Domaining.org.uk

Mobile communications firm Orange launched an ad campaign in the UK this month.

The ad campaign (TV, outdoor and print) focuses on the theme of “I am”, as in I am who I am because of everyone. You can see the ads I am talking about on this description of the campaign, here.

There are billboards all over the UK advertising Orange and urging people to “search online for “I am” “, instead of asking them to visit Orange’s website at Orange.com.(In fact the website is not mentioned at all).

This form of navigation is fairly new. I call it ’search phrase navigation’. It has important implications for the use of domain names in marketing, which I touch on later in this article. Now, I have covered this topic on this blog in May this year and at the time speculated about the threat this form of marketing held for domain names. In that article -’Keywords are back and this time its serious‘ - I wrote about a few Japanese firms that were using this form of search phrase navigation, however, this is the first time I have seen it in the UK.

The way it works is that a company chooses a phrase, not necessarily one that that relates directly to their business, and builds a marketing campaign around the phrase. The company website is then optimized so that it ranks well in search engines for that phrase. Customers are urged to enter the phrase in the search box of their favourite search engine, instead of the URL of the company website. If all goes well a search using this phrase will then bring up a list of websites with the company site at the top.

With this form of navigation you don’t need a memorable or category killing domain name. (You only need a memorable phrase.) In the case of Orange your search takes you to a very ordinary sounding – www.i-am-everyone.co.uk.

The lack of reasonably priced generic domain names is encouraging companies to look for other ways of getting their message out there. While generic domains rule the address bar they don’t necessarily rule when it comes to searching.

Having said all this, generic domain name holders do not need to give up, quite yet. I understand that, at the time of writing, if you type in the phrase “I am” into Google, Orange does not appear in the first page of Google’s natural search results - yet!

Three books have appeared on the horizon in recent weeks that I thought may be of interest to domainers.

The first two will help developer domainers who want to build out their domain name portfolio, and the third is an up and coming discussion of the domain name industry.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett is one of only a handful of books on blogging that tackles the issue of people wanting to make a living from blogging. Topics covered include, handling technical issues, examining different ways your blog can earn income, evaluate your blog’s success, keep content fresh and interesting and using a blog to generate income indirectly. Darren and Chris are both professional bloggers and Darren has played an important role in promoting different techniques for making money from blogging through his massively successful site Problogger.net. 

Online forums can play an important part in developing and adding value to a website. Forums help build site content and that content can help improve a sites position in the search engine rankings. As a consequence many sites include a forum in addition to information pages, article pages etc. Many sites simply contain stand alone forums and although online forums are not always big money makers, successful, popular forums can occupy an important place in their niche and position their owners as experts in that niche. Thats why I thought Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards by Patrick O’Keefe would be of interest to developing domainers. However, this book is not about making money from forums. It is about creating quality, popular forums that people want to join and participate in - what you do with the traffic generated by the forum is up to you. Overall, there is plenty here for new and more experienced forum owners and the topics covered include developing communities, forum promotion, managing moderators, dealing with problems and there is a very brief section on forum monetization.  

The third book I found is an overview of the domain name industry. It is about time domaining hit the mainstream press and The Domain Game - How People Get Rich From Internet Domain Names may possibly have a massive impact on the domain name market. As yet the book is unavailable but should be on the market shortly. So all we can do at the moment is read up about the book on its website, TheDomainGame.org. The Domain Game, written by Wall Street Journal reporter David Kesmodel  ‘chronicles the exploits of the world’s leading domain investors’. It also explains how people can get involved in domaining.   Whether it teaches seasoned domainers anything they do not know already, remains to be seen. However, if the book becomes popular it is likely to impact greatly on people’s perceptions of domaining and what domainers do, hopefully in a positive way.

I have not bought these books yet, but they are definitely on my list of books to buy when time allows. ProBlogger and Managing Online Forums are both available from Amazon in the US and UK. The Domain Game should be available from Amazon in these countries in the next few months.