It’s on the horizon. Domain parking as we know it is going to change in a dramatic way, and domainers have to start making decisions as to what they are going to do about it.

As this notion ripples through the aftermarket and parking verticals, albeit slowly, everyone just seems to be shrugging their shoulders as to a solution. To not have seen this coming means never hearing the words “I hate those pages!” when talking to anyone about what happens when they make a typo in the address bar or direct nav on a whim. And unless the domain is in a niche market, it’ll rarely be found in a search engine since Google’s mandate is to provide the most meaningful search results available. This simple symptom of parking a domain has been a clear indicator that the parking industry would never improve without some advancement.

The path to moving forward is clear; development. We’re at the beginning of this exciting industry, and as it blooms, it will be a case of “get onboard, or fizzle out”. Traffic is king, and one of the few ways a domainer can influence CTR is by generating more traffic. Obtaining more traffic means increasing stickiness. Stickiness means loyalty, loyalty means value, and value means providing content and interactivity that actually benefits the visitor. We are all going to have to start thinking like one and to do this means becoming an industry of givers and not takers. We also need to stop thinking of internet traffic as faceless numbers. Every day that goes by, internet traffic develops higher and higher expectations of the kind of content that provides meaning and value, and is often able to determine this prior to following a path.

So how do we give more? At its most basic level, the industry needs to start networking with content creators and page developers to create landers that offer a more engaging and memorable surfing experience. A simple developed lander should, at the very least, have custom content that offers something worth consuming. The visitor wins, and the benefits to the domainer are two fold; custom content enables the domain to escape the confines of the parked page penalty with the search engines, and allows for SEO and increases the involvement and control the domainer has over his individual domain.

The development of the lander doesn’t stop with providing custom content. We need to understand traffic intent to increase the value. Most domainers rely on their parking service to provide links and categories that enjoy the highest CTR; however CTR is an organic result of the many confines of parking a domain, which is inherently flawed. Not to mention that there is a lack of functionality and interaction which may also offer insight. By offering real content and analyzing traffic data, domainers will have a better sense of what their traffic is looking for and making adjustments to it to accommodate, allowing for unlimited tweaking to the content found and consumed, with additional adjustments made to both ad placement and page layout to obtain the most lucrative experience possible.

Domainers have enjoyed the luxury of simply pointing a domain at a server and sitting back and watching the money come in. Let’s face it, armed only with $7 and some DNS settings, a domainer can set up a revenue stream, and in as much as this activity has developed an entire industry and revenue model, it has also come at a cost. This arrogance has not only poisoned the internet with millions of pages of ugliness, but has polarized the gap between domainers and its “valued” page visitors.

The resulting change in parking is going to affect the entire industry, from the novice domainer, domain hosting, and up through the aftermarket industry as the marketplace adjusts itself to new methods of domain valuation, and ending up at Google, who is going to have to start working on some edits to their Quality Score algorithm to determine which sites are faking value and which ones are actually creating value.

Only when domainers and their domain visitors (which they claim they highly prize) come together in a mutually beneficial user experience will parking a domain and consuming its content yield the next goldrush in the parking industry. With additional resources required to succeed and adopting a policy of “giving back”, it won’t only be the domain owner and the parking company who will benefit.