both progress beyond their infancy.

Small businesses stand the greatest chance to capitalize on learning SEO because of the markets they serve. Small businesses tend serve geographic-specific audiences.

Nevertheless, search plays a key part to every business’ marketing and advertising, not only small businesses.

Whether a small, moderate, or critical percent, ranking your website, once considered optional, has become a mandatory task that businesses can no longer afford to ignore.

If you’re a small business owner with a website, then chances are likely that a good bit of your business, outside of word of mouth and referrals, comes from search engines.

Whether Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, AngiesList, or another source, small business owners that are looking to boost their local business presence are in great need of learning about small business SEO and local SEO.

It’s been known for quite a bit of time the importance of a domain name and its ability to provide businesses with search ranking advantages.

If business owners would have known the outcome of the Internet and the .com craze of the mid 90’s some twenty years ago, then I’m almost certain that most would give thousands of dollars to go back in time to have purchase their premium .com of choice when they were free or cost a few hundred dollars.

There were millions and millions of domains floating around with little to no financial investment.

You simply had to be a risk taker, gambler, or saw just a glimpse of what the Internet could and would become.

It’s always difficult to predict and know the future from where we stand today.

However, it is much easier to take a 20/20 glance back down memory lane and see all the signs pointing to your current position.

Fast forward from decades ago, and it looks like history might be repeating itself again with the second coming of new gTLDs or new domain extensions.

By time its all said and done, there will be nearly 1,900 new domain extensions in the open market.

For a small business, the local market for their line of business can be quite a competitive and saturated market.

From traditional advertising avenues to search marketing and other online advertising venues, small businesses are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck when it comes to driving new business.

For some, it’s a matter of keeping the doors open.

But like any small business that relies on the web for new customers or their website to act as a 24 by 7 by 365 online salesperson, there is always the question of what is the most effective path to take in optimizing one’s website for local SEO.

One crowd believes in using a single domain to rank local SEO, while others believe in multiple domains to boost local SEO rankings.

So which party is right or wrong? Or are both parties right and wrong?

Today, I’ll take a moment to outline a few local SEO scenarios for small businesses and also discuss the pros and cons of local SEO using single domains and multiple domains.

Like most domainers, I’ve been watching and reading about the new gTLDs, also known as general top-level domain names or new domain extensions, for over a year now, following TheDomains.com, Rick Schwartz, Morgan Linton, and other domainers.

I’ve also followed GoDaddy’s new extensions promotion as well as 1And1.com’s new gTLD promotional commercial.

1And1.com created a great commercial that was well positioned, but what a waste of time and money in my opinion.

To think that 1And1.com wasted nearly 50 million dollars in one-time new gTLD advertising just baffles me to no end.

And for the record, I’ve not seen that same 1And1.com commercial advertising for new gTLDS since my post.

But I digress.

Personally, I’ve taken the stance that domain names, especially premium and super-premium keyword domain names, using new gTLDs are not going to be as successful as .com domain names.