I am proud to know a couple of people with top level domains. John Reese is launching Income.com this year, and I have recently discovered that my friend Miguel Alvarez has stopped squatting on Copywriting.com and put up a killer site!
Miguel told me he had that domain years ago and I remember telling him to get something special up there, that such a domain deserved a very good site. I am very happy that he’s done a blog format as well.
About Miguel Alvarez
No, I’m not going to quote from his About page! I’ve known Miguel for several years. I hosted sites with him for a long time before I got my own servers. He is the owner of one of the best hosting companies on the web, ThirdSphere Hosting. He’s also one of the old guard Warriors from back in the 90’s and one of the few from the old guard to adopt the new way of marketing, search engine optimization, link building, and targeted traffic generation through the use of blogging.
Qualities of An Authority Site
Domain – If you’ve got it, flaunt it! Having a top level domain such as this is a big bonus when developing an authority site. Nothing is more authoritative in a niche than having the best domain name, bar none. While your domain may not be in the same league (mine isn’t even close!) as this, you can still benefit when building new sites from a little extra leg work to find expiring domains and not just rely on whatever Godaddy.com tells you is available right now.
Miguel’s work on trust, credibility, and relationship building is almost done completely for him just from the time people land on his site. The “type in” traffic alone must be great!
Design – Having a design that pops off the page is crucial to an authority site presence. Miguel is a great graphic designer with an eye for good layouts that don’t get in the way of, but enhance his content.
List Building – Copywriting.com is set up to build a big list. It attracts visitors with great content and then puts an offer to join the list on center stage in one of the best pieces of real estate on the site.
Site Map, About, Contact, Resources – Miguel has great static pages on the site that further cement his authority by providing the crucial information visitors need to get to know about the creator of the site, the main, most important places to visit on the site, how to contact, and key resources people interested in copywriting are likely to appreciate.
Note that his About page isn’t some generic gibberish common to 90% of About pages you see on sites. I sometimes wonder why people put About pages up at all if they write them as if they don’t intend for anyone to actually read them. A good About page is about sales. Not product sales directly, but selling yourself and your obvious expertise in your niche.
Posting – Miguel understands the use of graphics. This serves him well when he posts as he seems to have something graphical to break up his text in almost every post. His posts are to the point and well written on hot-button topics in the copywriting world. His content supports the products he recommends.
Forum – I still need to get a forum going. Sites like Copywriting.com always remind me of this. When you go to the front page of the site you’ll notice it doesn’t start right out with blog posts, but as a launch pad for all the different areas of the site including the Copywriting Forum. As you can see this is a new forum, but keep it on your watch list to see how fast it grows in activity. This is because Miguel can attract tens of thousands of people per week through his ever changing and high scoring blog content and move them into his forum because he clearly links to it on all pages of his site.
While Copywriting.com is a new site, it is destined to be a major player in the copywriting market and it is setting the bar higher for the niche by coming to the game prepared with the best content management tools, design, content, and user interactivity that visitors demand.