I did a Google search using a friend’s name today, and I saw a great search engine optimization concept. In the meta description on one of the first results for this person’s name, I saw a JLove.com link, with a meta description of “Meeting Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxxxx and an assortment of other fantastic Jewish singles is easy, it takes but a moment to upload your very own profile to get involved in Jewish dating!”

I think this is a cool approach to SEO in case a person is looking up someone they just met and perhaps want to get to know a little better. However, if I was performing a Google search of a potential job candidate, this could be perceived as being invasive. While many people aren’t shy about admitting they are involved in Internet dating (I have 2 married friends who met on Jdate), it seems inappropriate to use people’s names as search bait.

While I’ve noticed social networking companies like Friendster and MySpace using this cool technique, I question whether this invades users’ privacy, especially if they don’t even know the site is doing this.

I went a bit overboard with the launch of my latest mini-site, TropicalBirds.com. Instead of a small site, as the “mini-site” moniker would seem to indicate, I decided to build a fairly large website filled with tropical bird information, videos, shopping affiliate links, and resources. As I was building the plan for the site, I decided that since it is an informational site, I needed information – the more the better.  With hundreds of types of tropical birds, I figured I would build a site about some of the most common birds.

The website isn’t completed yet, as many of the bird articles are still being written. While some people might not like the strategy of launching a site with several unfinished pages, I don’t think this is much of a problem since the name isn’t in the Google algorithm yet, and the 404 errors shouldn’t harm the non-existent ranking. While 404 errors may look bad to some visitors, the type-in traffic is fairly small, so I am not losing out much here. I anticipate a “full” launch in about a week and a half.

So what’s the end-game with this site? As time permits, I will continue to add new pages, videos, and pictures to the site, growing the reach of it. I will be in touch with other bird sites offering reciprocal links in an effort to improve the search engine optimization of the site, and I will also be selling advertising space and links. Ultimately, my plan is to grow this into a revenue producing website with the Adsense and affiliate links. My 6 month goal is to earn a modest $10-15/day, which would make this a $36-50,000 website based on a 10 year revenue multiple.  Ordinarily $10/day in 6 months would seem small, but the RPC for is fairly small.

If I have a dozen sites like this built, it will generate some passive revenue while increasing the liquidation value of my domain portfolio. Additionally, sites like these can be a fantastic test bed to try new things with Adsense placement, image placement, links and other things.