Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfupoleasercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimize your content to build traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello and welcome back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, as always, and today I'm going to be talking about a topic that can well.

Speaker 1: 1:24

It frustrates me sometimes, and it can frustrate others as well. It's domainers, right, these are people who buy up domains, sit on them and then try to sell them at profit. So so we'll talk about what domainers do, why they do it, why and how it affects SEO, and why it gets on my nerves, and also a personal story I've got to share, which was the inspiration for doing this podcast. So let's talk about domainers first and what they do. So let's talk about domainers first and what they do. So what they are they're people, individuals in some cases. In other cases, there's some quite big companies now that do it, and what they do is they buy domain names with the sole intention of reselling them later for a profit. They scout for domains that either have just expired because they only forgot or decided not to renew them, or if they contain keywords that might be valuable for SEO or branding, or are brandable in their own right, they might be good for a company name or things like that. And so a domain's goal is simply just to sort of snap up these domains and hoard them before anybody else gets hold of them and will hold on to them, and sometimes with not even putting a website on them. Sometimes they just have them sit there not doing anything, or they park them on sites with ads waiting for potential buyers to come along.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Now, purely from a business point of view, fair enough, it's classic case of supply and demand. There's nothing illegal about what they're doing, or even is it morally wrong? I don't know, probably not in most cases, but they do it because, yeah, sometimes some people are willing to pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for the right domain name. Some have even gone for the millions. I remember cruisescom went for multiple millions of pounds. Um, so there are some people, some companies out there that are willing to pay big money for um, your, you know domains, um, if they've decided they want them for their brand or to build a brand on, so that's why people do it.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Okay, but from my standpoint as someone who actually wants to build websites and generate actual, real value, it can be a real, real pain when you're trying to find new domains. If you're trying to start a new project, you're trying to create a new brand for something, you can have a really good idea for a name. You can go out there and find it's gone. It's just someone sat on the domain doing nothing with it. I mean, if I've come up with a name, I think I like that might be brandable and I go there and someone's already built a website on it and they're running a business using that and fair enough, you know they got there first. But when it's just people sat there waiting for someone to come along because it's a brand name, they like it's really really frustrating. But yeah, to talk about why this actually came to me as an idea to talk about it was because one of my affiliate sites it's my energy affiliate site it's targets the uk and it's on the dot code uk version is what of the domain name? Is what the site is actually live on and it's been there for probably eight years or so now.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Now, when I first registered that domain and decided on that brand name, I bought the com version as well because I thought I wanted to stop someone, essentially at that time, coming along and copying the domain name and just putting the com on, because in the UK coms can work okay. I prefer couk if I'm just targeting the UK, but coms can target it quite well. So I bought the com just to block it and you know I've just been paying for it to start there doing nothing. It wasn't even redirected to the couk for the past eight years and I've recently been having a little bit of a cull of my domain name portfolio because yeah, I'm, and I've just ranted about how bad domainers are I do have a bad habit which I'm not bad so bad nowadays, but historically a bad habit of having an idea of something and then going register the domain names b with. It's always the case because I think I'm going to build something, but often I haven't got around to it.

Speaker 1: 5:33

I've just stacked up probably several hundred domain names over the years, um, and I thought you know each one of them costs me 10 quid or more a year to renew and I'm probably paying several thousand pounds a year. You know, several thousand dollars a year just renewing domain names I've, I don't use and I've never got any intention of a year you know several thousand dollars a year just renewing domain names that I've, I don't use and I've never got any intention of using and you know they're not really worth a lot to sell as far as I'm concerned anyway. So I've just been letting them drop and one of them was this dot com version of a, the dot kdk site, that I've got and yeah, it just dropped the other week and I thought nothing of know. Now, the interesting thing was that within 24 hours, within 24 hours of it dropping, I got an email and this email came. It was actually via the contact form on our couk site, so this person had come to us directly and it says message hi, I noticed that domain namecom is available and I thought it might align with your brand. If you're considering securing a new domain, this could be an excellent option. Feel free to check it out or submit an offer here, and there's a link to where go to make an offer on the domain. Let me know if you have any questions kind regards blah, blah, blah the person's name.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So this person their company had literally waited for the domain to drop, bought it and then come to our website, which shares the exact same domain name, except weathercouk, and they bought the com that I'd let drop, trying to sell it to me. They probably had no idea that we originally owned it because it would have had domain privacy on, but they they probably had no idea that we originally owned it because it would have had domain privacy on. But they've watched it drop, they've bought it on the drop and then they've looked around for someone to select to and tried to come back and select to us. So, if anything, it's funny. They've wasted time and money trying to sell me back a domain to me that I'd actually let drop. So in this case it's funny. But there's a downside here. What if I accidentally let it drop and I didn't mean to? They could then actually hold me hostage to get my own domain name back, and this can happen, and that's where I think it does come a little bit dirty. If people are doing this, they wait to hijack and then try and hold people ransom for them.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Now there are ways you can go around it. You can take people to court, can go to domain name resolution services, especially if it's something you've run before or if you're trademarks on it and things like that. But it's still an annoyance when people do that to you. Yeah, so I find it frustrating when domainers hoard domains, cause confusion for brands. So you know, if you're trying to build a brand and you can't find the right version of the of it available because someone else has sat squat in it, um, now seo's seo. You know there are no particular negatives to the seo side of it, um, but if you do want to consolidate your brand across a multiple top level domains and a domain is sat on a version of it, it can make it really expensive for you or even impossible. And if the domain themselves actually decided to build a low-quality site on that domain, then there's potential for brand dilution or confusing customers who are searching for you. So, yeah, that's an annoyance.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Yeah, it annoys me how they pounce on expiring domains. Like, as I experienced, that could have been a real annoyance to me. Obviously, we know it didn't, because I was deliberately let it drop, but it just shows you how they're doing this and how they have automated systems for doing this and to try and get it to hold people hostage and then flip back to them. I mean, obviously I understand why they're doing it, because it can be pretty profitable. You know, if you get you catch domain that's in high demand, then you know it could be worth a lot of money. You know, it's a bit like real estate really, I suppose, except digital. It's low maintenance and potentially high return. Um, and back in the early days, the internet it was a gold rush. There were people buying up lots of sort of single word domain names and things like that, um, and they did make some good money selling them. But I think it's getting to the point now where there's so many people trying domaining again because it's one of those get-rich-quick things. I know that I've seen people out there with courses how to do domaining, how to get rich with domaining, and it's really really hard because so many of the really valuable ones have been snuck up and gone and now people are just scrabbling around at the bottom of it with multiple word domains all being completely hijacked and gone and those of us looking to develop stuff find it really hard to find domains.

Speaker 1: 10:01

So anyway, what can you do to protect yourself against domainers? Okay, so, first of all, keep an eye on your domains. Monitor your domains, you know, keep track of your renewal dates, set up auto-renews on them, use calendar reminders. You don't want to lose a domain accidentally because you're in control of that part of it. Secondly, buy the extensions you really need. You know, if you've got the couk for your business and you think the com is crucial, or the org or the net or the whatever, then buy them up front when you are first registering it, because as soon as you get something on there of any value, then people will buy all the domains, uh, the other top level domains around it. And, like I say, if you don't care, like I don't care in the case of this, this uk version, this site, then that's fine. But if buy them when, buy them early, if you want them, if a domain name you've already want has been purchased, then you can use a back ordering service. And these are these are the kind of services that the domain is themselves used to try and nab them when they expire. So it won't always be successful, because any domain expirer has probably, if any value, has probably got other people looking at it, but they're worth a try.

Speaker 1: 11:12

If you're trying to get hold of a domain and you think it's going to expire If all else fails and you really want a domain that's owned by a domainer, then you might have to. You know you've got to be open to negotiations or be prepared to pay a premium. You know it's not not ideal, but if your brand absolutely needs that domain and factor it into your budget. But I would say because there's one time when I did actually buy a domain off a domain, um, you can, you. They will come down on price because, although they may think it's really, really valuable, the only very small market for any particular domain name apart from the very, very, very, you know, like the cruisecom ones, that kind of thing, most other domains you'll find, especially two-word domains, three-word domains. There's not going to be a lot of competition to buy a domain name. It's especially one that's like a naked domain name that's never had a site on it, so it's got no backlink or history profile then you then be aggressive in your negotiations. I got the price down for the one I bought. They wanted $3,000 to start with and I ended up paying $700. So don't go with the first offer, be willing to walk away. You will get the price down.

Speaker 1: 12:21

So yeah, with all that said, there's another type of domain that I have talked about before, and those are people that chase and buy domains for their SEO value. That's different. Okay, I've done podcast episodes on that. Go and look at search for like I think it's called expiring domains and domains at auction. That's where I talk about when people buy domains for their SEO value or their backlinks. This is different. This is just really a warning to you that in this online ecosystem, there are this little subset of people, the domainers who are out there looking to make that fast buck, and you know I've said my piece on what I think about what they do, but just be aware that they're out there and watch out for them and the fact that they can cause you issues if you don't look after the domains you've got and you don't get the domains you want up front. So anyway, I hope that was useful, I hope that was interesting and, yeah, until next time.

Speaker 1: 13:15

Keep optimizing, stay curious and remember seo is not that hard when you understand the basics. Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me. This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my seo tools and services. You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that ed is spelled with two d's. You can find me on linkedin and blue sky just search for ed dawson on both.

Speaker 1: 13:39

You can record a voice question to get answer on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our seo intelligence platform keywords people use keywordspeopleusecom where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online. Post those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority and, finally, connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimise and continually refine your content with targeted, personalised advice to keep your traffic growing. Rank for and then help you optimize, continually refine your content targeted, personalized advice keep your traffic growing. You're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice? Then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.