Dave Pasternack - Unofficial Site

What's in a Domain Name Anyway?
Does having a domain with QueryTerms.com work as an SEO strategy?
Our domain, davepasternack.com, was believed to produce additional SEO value for the search term "Dave Pasternack". Currently this is a very competitive SEO term and after 2 weeks we rank on page 4, a less than hoped for result.
Our SEO strategy is: 1) use davepasternack.com, 2) publish relevant content, and 3) use RelevantYellow local search optimization services. Given the short time constraint, we knew that the RY Local SEO would be minor since that generally takes a couple months to fully kick in due to the offline data publishing processes. So we completely looked to the domain name and content to propel the search ranking. Not a bad assumption, afterall, the query Dave Pasternack is fully embodied by the domain name davepasternack.com! The relevancy is made even more intuitive by noting the bolding of the entire domain name in the search results page:
dave pasternack serach result

The bolding of davepasternack.com when the query is "dave pasternack" implies strong relevancy and thereby we would expect higher ranking value, however that isn't what we have come to experience. The site is ranking similar to other DP related sites. We've looked for an example where a single, concatenated term domain name makes the grade alone, but have not found a compelling case. On the contrary, we've found cases where one would expect results, but its to be found.
Take TopSearchEngines.com for example. The domain is indexed properly and has PR=2. However it doesn't even rank in the top 100 for the query top search engines. It seems that this, alone, isn't an effective SEO strategy.
How about Query.Terms.com?
Unfortunately we're unable to find much data to conclude one way or another. A supporting case was found with the query "ftp digital" which results to http://ftp.digital.com as #1, but the query "profile local" doesn't return http://profile.local.com. However in the second case, the landing page doesn't have contain the word "profile", so that might account for the discrepancy.
It would be ideal to test if query.terms.com truly has an SEO value with the URL http://dave.pasternack.com. The folks at Pasternack Enterprises currently have the domain pasternack.com configured with a wildcard alias so that it handles *.pasternack.com. We'd need the subdomain "dave" to be managed by a different web server. If anyone out there has made contact to pasternack.com, please let me know. This would be a great SEO test.

Dave's Getting Local
Relevant Yellow Search Optimization

Although its just been a couple weeks, the local optimization is starting to kick in. We're #2 for Dave Pasternack as well as in Yahoo local; this will evolve more in the next weeks to Google Local, MSN Live Local, Superpages and others.
While there is still a lot of link value through local search publications which has yet to take effect, this is still much lower than we expected based upon our domain name relevancy assumptions.

Will the Real Dave Pasternack Please Stand Up
Did-It President Renounces Prize Offer
Earlier this week (2/20/2007) we spoke to Dave Pasternack, President of Did-It. We let him know that RelevantAds created a business profile for his company in order to establish Did-It as a validated listing in local search directories. We also let him know that RelevantAds intends on donating money in the name of Did-It and the domain name should it receive any proceeds related to "Dave Pasternack". (see disclaimer)
Dave gratefully accepted the RelevantYellow service, however was not interested in donated prizes that RelevantAds would provide in the event that the domain name davepasternack.com wins the ThreadWatch competition. He went further to suggest that there are over 40 Dave Pasternacks in the World and that the Dave Pasternack in New York was a famous Chef with a restaurant called Esca might want the domain. "I really feel back Dave Pasternack the chef since he's just an innocent bystander in all of this," he stated sincerely, although Dave did not know if the chef Pasternack was even aware of the publicity and SEO contest. The Did-It CEO said that he had previously met the chef and ate at his restaurant, but didn't have any contact information.

Dave Pasternack's Products & Services
Pay-Per-Performance (Maestro)
Goal-Based Bid-Marketplace Adaptability, Pinpointed Conversion Metrics Knowledge, Consumer-Reactive Presentation (Includes Dayparting), Total Client Control. (more information)
Paid Inclusion

We combine the Art and the Science of XML and directory inclusion, proprietary editing software and human editors to guarantee quality, and real-time tracking automatically adjusts non-performing listings. (more information)

Search Engine Marketing White Papers

I author white papers about various SEM topics including CPO/CPA metrics, Building keyword listings, SEM Best Practices, Maestro Agent. New white papers are added every month. Click here for a good starter for those new to the industry of pay-per-click.

Also see a list of some of Dave Pasternacks' recent articles. The editors here have summarized a few of the recent articles I've written for DMNews.