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People who work online for a long period of time may find themselves owning a few domain names that they don’t use. These idle domain names sit at their registrar waiting to be put into service “one day.” Often times, the “one day” turns into years.

Sure, some domain name owners may put these domains into parking services like Sedo.com. Aside from parking, there is another way to use these domains names rather than letting them sit idle.

A higher and best use for these domains is to use them as redirects. Here is what I mean. Say you have a domain called BestTraveltoEurope.com. If this domain name is sitting at a registrar like GoDaddy, you can have it forwarded to another website.

Go into your registrar and pick another website that you want your domain name forwarded to. Make sure to choose the “domain masking” option. Then fill-in the title, description, and keywords for your forwarded domain. Domain masking essentially creates a website within a website. The search engines will see your website with its associated meta tags and index your website. Over time, as you build links to your forwarded domain website, you will get Google Pagerank.

Where should you forward your domain to? You have many options. One option is to point it to another related website that you already own. That will count as a link to your website. Another option is to point your domain to an affiliate offer. If your domain name is like a keyword phrase that people might type into the search engines, you’ll get the occasional type-in traffic. There are many more options that you will think of after you’ve forwarded your domain.

Some people may be skeptical that Google would give Pagerank to a forwarded domain. This skepticism would be warranted if the forwarded domain is only a redirect. However, if you apply domain masking, the domain will get Pagerank if you continue to build links to it that are relevant to the domain description and keywords.

Remember that a website only needs two things to survive in the wild — a la the Internet — content and links. This also applies to forwarded domains with masking.

You may have an online business and you need to figure out a way that you can get your business out there to all potential customers. The way to do that is through search engines. Search engines are used most often to find almost anything on the web. Search engines provide a service that is similar to a telephone book except with URL’s that take you directly to a place that you can find what you are looking for. With the help of search engines you can drive business to a direct website.

When you use domain name marketing you are starting to circulate your name around the World Wide Web and when you start to connect to customers you may find that the search engines have picked up your link and you can now be found fairly easy if someone uses the right keywords. If your domain name marketing was this successful with only minimal effort imagine if you aimed to get your domain name into search engines all over the web. Your potential could be endless.

You can start by using keywords when promoting your domain name. If you can link to other sites with the same interests your website can be viewed more often. Your name can either be appealing to customers or it may turn them away. You won’t know until you get your name out there for everyone to see. Start your domain name marketing today to see what happens.