Branding concept...stop me if this is insane

[sunday silence]

The concept is to buy up a whole string of generic names related by some root word. Let's say "fishing" So I buy "Westcoastfishing" "Eastcoastfishing. "Michiganfishing. etc.

Each site would have similar look and feel and some content would likely be redundant (e..g articles on fishing say) But the idea is fisherman would learn to type in "geog region + Fishing and go for it.

And also realize that internet success usually thrives on national/worldwide audience (at least that is my take). Local businesses get less use out of internet for obvious regions. So like ebay and stuff like that is based on connecting people in a huge world wide area.

what go people think of the branding concept, and also what about the idea of local/regional based websites?

 

[Tia Wood]

The SEO and traffic would be spread across those domains. It might be better to do something like:

http://michigan.*fishing.com
http://michigan.fishing*.com

etc.

But then again, you could network the sites together and sell them individually if they were separate.

 

[sunday silence]

yeah, I can see that.

Has anyone ever tried to franchise such a project; to develop a group of related sites and then franchise individual ones out?

 

[recluse99]

I read somewhere that there are 5,000 permutations of a *word* ... thats alot of domains ... the permutations would include typos, adding a word in front, adding a word at the end, or both, those added words would be everything from colors, locations, numbers, names, etc... or a combo of such ... so I would find some popular word and make your own permutation ...

good luck out there...

 

[mcrsteel]

I agree with recluse99. Seems like you could benefit from doing some pointed keyword research before buying what could amount to thousands of domain names.

 

[floname]

I personally would acquire the top 10 names that represented the most popular micro niches within your root niche; If it were fishing lures, it could be a network like:

PerchLures
BassLures
SalmonLures

etc. etc.


If you were looking to build a recognizable brand, build your list of 10 keywords and attach a matching prefix or suffix to each of the names:

accufish
acculure

Decide on a "hub" and build that into a blog or informational resource that links off to the "buy" sites.

 

[sunday silence]

Hello all. thanks for all the ideas. There are a number of good ideas here.

I certainly dont intend to buy up thousands of names; that's hardly an effective model. In fact, it really comes down to how many "buy sites" you need to cover whatever national/worldwide industry/issue/product your going for. Instead of hundreds of names, you just need a handful, then have to make judicious use of naming, and the branding issue comes in right there.

THe issue that is interesting is the concept of a "hub blog" or some sort of center that directs people to the other sites. Thas's because one thing that bothers me about this model is the notion that google frowns upon duplicate content and I dont want that to become an issue.

say I do fishing. I have "salmon fishing.com" "tunafishing.com" Caribeeanfishing.com" etc. Some of the content must be original E.g. "My trip to bahamas.." "How to rent a salmon boat" "best tuna fishing this week in florida" SO each site has individual content...

BUt then some articles would be generic "How to tie a fly" "Buy a fishing pole here..." Etc. So if this "generic content" is repeated across several of these "buy sites" then this would hurt SEO and adsense too. right?

the concept of a "hub blog" is interesting in that regard as a way to ameloriate that problem, yes?

So I guess next question is; would it help in the long run (in terms of adsense, google traffic) to have links to individual domain names? or is it cheaper/efficient to just put all the sites under one domain name? Would google treat them differently?

Also any further comments on the hub concept would be appreciated.

 

[DomainOutlaw]

While it would be slightly easier to rank for keywords I dont think the ends would justify the means.

 

[sunday silence]

So you mean that it would not be worth it in the end to do seperate domain names if they could all be found under one domain name?