October Boston SEO Meetup Recap
October 24, 2012 by Nick Stamoulis
On Monday night, the Boston SEO Meetup group reconvened at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) center. A group of about forty local Boston SEO professionals, marketing professionals and local business owners enjoyed pizza provided by guest speaker Dave Evanson, Senior Sales & Brokerage Consultant for Sedo.com. Beverages and additional goodies were provided by the group’s food sponsor, Brick Marketing.
The topic of the evening was internet domains. Brian Hawkins, one of the co-organizers of the Boston SEO meet-up started the night off by asking if anyone had ever purchased a domain late at night and had woken up the next day thinking it was a very bad idea. After a chuckle around the room, he introduced the speaker of the evening, Dave Evanson of Sedo.com, a domain marketplace and solutions company.
Evanson began his career in marketing and worked as a senior vice president of marketing for the credit card industry in the 1970’s. He moved on to found a strategic marketing company and became interested in buying and selling domains in 1999. Evanson joined Sedo two years ago as the Senior Sales and Brokerage Consultant. On average he oversees 1.5 to 1.7 million dollars in domain sales each week. Over the course of the evening, Evanson gave us a glimpse into the world of domain brokering and how domain names are valuated.
Domains are valued much like real estate as domains are in essence virtual real estate. According to Evanson, people and organizations purchase domains for three reasons. They either want to develop the domain into a website, flip the domain for profit, or buy the domain as an investment for later development. The value of a domain depends on a multitude of factors. For instance a “.com” domain will sell for four times as much as a “.net” site. Other extensions such as “.us” (United States) and “.ca” (Canada) fluctuate in perceived value due to the fact that they are local to as specific country.
The group then had a chance to ask Evanson questions regarding domains and their impact on SEO. Evanson says that the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are creating bidding wars among major companies. Corporations are going after coveted domain extensions such as “.pizza” or branded domains such as “.google.” Evanson also pointed out that most end users rarely ask about traffic to a domain, and are more interested in buying the domain for branding purposes.
Check out video from the event on the Boston SEO Meetup YouTube page.
The next Boston SEO Meetup will take place at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA on November 19, 2012. Join us to network with fellow SEO professionals and other individuals who are interested in search engine optimization and internet marketing.
