
Generating qualified traffic using local domain names.
Quick Summary of Contents
- 1 The hidden secret in local domain names driving increased website traffic and sales.
- 2 8 Steps for Selecting and optimizing local domain names for Local SEO.
- 3 Need local domain SEO examples?
- 4 Don’t forget the sleeping giant city populations.
- 5 Incentives for the bulk purchasing of domain names.
- 6 Which is for you: redirecting domains or building setup-optimized sales pages or minisites?
- 7 Need local information about your city or zip code?
- 8 Which side of the door will your business find itself when increasing local website traffic?
- 9 Download Your FREE COPY…
Allow me one moment to make a statement about what you are about to read and how it can change the way your online business operates.
Simply put, your business will be one or the other:
OPTION ONE:
Most of you reading this post will either decide to put together a plan to purchase or implement local domain names for your business as a cost-effective method to drive more qualified local website traffic and sales.
-OR-
OPTION TWO:
Allow your competition to shut and lock the door to your business using one of the greatest search engine secrets, outside of capitalizing on type-in traffic, to generate greater customer growth and revenue: local domain names.
One of the hidden gems in local search engine optimization is the ability of a business, both online and offline, to generate traffic using local domain names.
Most business owners don’t think about this concept when launching their business.
Business owners choose a domain name based on a “brand” name that best represents their business and its brand.
This branding is not at all bad, but more importantly, you should be willing to ask and wrestle through the following questions:
- What if choosing a better domain, like a city or zip code-specific domain name, could allow your business’ website to convert 10, 20, 100, or X amount more qualified traffic?
- How many more sales could your business close?
Now your wheels are spinning, right? I’m sure you are wondering how much your business will cost compared to the current marketing and advertising spend vehicles.
The answer is simple and cost-effective: a mere $15 per year or less registration fee per domain name.
That’s it! Yes, $15 a year invested in a city or zip code-specific domain name can spawn 10, 20, 100, or X more qualified website traffic.
So, how many domain names could your business purchase?
Truth be told, the number of domains is probably endless, or at least enough to lock the doors on competition trying to do the same thing.
8 Steps for Selecting and optimizing local domain names for Local SEO.
That said, here are 8 simple steps you can take to lock the doors on competition using local domain names.
- Use the spreadsheet tool at the end of this post as a local domain SEO example, which we recommend you download and use it to your advantage.
- Select a primary city and a group of cities of approximately 10-15 cities surrounding the primary city.
- Create a spreadsheet like the downloadable tool at the end of this post and list the cities in one column.
- Identify each city’s population and use this as a guide to select a list of cities to address. To find the population of each city, use wiki-pedia or enter “city population” into a major search engine, replacing “city” with the respective city name.
- Determine a list of 4 or 5 two- or three-word keywords or keyword phrases.
- For each city, append each two- or three-word keyword or keyword phrase.
- Determine domain name availability by visiting a registrar like GoDaddy or Register.com to run a bulk domain registration to verify the availability of your city or zip code and keyword combinations.
- Determine your plan of either redirecting local domain names to your primary business website or setup sales pages or mini-sites optimized specifically for the city or zip code domain name.
Download And Watch This Video To See 8 Steps Put In Action
Need local domain SEO examples?
For example, one of your keywords could be Chair Rental or Wedding Chair Rental. Your cities could be Tampa and Destin.
So when cities are concatenated with keywords, they become TampaChairRental.com, TampaWeddingChairRental.com, DestinChairRental.com, and DestinWeddingChairRental.com.
Now think about the various combinations your business can achieve for your industry and city.
In addition, if you need more ideas, then subscribe (use the sidebar form) to my daily domain auctions and closeout domain listings right into your inbox.
Don’t forget the sleeping giant city populations.
Another thing to remember about population is that you may have cities with drastically different populations, such as one city at 5,000 and another at 50,000 or 120,000.
Securing the local domain names of cities greater than 75,000 in population is highly recommended.
However, I personally believe cities between 50,000-70,000 in population are the sleeping giants for years to come.
If you have a business in a city with a population of 50,000-70,000, then it will serve you well to invest in local domain names as these cities grow over the years.
Incentives for the bulk purchasing of domain names.
In addition, if you have hundreds or thousands of local domain names to purchase, it may be best to contact the registrar directly.
Registrars have been known to give large incentives for the bulk purchasing of domain names.
The first hurdle is now passed with the purchasing of local domain names, and at least your competition does not own these valuable gems of search engine success.
Which is for you: redirecting domains or building setup-optimized sales pages or minisites?
Each of these options has pros and cons, and your business will have to weigh each according to the nature of your business and the business industry.
Although we can recommend any of the options above with profitable success, we have found customers to have the most success with the development of minisites for their businesses using either city or zip code domain names.
Need local information about your city or zip code?
Once your business has confirmed the successful implementation and testing of either city or zip code domain names, another thought is for your business to do the same at the county and state levels.
In addition to city and zip codes, it is highly recommended your business invest in the purchase of data from Zip-codes.com. They offer three options (i.e., Standard, Deluxe, Business) and at three affordable price points.
You could even use this data to get started with your city or zip code domain name efforts, as they provide more in-depth detail about each zip code and city and their respective demographics.
Which side of the door will your business find itself when increasing local website traffic?
As I stated in the beginning, there will be two types of businesses that will buy into this strategy to generate greater customer growth and revenue:
Those who lock the door on the competitors’ business AND Those who allow it to be locked on their business.
Which side of the door will your business find itself?
I’m looking into doing this, but I’m concerned about google’s rule against doorway domains. What’s the difference? Thanks!
Hi Jason, The difference doorway domains and what I speak is that you DO NOT want to have your local domain linked to your main website. Let’s say that you offer 5 services. You could setup keyword-specific service sites for each service that are meant to educate customers and convert sales. I stress education because you don’t want to provide low quality content or content made only for search engines, nor do you want them to link to your main website (this would violate SEO policy). Hope this helps… Thanks for your comment.
Hey Alvin!
Saw your tweet, and after downloading your “How to develop and flip GeoService domains”, and watching the video, I came to read this post. Thank you for making the effort in promoting this valuable tactic!
I have been doing something similar, that might be complimentary to your strategy or those of your readers. My team developed a tool that automatically combines two sets of keywords (just like your excel sheet) one being name of the city and the other a service. The tool then automatically checks for domain availability. Compared to GoDaddy’s bulk check, we don’t include premium domains or auction domains that are for sale. I would love if you could check it out – https://whoapi.com/page/domain_checker