NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAIN EXTENSIONS (TLDS)
Transcription
Eric: Hi. I’m here at Globe Runner SEO and I want to talk about some big news in the world of search today. We’ve got new TLDs. So new domain level extensions, so instead of just .com, .net, .org and the other 26 extensions that are out there right now, the organization that controls the domain names has announced that next year they’re going to allow companies to start buying and producing their own domain name extensions.
So a brand could have their own domain name extension. You could have google.google if you really wanted to.
But here at Globe Runner we thought what is the real business potential behind this? Who would actually do this and why? Now first off, it’s not cheap. It costs $180,000 to register your new TLD. In addition to that you’ve got to have a support team in place. There’s legal work that needs to be done.
I’m actually estimating that it will probably end up costing closer to a million dollars a year for all the overhead that goes into this. It will probably be about a million bucks a year to get this thing rolling.
So if I’m right and it costs about a million dollars a year, who would want to spend that kind of money on a domain extension. Here are some ideas. Here’s some really good business opportunities out there that I think should be explored.
First off, companies like GoDaddy and other large hosting and domain selling companies would want to get into this business. Essentially they’re buying a vertical. If they could buy .shop, for instance, or .web or something that isn’t out there right now that gives them a new extension. This would just be like GoDaddy running that commercial on the Super Bowl this last year for .co.
.co was a way that they could sell lots of new domain names under a new extension. It gave them a whole new vertical. Millions and millions of people registered domains.
So even if it cost you a million dollars a year, if I can sell these for $20 a year or $10 a year and I sell a million of them that’s a $10 million sale, pretty easy ROI case to make there.
Other companies that might use it are large companies that have a large number of websites they want to tie together through an extension. A way that I see this going is like Warner Brothers. Maybe a movie company might want to buy .mov, .movie so that they could tie their network of websites together through this extension and they’re a large enough operation, a large enough organization that it makes sense for them.
Another good example would be sports leagues. So I definitely could see the NFL would want .nfl. You’d have cowboys.nfl and all the other NFL teams would have a .nfl official website. And they could control that and guarantee that when a viewer goes to their website they’re looking at the official website for that particular team. So I see those as two particular ways that this can be used for a business advantage for a company.
The other one that we see potential for is any kind of website that has a large number of sub domains. So a good example is WordPress. If you set up a WordPress website you can set them up two ways. Obviously you can do a self hosted WordPress, but a lot of people just go to wordpress.com, create an account, instantly have a website up, and it’s yourwebsite.wordpress.com.
Well now you’ve got a sub domain. Well I think WordPress might register something like .wp and then you would have yourwebsite.wp instead of yourwebsite.wordpress.com. So there’s those types of opportunities too. I could definitely see somebody like Google trying to make their blog platform more effective and get .blog for instance, instead of .blogger.com.
So there’s a lot of opportunities here for business to really expand the marketplace. I think it’s a good shift. It certainly will reshuffle search some. We’ll see, over the coming few years, how this affects search going forward. If these get preferential treatment or if they’re a little harder to rank. I think there’s arguments to be made for both.
Certainly your TLD having an effect on search today. A .edu will rank differently than a .org or a .com or a .biz. Those differences are less and less important, I think, than they used to be. During the original rollouts of the web we saw that .coms got preferential treatment.
Today I think that if you have a really good .net and it’s got good information it can rank just as well as a .com. So we’ll be interested to see how that rolls out and how those changes make.
But if you’re in the business of buying TLDs, you’re in business now.
GET YOUR TWITTER FOLLOW BUTTON!
Back in February, we did a blog post about Twitter redesigning its interface with additional features and rich media integration. Now, Twitter has recently rolled out another change that may have a large impact for businesses; the Twitter Follow Button. Users can now click an embedded Twitter button to follow Twitter accounts directly from websites that interest them.
Officially released on May 31st, this new feature allows businesses with a Twitter presence to generate a simple code for the follow button that embeds on their website, allowing users to follow the company’s account on Twitter with a single click. This single-click action is important because it allows visitors to remain on the company’s domain without being redirected in order to access Twitter, preventing them from having to leave the page and alter their train of thought. Users must be logged in with Twitter to be able to one-click follow- if they are not, they will be prompted to log into Twitter through a pop-up window.
With the option for a business to show how many Twitter followers they have next to the follow button, companies can flaunt their massive amount of followers. Or, companies can choose to hide their number of followers if they don’t feel confident with the figures. It’s common for consumers to judge the validity of a business based upon the number of followers, friends, and reviews they have, so some may find this feature beneficial.
Social media marketing strategies are very important, and social media sites are adapting to the changing consumer and the way they interact with businesses. Sites like Twitter allow companies to communicate with consumers in a unique and personal manner, but driving traffic away from a company’s main site to access another communication channel is superfluous and unnecessary. The Twitter follow button presents a simple solution to growing your Twitter community without disrupting the user experience of your home site.
GIT: A BEGINNER’S STORY
My Personal Story
I hadn’t planned on applying for an internship this summer and instead was going to wait until Spring 2012, but I found an amazing opportunity through my university to join the team at Globe Runner SEO. The description of the job sounded exactly like what I wanted to do for my career path, so I updated my resume and sent in an application. After applying for the Internet Marketing/Web internship, I was asked to come in for an interview and technical assessment. It’s hard to express in words how much I was simultaneously excited and scared about this potential new job. When the interview process was over, I was soon offered the position and able to start a week later.
I have never been exposed to Git, the open source, distributed version control system used for source code management. On day one, some might say I was thrown into the Git inferno. Fortunately, I had the help of an advanced Git user and amazing instructor, Chris Lee. He was able to show me the basic commands of Git, and what those commands are used for. At the beginning of the learning experience I was very intimidated by the usage and syntax of Git, but then started to better understand as the processes and uses became more clear.
Step 1: Find your terminal
The first step was to find and utilize a program that I didn’t even know existed on my computer, Terminal. Terminal uses a command line interface to let users interact with the computer, and Git can be run using Terminal.
Step 2: Create an SSH Key
Before accessing Git through Terminal, I had to create a SSH Key that allows for the identification of source code changes and also creates a secure communication channel between my machine and others. After telling Git who I am by using the command git config, I was ready for the next steps.
After setting up my SSH Key and telling Git who I am, the next step was to start using and learning the processes of Git. This was the part where I struggled the most as a new user because there are many commands to learn. There were a few commands that I was using very often, so I will point them out because of their important roles.
Step 3: Create a repository
The command git init will create a repository at the current local directory, and git status will tell me information about the working copy. Using git add will allow for the addition of new files to the staging area, where files are held before they are eventually committed using the command git commit. If I don’t feel comfortable with what is in the staging area and don’t want to commit those files, I can use git reset to clear the staging area. To view changes that were made, the command git log will show me the history of commits.
Step 4/5: Stage your Changes and Commit with Git
Finally, after navigating to the appropriate directory, creating a repository, adding files to the staging area, committing those files to the repository, and checking the status on the working copy, I can now push the changes to a remote repository. I first need to tell Git about the remote repository using the command git remote add origin <remoteURL>. When Git knows where my remote repository is located, I can now push my changed files to that repository using git push origin <branchname>. Now, my files should be located on the remote repository where they can be accessed by other developers if using a central server model.
Overall
As you can see, learning Git takes time, patience, and hard work. I am still extremely new to Git, but I’m very excited to become fluent in the use of it and discover new ways to use it. I’m sure my time at Globe Runner SEO will have me proficient in the use of Git in short time.
MOBILE APPLICATIONS OF WORLDLY IMPORTANCE
Tension continues to rise in Cairo as civilians encourage tyrant dictator of 30 years, Mubarek, to leave his post in office. The Egyptian government tried to cut off contact with the rest of the world by shutting down the internet and inter-continental phone contact to ease the focus of riots and the revolutionary uproar. This preliminary attempt failed as young people were able to connect with the outside world via mobile devices and social media, being the only link to news for the outside world. This shows us just how powerful this technology is. Eric McGehearty, CEO of Globe Runner SEO https://globerunner.com, shares with us his thoughts about mobile applications and how they can not only impact our personal outreach, but greatly benefit your business.
Transcription
Eric: Hi, it’s Eric here with Globe Runner SEO, and I want to talk about a sign of the times. How’s our world changing today, in a more interconnected environment? Today’s events in Cairo, with the political movements that are going on there, and really the Internet and the whole social grid we have was shut down for some time. The only way that we were getting news out of Cairo were through young people using social media Twitter, Facebook through their portable devices and through wireless communication. That is really the way the world is moving, in terms of how we’re communicating with each other. So, as a business owner, how do we take that and really get a deeper, better understanding of how we can communicate with our customers and our client base? It’s about instant, direct communication. How can you and I talk, right now, through the Internet? How can we form a connection instantly, very quickly?
Social media is really the answer to that. Now whether or not it’s young people in a political movement, or a business here in the States, trying to make a better presence, a quicker connection, and a faster access to their customer base, these are the ways that we’re going to be doing it. It’s through mobile devices and it’s through social media.
But, the mobile device is key. The mobile device lets me connect on the street every day. The traditional media now is being superseded or supplemented through word on the street, through individuals who are using their phones to capture bits of information, news updates, and push them out through social media.
If you’re set up properly with your mobile devices, you can very, very quickly get information out. As a business owner, it’s an incredibly powerful and quick way that I can communicate with my customer base, through my device, out and about, and really engage with people and excite them about what we’re doing as a business. If you can incite them, make them interested in your business, and help them connect to you, they’re going to be more engaged and more likely to spread the word about your company.
Thanks so much. This was Eric with Globe Runner SEO. Hopefully, today we can keep connecting things that are happening in our world with how we can grow our business, stay connected, and grow a powerful company. Thanks so much, I appreciate it. Great talking to you.