“Oh I get it now!”

Every day, more and more savvy small business owners and independent medical professionals are coming to the realization that hundreds, maybe even thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, are searching the internet locally for the very products and services that their businesses provide.

Wait, wait, wait…

I know, that you know, that this is no revolutionary concept. The point is however, that it is indeed a brain explosion for the entrepreneur who is realizing it for the very first time.

Have you ever seen those stand alone carts at the mall?

You know the ones I’m talking about right? They’re usually piled high with everything from RC cars, puzzles, and cheap looking personalized etched glass to moisturizer, hair clips and “As Seen On TV” products.

An analogy I like to use some times when discussing the value of organic internet traffic with a traditional brick and mortar business owner is that of one of those cart vendors in the mall, selling all that crap that no one even looks at when they walk past. Those little carts are still profitable though because of the mass amounts of human traffic that flows past, and JUST HAPPENS to see a “shiny object” that grabs their attention. Boom. Impulse buy. Okay, I admit it. I bought a hermit crab once from a mall cart vendor…as a gift for someone else of course.

Anyway, compare the mall cart traffic of the unknown masses on a busy Saturday to the incredibly specialized traffic that a geo niche domain garners when populated with relevant content. Because the domain and the content of the site is so focused on a specific niche and on a specific search phrase, the probability that search engines will make the connection between the targeted search and targeted geo niche domain is exponentially increased, resulting in the searcher finding exactly what they searched for.

What exactly am I talking about?

Okay, for instance let’s look at the profession of dentists. There are a lot of reasons why people look for a dentist but I think we can all agree that the primary reason people look for a dentist is because, well, they need a dentist. Maybe they’ve moved recently to a new city or the dentist they do have is skimpy with the laughing gas or has bad breath. Who knows. The point is, at any given time thousands of people are looking for a dentist all over this great land.

Well, what exactly do you search for when you’re looking for a new dentist in a new city? Every one is different of course, but for me it just comes natural to type in the city where I’m looking for a dentist, and then the word dentist. And yes, I do realize that the plural ‘dentists’ tends to have more searches compared to the singular. More on that later.

So, the scenario is I go to my favorite search engine and type:

Asheville dentist

Or maybe, if I am feeling lucky I just go to AshevilleDentist.com and hope for the best. (This is a parked page, not my site, no relationship to whoever owns it, just using as an example.)

So you tell me, what dentist in Asheville wouldn’t be intrigued that every month about 150 people go to Google alone and type in the exact phrase, “Asheville dentist” and hit Enter? Oh and let’s not forget to mention the 400 or so per month that use Google to search for the plural “Asheville dentists?” Between those two searches alone, on one search engine, nearly 600 people are looking for a dentist in Asheville EVERY MONTH. And this doesn’t even include other searches for the same phrases on other popular search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.

With proper attention to SEO and relevant content, it would not be difficult to get AshevilleDentist.com ranked very well in the search engines, especially for the exact match search “Asheville dentist.” Same goes for the search for “Asheville dentists” and the corresponding domain AshevilleDentists.com (also parked and once again, not mine). Plus, if either of these domains were developed (the way I would do it anyway) the plural domain would rank for the singular and vice versa.

Now instead of unrelated uninterested mall traffic passing by a cart with unrelated miscellaneous gadgets and contraptions, the human traffic generated by Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. for the search “Asheville dentist” is presented with the exact thing being searched for, a site about a specific Asheville dentist, built on AshevilleDentist.com. Heck, find me the dentist in Asheville who DOESN’T think it’s a good marketing idea to own the site 600 or so people every month find first when looking for a dentist in Asheville.

I use the example of AshevilleDentist.com because I live in the Asheville area, but the idea is interchangeable with any city and just about any profession, offering the creative domainer limitless combinations of potential domains to develop or sell.

Just for the heck of it I used JustDropped.com to search for domains deleted within the last 90 days that end in the word “dentist.”

Here are just a few available geo dentist domains (some with traffic according to Estibot’s Alexa data) that are available for manual registration.  That’s $8 folks.  And there’s thousands of dentists out there who will readily grasp the value proposition that is represented by capturing the eyeballs of the specialized traffic these types of domains can bring.

In an industry where as a general rule of thumb you’re going to have two visits a year, probably x-rays with your regular cleaning and maybe even a dental emergency or two over the course of a several year patient relationship, how much is just one new client worth to a dentist anyway?

BainbridgeIslandDentist.com
136 monthly Google exact searches

HudsonFallsDentist.com
Alexa 17.6M

MagicValleyDentist.com
Alexa 9.7M

MammothLakesDentist.com
Alexa 17.9M

Sure, for some small businesses a few hundred extra monthly views of the company website or building a new web site only expecting a few hundred monthly visitors might have little positive financial impact. But don’t overlook the ones to whom it can make a tremendous difference.

For small geographically focused service oriented businesses, especially medical professionals where the patient relationship may continue for several years, geo domains can make a tremendous difference, especially in the area of new customer acquisition and reducing traditional marketing and advertising costs.

____________________________________________________________________