Another ClickZ article and a WebmasterRadio podcast

Hi folks,

If you enjoyed my ClickZ by-line article on the SEO potential for private gTLDs, be sure to read part two in the series, detailing new SEO techniques that become possible using your own gTLD.

And here's a podcast in which I give an overview of new gTLDs and their potential marketing benefits.  I recorded this podcast last week while I was at SES Chicago to present on SEO and new gTLDs.

Tim Callan in the BBC and ClickZ

Last week I had some nice press activity.  See multiple quotes from (and a picture of) Tim Callan in this BBC article about new gTLDS.  And here's the Tim Callan by-line about gTLDs and search engine ranking in ClickZ.

A few timely things

Hey folks, today I have a few short, unrelated things to say.

1.  Sorry I haven't posted much for the past month.  I've been insanely busy with the new job and all.  In the past seven weeks I've set foot on four continents and have been to the East Coast four times.

2.  Speaking of setting foot on various continents, later today I'll be presenting on the marketing opportunities for new gTLDs at the BrandMAX conference in London.  Last week I gave a similar presentation at iStrategy in Atlanta, and it was very well received.

3.  And speaking of new jobs, here's my first ever vanity release.

Permission to fail isn't permission to be stupid

As a follow on to my earlier post on the topic, note that permission to fail isn't permission to be stupid.  Nor is it permission to not really try to succeed, nor permission to be defeatist about things.  You have to be trying to succeed or your failure is true failure.

And as a general rule we should expect to be succeeding much more often than we're failing.  If you're trying something monumentally difficult like discovering a unified field theory then that's probably different, but most of the time we're doing things that have been done many, many times before.  We're creating profitable direct mail campaigns or making advertisements that work or figuring out what our customers want and giving it to them.  If you're frequently failing at tasks such as these, then maybe something else is wrong and you should look into that possibility.

When I grant permission to fail, it comes with the condition that the James Bond employee is doing her best and is performing up to her ability (or preferably a little beyond it).  It comes with the condition that she is making every decision for a reason, and in each case she knows what it is.  If you do that, everything's cool.  If not, it's not.

The leader is the follower

Following up on my recent reader question about strategies for market leaders, one of the biggest things to understand is that the leader is the follower.

I'll explain.  If you're the market leader in your space, that means you're doing better than anyone else is.  You have more customers and are making more money.  Likely you're more profitable and have better economies of scale.  You have better brand awareness and probably more overall affinity and preference than your competitors do.  Word of mouth works to your advantage and you win the SEO war.  You get a guaranteed mention anytime anyone in the press or blogosphere talks about the category, and you're automatically invited to all RFPs.  It's a pretty good position to be in, and all else being equal, these advantages tend to cause leaders to continue to win.

Smart challengers are aware of these advantages and therefore try not to play against the leader at its own game.  Instead challengers typically try to differentiate themselves in some way from the leader.  They need to prove that they're better or that they better serve the specific needs of a segment, geography, or situation than the leader does.

I've mentioned in the past that leader and challenger strategies are mirrors of each other.  If the challenger's success depends on differentiation, then the leader is well advised to eliminate or minimize that differentiation.  And thus we find one of the paradoxes of market behavior, which is that innovation occurs not in the companies that are best resourced and have the most customer feedback and can bring new products and services to market most efficiently.  Innovation tends to take place on the struggling, starving fringe of the market, where companies are motivated to innovate.  Then what happens is some of these innovations take off, and when they do, smart leaders move to cover them quickly.  The power of the leader typically is what brings these innovations into the mainstream, not the original inventiveness of the challenger.

So it turns out that the effective leader strategy is to be a follower.  Challengers will come along and try to differentiate themselves.  Keep a close eye on these innovations.  Some will obviously be good ones.  Some will not be so obvious.  Cover the good innovations as quickly as you can, choking off the oxygen to these smaller, more poorly resourced usurpers.  Keep an eye on the questionable innovations to see if they gain traction.  If they do, they're good innovations and treat them appropriately.  If not, someone else burned up his money on them so you didn't have to.

A great visual metaphor for this situation occurs in Formula or NASCAR racing.  Oftentimes you'll see one car trying to pass another.  The front car will have a natural tendency to stay in front by virtue of the fact that it's blocking the other one.  So to pass, the second car must be on a different stretch of pavement than the lead car.  The second car must differentiate itself.

So what does the lead car do?  It moves to block the second car.  When the second car bobs left, the lead car bobs left.  When the second car cuts to the right, the lead car cuts to the right.  In this circumstance it's actually the trailing car that's calling the shots, the trailing car that's deciding where both cars will go.  And the leader is pursuing a smart leader strategy and covering every move before the challenger can take advantage of it.

More writings on gTLDs and SEO

I recently wrote about why there's good reason to believe that controlling your own gTLD can positively impact SEO.  This socialmediatoday post covers much of the same topic, and SearchInsider goes into depth on the idea that you can create an entire gTLD that is optimized to do well in search.

Finally, I went into detail in my first post about why to believe that quality content in a TLD might be rewarded in search.  We also have seen the opposite, in which exceptionally poor content can punish an entire TLD.

New gTLDs and SEO, part 2 of 2

Last time I described the reasons to be optimistic that a well chosen gTLD filled with quality, relevant content can become an SEO enhancer.   I don’t know that  your own TLD will immediately cause your pages to rocket up the rankings on the first day you go live (although I don’t know it won’t either), but no matter how Google treats your TLD in and of itself, there are definite additional opportunities to improve search engine optimization if you control your own domain space.

Opportunity #1: Increase search term density in domains

One well understood SEO technique is to maximize the density of search terms in the domain.  That’s the idea behind using subdomains for SEO purposes.  By eliminating useless words like .com, you can increase that density.

Opportunity #2:  Place the most critical search terms in the second level domain

A common Google behavior is to grant better position to pages with the searched term in the second level domain.  That’s why microsoft.com does so well on the term microsoft.  Unfortunately it’s a difficult fact to make use of since any term with competition for search position most likely doesn’t have the appropriate domains available.

Once you control your own domain space, that all changes.  You can generate as many pages as you need to, focusing each on the most perfectly relevant term you seek to win.  You can add and remove pages and content as you will to optimize your results.

Opportunity #3: Generate more clicks in any given search position

I’m not aware of any research looking specifically into this question, but it seems likely that a friendly domain will gain more clicks in any given search position than an old-fashioned TLD will.  Let’s say you search on laptop.  The page at laptop.bestbuy is highly likely to contain useful product information and be a place you can purchase.  That’s a strong cue for a consumer to choose this result over other results.  Or let’s say a search turns up login.usbank (or for that matter login.paypal).  I can imagine the typical visitor feeling more confident that she’s visiting the real bank and not some phishing site - and therefore choosing this option over others.

Remember, nearly 100% of the extensive SEO effort that goes on in the world is for purposes of bringing more visitors to your site.  The traffic is the true goal.  Search position is just a method of gaining this traffic.  If there turns out to be a method of increasing clicks from the same search position, that’s tantamount to improving your position in search results.  Being in the #9 spot but getting the same number of clicks as the guy in #8 is every bit as good as being #8.  Over time, especially as consumers learn to look for your friendly domain, I expect that preference will just continue to increase.

Note also that these three opportunities apply to your paid search results as well.  SEO value influences search placement, potentially putting your listing higher than just your pure bid value would lead one to expect.  And increased preference for your listing can increase the return on your SEM spend.

Future proof your SEO strategy

Of course, we’ll have to see exactly how everything shakes out.  The algorithms don’t exist today, as do neither the TLDs nor the content under them.  So we’ll all be exploring these ideas together.

One thing about which there is no question, however, is that only those of us who obtain our own TLDs will have the opportunity to participate in this upside.  Whatever SEO improvements the world identifies, only those on control of a domain space will be positioned to take advantage of them.  Right now companies must decide if they want to be a part of that progress, however it shapes up, or if they prefer to sit on the sidelines and let others overtake them.