Thank you SO much for the info. I had set up on blogger.com, but that is as far as I had gotten! I have a couple other domain names that are of interest, but some I just want to sell down the line as a name, and not spend a lot of time developing a site. Should I do the same for those, or do something else to boost SEO ranking?
I cannot thank you enough for your input. This is so much fun for me. Makes me wish I'd taken marketing courses when I was in school (almost 20 years ago!). Better late than never!
Welcome to DNF
To answer your question, I agree with hugegrowth - put focus on your main blog to begin with. Though I personally recommend wordpress, as I find it significantly easier to work with.
Creating an SEO ranking for a domain with a site that has relevant content only has any value if
1. The end user will realistically want to keep the site once they buy the name
This is because if you were to build a site about, say, reusable coffee mugs (first thing that came to mind), the pagerank is only meaningful to a purchaser if it will benefit them.
Let's say you build a site out so well that when somebody searches "reusable coffee mugs" on google, yours comes first. But, for argument's sake, the domain is "coffeemugqueen dot com".
The keywords in the domain name are not picked up by google for such searches, as "coffee mug queen" has nothing to do with
reusable coffee mugs. Rather, your content, relevant backlinks, and meta tags will make google pick it up.
If you are looking to ultimately sell it to an end user, there is value in this, but only with the site.
That said, a coffee mug manufacturer is not necessarily going to see the value, as they would need to leave the site essentially as-is to keep the pagerank and promote their own product.
There are
very few people who understand this.
Whereas a keyword domain name (let's go with the obvious exact match here, "reusablecoffeemugs dot com") has self-explanatory value which is visible to many more people, and can be expressed in plain language.
Most people will look at you with a very lost expression as soon as you start talking about "pageranks" and the like.
So, that said, if you think that you can sell the domain AND the site based on the page rank, so be it. Just keep in mind that this will be a harder sell than just a domain name.
2. If the money justifies it
Most of my domain names I sell for $xxx. That's because I'm all about the quick flip, with the exception of select names that I'm willing to hold out for the right buyer on.
Assuming you can find the right buyer for a site plus domain package, you also have to consider whether or not how much money you get out of them can justify the effort you put into building the site out and doing SEO work on it.
As I said, it will be a difficult sell to get most to see the value in it. If I were you, I'd stick to just the domains for the time being. But maintain a few "experiment" projects and see how high you can rank on them.
Just as a bit of a crash course to try things out. If you start getting inquiries, then it looks like it's working.
For you, it's a matter of getting your feet wet and seeing what works. I've found my comfort zone in selling domains for $xxx. Sooner or later, you'll realize your "eureka!" moment. All it will take is a bit of playing around.
