Last week, I visited San Francisco for a number of meetings and got a chance to film some video content for Market Motive with an old friend, Todd Malicoat (aka Stuntdubl). Todd also collected and curated a number of questions from Market Motive folks across Twitter, and, rather than answer in the unacceptably short, 140-character format, I figured I'd do so here on the blog.
I'd always bias to taking the website over the social media presence. It's not that a great Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare or LinkedIn account aren't great, it's just that the flexibility, power, branding and measurability of a website has yet to be matched on any platform. With a website, you can custom build virtually any form of analytics, leverage any type of web technology to display/deliver content and control your own destiny. Even if Facebook or some other new, wholly flexible platform allowed for all of these features, you would still never truly own your home on the web.
I'm a huge supporter of and advocate for social media marketing, but I don't think I could ever endorse having your primary base of marketing and acquisition happen anywhere but on a site you fully own and control.
Unfortunately, this is an issue that's fluctuated so much over the past 5 years that I don't feel entirely comfortable giving a solid answer and feeling secure it will be the right one long term.
The current situation is that for Google, most of the time this isn't a problem. You can set up a site in Spanish targeting Spain, another in Mexico and a third in Peru, many with overlapping content pages and so long as the country TLDs are unique (e.g. .es, .com.mx, .pe, etc.) and/or you've separately targeted the sites through Google Webmaster Tools ( more on that topic here), you're relatively safe from duplicate content filtering.
That said, Bing is not nearly as sophisticated on this front (usually), though they are getting better. I don't know how search engines like Baidu, Yandex or Naver might handle this situation, currently - if anyone in the comments has expertise here, please do chip in. Given this, it's often wise to choose either a globally-targeted site OR biuld very customized sites to specific regions (even if there is language overlap). You can always use the cross domain rel=canonical if you want to "share" content between/across sites and self-select which one Google returns.
It depends whether you mean directly or indirectly?
Directly, it will likely be Twitter. Google's ongoing animosity with all things Facebook shows no sign of shifting and thus I'd say it's unlikely Google will start using Facebook signals directly in the results. However... as we showed with correlation data, things that do well on Facebook tend to do quite well on Google, too. Indirectly, the ability to influence a wide network on Facebook, earn lots of shares, comments, likes and activity may indeed lead to very positive and influential second-order effects (links, tweets, positive content analysis signals, etc).
With Twitter, it remains to be seen whether they achieve ubiquity in a wider world. The service is a clear leader in many fields - marketing, politics, technology, investing, media and more - but it's not yet a service everyone's using (~100 million actives vs. Facebook's 750 million). If it sees growth spikes, engagement increases and they become more ingrained in the fabric of "normal" society, then they may indeed be competitive with Facebook for influencing the results, on both first and second-order levels.
The honest answer is that no one really knows. However, I'd strongly suspect the .whatever TLDs(see Mashable's article on the subject for more) will have far more impact on the branding landscape of the web than it will directly in search results, for searchers or for organic marketers. I do have some guesses:
- The new TLDs will become commoditized quickly - $180K is not a big financial hurdle for many medium+ businesses
- The "cool" factor is likely to exist in the tech startup and web-savvy worlds (like a Quora or NameSake), but your cousin in Michigan won't have heard of them and will have trouble using them or believing they work (if they see them in offline advertising)
- They may actually increase the desirability of .com domains as the gold standard everyone's used to and comfortable with
- A few might earn enough brand recognition (as .ly and .us have in the web 2.0 runup) to get some escape velocity and be on par with .info or even .net... But, I wouldn't put money on that :-)
Normally, I'm a huge fan of early adoption in new marketing tactics, but this doesn't feel ROI positive for enough folks to make it a strong recommendation from me, personally. Like everyone else, though, I'll be watching with anticipation to see how it's adopted and used.
Looking forward to your opinions as well, particularly if you have more information to add or feel my answers are mistaken in some way!
p.s. I keep tweeting that I'll put up my blog post on SEO 101 for Travel Bloggers. That post is intense, big and requires a lot of time, so I've had to delay a few times. My new target is next weekend - sorry about that!
.moz?
Maybe that would cause a dispute with Mozilla ;)
.moz can go to SEOmoz and then Mozilla can have .zilla :D
/ agree
Rand your answers are spot on. Here is my question:
What is the future of link building in SEO?
Link building will never stop. Google or Bing have to rely on this factor. Because, It give very good signal regarding activeness of website.
Your maketing campaign is going on (=Link Building) So, your network is active & search engine always give benefits to that specific websites.
In my opinion (so it is not the Truth) Link Building will exists but it will see dicreasing its influence as a part of the SEO job. With that I do not mean that we have to stop creating link building campaigns, but we will have (better: we should have already start) to insert them into a wider inbound marketing strategy.
Personally, I believe that there's still space not only for specialized directories or for a correct and professional use of web pr, but also I consider that traditional link building tactics like link baiting with widget, infographics, etc. etc. or the "manual" pitchings for links with other webmasters, are still valuable, especially if we use them and streghten them with the "social tools" a link builder can access (at the end, aren't this links the consecuence of a "social" activity?).
Said that, it is clear, at least for me, that complementing the classic link building with inbound marketing actions (Social Media presence, Q&A, Email marketing, RSS, (guest) Blogging, Online Video and so on) makes link building itself easier and more scalable, as that way we inseminate the web with our presence online creating awareness and attention to our brand and services/products, therefore - finally - creating the opportunity not only to have easier access to sites for link building, but also to be asked to be linked.
Rand recently in one his presentations (Slide 48 and 49)said 'Stop Getting Links - Start Earning Links' https://www.slideshare.net/randfish/creative-thinking-linking-in-seo
I know I might get many thumbs down on this again but I was, I am and I will always be of the opinion as mentioned in one of my earlier comments long back
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday#jtc135814
The focus has to be quality content which is shareable and with social media and content curation this whole process of organic way of getting links is getting a new dimension. In fact I would say that this dimension was always there but it is getting the right direction now.
Don't build links let the links get built or be earned by your site as a result of the high quality standards of your site.
Links are important and are a vote to your site as said by Google and they ascertain your popularity . One never gets popular by running after popularity it has to be earned by quality hard work. Stop Building links start focusing on the user experience, quality content and sharing and the links will follow. This may be at a slow rate but it will be at an assured rate.
@anand: I have to disagree here. It is very hard to predict that the ever streamlining Google has to rely on incoming links for the forseeable future. Infact Google is trying hard to stop its ranking model dependency on backlinks.
@gfiorelli1 & @WebProTechnologies: We all know that there are many niches where there is no scope of acquiring links through social media. We also know that their are many businesses which don't have the ability ('will' is the biggest followed by determination & resources) to capitalise on inbound marketing and these businesses form a very large part of the SEo client base. We also know that inbound marketing is not for everybody. Though its sound too good. In an ideal world every business will have the ability to produce top notch contents, develop & maintain large social media presence and followers who are ready to share the contents at the drop of a hat. But this is not really the case in real world where you are paid a fixed fees and expected to magically improve the site traffic and conversions with minimum to no input from client.
"Stop Building links start focusing on the user experience, quality content and sharing and the links will follow. This may be at a slow rate but it will be at an assured rate."
I don't remember how many times i have heard this fairy tale. I think you need to come out from this simulated reality created by branded SEOs. Free yourself from the dream world & into reality. "welcome to the real world" :)
So glad to see your answer to the first question! From your keyboard to the ears of the world!
I was horrified recently to see an acquaintance blogging about clients convincing them that a single (140 character) Social Media presence was all they would need to earn huge profits for their business!
Agreed. You know what they say about putting all your eggs in one basket, it's even more risky when you don't even own that basket.
Me too. I often do a presentation on internet marketing with local small business owners. I like to put up a random, crazy pic of Mark Z and say, "do you want to gamble your entire online presence on the whims of this guy?" :) https://cdn.crushable.com/files/2011/05/zuckerberg.jpg
I love social media, but the website is the central marketing tool that everything else should point back toward.
Regardnig question number 3, the interesting thing is that I see backlinks from Facebook to my sites in GTW... I see backlinks from a facebook page, from my wall, from other users' wall, which shared my articles... So if they don't count, why whould google crawl them and show them as backlinks in GWT? It's like saying: we don't use site speeed for ranking, but we develop a lot of tools to check the page speed, we add it to Google Analytics, etc... I suspect that still, facebook shares help
I am in the process of taking the top questions in the Q&A and compiling them for what I hope can be an SEO Wiki on SEOmoz (Wikimoz). The idea is when people search for the best way to erradicate duplicate content, they will be returned a page that has the answer and links to support it. A page reviewed by SEOmoz for best practices. My effort to help eliminate duplicate questions :)
Here my answers :)
My opinion as to how to choose a social media site to focus on: I would do some research as to where other players in my market are being more active, then go and do a better job than them!
The thought about .com domains gaining more value seemed possible to me when I heared the news. Liek Rand, I also beleive that from the SEO point of view new TLD's won't do a thing, but branding is a whole new matter, also how people decide to use their new TLD's is a whole new game, but I think it won't have any effect on the SERP's.
As for Twitter vs Facebook, being from Europe I can say that people are a bit intimidated by twitter, it is so simple to use but most people fail to see the point and benefits of it. Unless 5 of your friends have Twitter here, a regular guy won't create an account and try it out!
"I don't think I could ever endorse having your primary base of marketing and acquisition happen anywhere but on a site you fully own and control."
I'd have to agree with that one. Social media is great, I won't deny that. But you do lose a lot of brand control on a social network. It's important that companies maintain some control over their messaging. A website is the best way to do that.
Social media is fun and the "It" thing to do right now, and probably for a long time from now. There are so many potential benefits from engaging in social media platforms - forming relationships with customers, turning customers into brand ambassadors, another backlink etc. Even though there are many great things about social media, I always tell clients that social media should be utilized as a piece of the website marketing puzzle - not the whole picture.
Thanks for writing - keep it up!
This is how I'd have answered it:
1. In terms of SEO and brand site. Social media is great and has a massive part ot play in the way we consume media on the internet however as they represent a competing business model to the dominant search engines in that they provide users another route to find content, I would guess that search engine's will continue to push people to your site. Similarly, if you want to establish a business as a brand in its own right do you piggy back of another brand (accepting that social media sites are huge brands in their own rights) or do you gain considerably more credibility from having your own brand that stands proud in its own right.
2. Search engines are getting much cleverer in the way they detect duplicate content. If you've got duplicate content (especially across domains) either use the cannonical tag or rewrite it - better to rewrite it. As far as I can tell if you are targeting different countries the search engines are generally smart enough to work out where you are targeting and don't penalise you (much) for it - I have 5 different TLD sites running the same-ish English content targeting 5 different countries without too much of an issue - however that's the situation now, it's likely that this will change in the not too distant future and do you really want to be stuck with having to rewrite the content for 1000s of products in a rushed panic of trying to fix things?
3. There is no doubt that Google feels threatened by Facebook more than Twitter and rightfully so! Facebook has created a platform that allows users to communicate with each other and find content - if they put some emphasis into their web search function Google could be in trouble. There again I don't think Google can turn the tide back and must be taking signals from Facebook. The share function is the most likely one they are looking at. So for the forseeable future Twitter looks like being the biggest influencer in search - the next big update of the Twitter interface as Twitter looks to better monetize its offering could change all that again.
4. Although $180,000 isn't a lot of money to a big business, it still represents a significant barrier to entry, I believe the new TLD will therefore remain in the arena of big business branding. This could of course become a signal to the search engines that the business is a BIG brand and might treat it accordingly, a sort of big-wallet Vince update.
These new TLDs are a complete waste of time and money! They will not be mentioned after a couple of weeks after launch. Social Media is now a huge factor and I can assure you that Google are using them as signals for rankings in the SERPs strongly now.
Completely agree. I also can't see what's going to go in the middle where the traditional domain name would go?
www.buy.pepsi maybe? Something like that. A bit rubbish imo
can you imagine the chaos for consumers do i visit buy.nike or store.nike or shop.nike or retail.nike or shoes.nike.... argh it's crazy to think how confused consumers might get and how useless will be the suggested terms if you get a 404 error....
totally agree. As mentioned above, most companies can't even handle their current domain, nevermind sort out subdomains and now they are being given further tlds to mess with. It's going to be fun for some SEOs out there
Thanks for the feedback guys! It's completely mad in my eyes. Could you imagine what the 404 error page will look like and then how confusing will the URL get if you are using different country extensions such as .nl or .fr as well? It's crazy. All the URL's will begin to look like Dynamic URLs all over again and The Lost Agency that made me lol :)
www.buy.pepsi maybe? Something like that. A bit rubbish imo
You wouldn't need the subdomain or domain you could simply use the TLD. https://com/ is a valid address there's just no HTTP server there. Users would just enter "pepsi" in their address bar.
This will cause a problem for "search from address bar" as it will no longer be able to differentiate single search words from TLD addresses.
I wonder how much .sex will go for given sex.com was $13M last year.
Basically this will be another land grab and it only seems to benefit those with their fingers in the registry cash drawer.
I think the cost of the new TLDs is extortionate however, I don’t expect them to stay at that price for a long period of time. I think for the time being anyway! People (whoever they are) will have a hard time convincing businesses they need or want a new domain that costs $180,000. Other than vanity! What are the benefits? At this moment in time I just don’t see any benefits other than being a little cool.
I suppose if your rich it’s like buying a Porsche! You don’t really need one but what the heck, you can afford it!
Gav
I totally agree with you Gavelect. It's a massive rip off, it serves no purpose and is extortionate.
Maybe if we see it from another angle?... Some fat cats want to make more money from companies that are already struggling...
While the $180k isn't a huge barrier to some brands and businesses, the other $320k they'd have to spend on infrastructure may be.
It's not as if I can just apply, pay my money and be given a .anything domain, there are a lot of things that need to be in place, including full time customer support (even if it's for just your brand) and various levels of management and SLAs (afaik).
The form's about 50 questions long each requiring a page or two of answers highlighting how it will improve user experience and how you'd be able to manage the TLD (ensure whois accuracy, authentication, verification, that kind of thing).
So, while .disney and .apple domains are almost a certainty I don't see many .mybusiness style domains springing up.
However, I do see a business opportunity for being in the middle of this, setting up an infrastructure to manage multiple new TLDs for brands. Anybody want to start that up with me? ;)
Here's one more take on each question:
#1 Social Media vs Website. Agreed--websites by far; easier to monitize, easier to brand, plus you 'own' the relationship. I can always buy FB ads.
#2 Localization vs duplicate content. I might try creating sub-domains for translated content, also cross rel canonical the country TLDs for the brands with some creative robot follow/no-follows for country-specific spiders. Monitor rankings like a hawk after that.
#3 Twitter vs Facebook. I like Rand's thinking; FB vs. Google will be a dynamic relationship.
#4 Brand TLDs vs the world. Personally I think trust will continute to grow with the brands, especially those that can afford $180,000.
Hehe I have heard all 4 questions numerous times recently, I do not think the new TLD's will be a problem at all look at the likes of .travel for example they are not exactly ranking crazy. I think they have benefit for brands but.
Also the social vs website question that is an age old one that keeps comming up, really you need a company website as your base and all the social areas are little portals.
Regards.
James Norquay.
New TLDs (and already existing newer ones such as .TRAVEL) will rank just as good. It's what you make out of your site...
Have you tried to search for Seychelles?
but i'm sure that's a rare case and one that they made the decision to focus on that domain where i see these other domains as the long list of projects that never really get the attention they deserve
Hello guys...
These are my own opinions...
Ans 1 - Own Website... how can you not have a home and think about inviting people... where would u invite them afterall!!!
Ans 2 - Duplicate Content will not be tolerated... except if u make sure u let the search engine know where the content has been taken from.
Ans 3 - Facebook is my choice... Tumblr too is coming up quickly and so can't say much about Twitter
Ans 4 - TLDs won't have too much affect on the rest f us.
Peace to all
I think with Google's movements, such as the launch of their new social network Google+, show that they want to compete and I would thus assume that Twitter will have more influence than Facebook.
So Rand... I guess this means you guys aren't going to buy .MOZ
?
If I buy .MOZ will you buy SEO.MOZ?
I got first dibs on .seo. Nobody better come up against me on this one. Really though. #4 is very curious! We could see some really cool things with this.
I wouldn't assume that Google is arrogant enough to ignore Facebook just because they don't like their style. Facebook has a far broader audience and its vastly more popular in all social groups.
Outside the US Twitter remains a hobby of the tech-savvy.
Just my 2 cents :)
If you ask me, custom TLD's are going to bring down the already lowered value of EMD's (Exact match domains) if not completely abolish their value.
thanks for these questions...these have lots importance
I also wrote some articles on Google seo
https://searchcrone.com
I agree with the idea that things could get a little messy with every big company having a TLD extension. It seems like for those extensions to catch on, there would have to be a large awareness campaign push by the companies in the offline world so that citizens would actually know that these extensions exist.
I have very good experience with first and second.
1. Social media presence without website will not help us more. I have developed big community on Facebook for SEO experts. (It's group. If someone wants to quick start any project so they can take help of PM to any member.) But, it’s not working well. I also developed one social community for my own website on multiple social media websites. It's working very well. With help of website visitors can get more ideas and put more trust on us. Finally, conversion rate is quite bigger on website rather than social community. So according to my opinion Website is very good solution for online business. If we supposed to go forward to develop branding so we require strong platform in form of website.
2. Still I never get any negative signals from Google. I am focusing more on marketing side. Different Geo-targeting websites takes different time to perform well on search engines. If external link building campaign is going on so it’s working. I have never found any issues with it. This is my personal experience. Different people or different website may felt some different.
BTW: Randfish raise these four questions on right time. Since last 6 months definition of SEO is quite change. There are too many changes by Google & Bing in identification of good website, user interface of display with social profile. That's really great stuff by Google and Bing.
But, it creates too many questions to all SEO guys and clients. What's going on? And how much time will it take to get higher rank in Google or Bing?
For SEO guys, it’s time to focus on more quality and develop fabulous social network. Single Facebook and Twitter account will help us more rather than focusing on multiple profile handling.
What you mean SEOmoz is not convinced to pitch for .SEO?
I'm a strong believer that consumers have enough trouble dealing with anything outside .com and for local markets they assume with have the country level TLDs, it might be a marketing gimick to get them but until consumers trust them they are a waste of money.
Also big corporations seem to fail at SEO on their main domains how the hell can they effectively compete with .random as their central piece?
Totally agree with Dave on this one. To my mind, it's not the financial side of things that is a barrier to the use of these TLDs... it would be the fact that you need to basically retrain the entire internet to deal with typing in unfamiliar URLs.
My answers will be:
1> The choice has to be website without any doubt because it's going to stay with you, how good or bad it may be. It's like a child whom you are taking care of with utmost sincerity. Social media presence can enhance your website rank in search engines, build your online reputation and can drag plenty of traffic to your website.
2> Isn't search engines like Google, Bing, Baidu, etc. are smart enough to identify the country-level TLDs to avoid duplicate content risk? I think Yes, they has to be. As Rand mentioned, Google does understand the country TLDs and also they give you the option to do that through their GWT. I feel Bing is very much into the same path like Google and since the Yahoo results are now powered by Bing, they have to understand this division for geotargeted domains.
3> It has to be Twitter without even a giving second thought as Google have access to the Twitter data. So they have more control on it to give a direct influence to their search results. Saying that, they would also try to take the Facebook signals (who knows may be they are already taking) directly in the search results. No matter how much love and affection they have for Twitter, they cannot overlook Facebook, based on their current demand and popularity.
4> Only time will say how much impact it has created. But yes, they are going to leverage its usage by various business clients. But the great thing is you can now choose the TLDs as per your business. Isn't it gives you another opportunity to enter a keyword in the domain?? :)
One interesting possibility with the TLD's is for those countries/regions that don't actually have a TLD yet to have one, such as Scotland getting .scot or London .london. Question is will sites that use these then be geo-targetted by the search engines as other country-specific TLD's have been?
Maybe one day personalised domain extensions will be cheap. I can see that 180k dipping down to 100k soon enough. However in saying that you can't go wrong with a good ole .com .
I can see Google drifting away from using facebook metrics to help rank sites. I believe Google don't like Facebook, and don't want to encourage people to use it. Problem is, who uses Google Buzz?
Infact there is something called +1, and Google seems very keen to push it.
I think the first question is an interesting one in its own right (particularly as part of a general business/professional discussion), but I don't think it makes much sense when labelled specifically as an SEO question. Nice read though. - Jenni
I doubt that ICANN will allow the registration of .travel/.games/.clothes/.etc as these are common words and the idea of the new TLDs is to be brand specific like .apple/.ibm.
The problem in question two is not only for the geotargeted domains but also for a companies holding different websites for private and corporate clients. What will you do in this case when both domains are targeted to a single country?
*edited for wrong placement.
ICANN will allow .ANYTHING, it's not only for brands. There are applicants for .NYC (New York), .BERLIN, .GAY, .MUSIC etc.
Personally, I think geographic TLDs or cityTLDs and community focussed extensions will be the most "successful" ones.
I agree, I think the geographic targeted TLD will be pretty successful once people get used to them
.newyork or .whatexit (for New Jersey) will be pretty valuable.
Interesting questions, thanks for your post
I don't like the idea of the TLD extension and I can see the SEOmoz community hating the idea too. Large companies always have issues with subdomains and URL's and now the chaos will get even worst.
Google now post a new app its called google+
Thanks for letting us know! I'll be able to sleep tonight.
Rand i have a question, because you mentioned the risk of duplicate content there :)
I have a web https://ikt.co.id , it has a mirror https://id.ikt.co.id (yes it has EXACTLY the same content). I did this, because ikt.co.id is served on US Server, and id.ikt.co.id is served on INDONESIA Server, (and i dont want to have any more domains since even in webmaster both of those has been set to target Indonesia).
Whenever visitor from Indonesia go to ANY page in https://ikt.co.id , they will be 301 redirected to https://id.ikt.co.id (Detect IP if it is Indonesia or not from Server PHP Script).
When you share something from https://id.ikt.co.id by clicking on any social network button in that site, it will always share the https://ikt.co.id version of that page.
I have putted the No Crawl on https://id.ikt.co.id/robots.txt, i have put all cannonical rel on EVERY PAGE within https://id.ikt.co.id to point the https://ikt.co.id version of that page.
Question : will I have any trouble ? or will any of this affect my SERP?
https://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-seo-two-domain-having-exactly-the-same-content
Hi,
You really seem to even of confused yourself there! :(
If you want to PM me then I will be more than happy to help you.
Thanks.
The news of new TLDs, will definitely bring a new angel into Internet marketing, and also attract new users.
No it won't at all, the complete opposite actually.
I am not so sure if will be twitter or Facebook, but i have heard about facebook using the death of the people like part of their business. This can make Facebook grow even more.
Today a site is nothing without social media, so i bet for social. I work in a company that doesn't exist on facebook or tweeter, and we are falling each day...meantime other grow. Pisos Madrid
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