ICANN changes will affect your SEO

Details: Thursday, 14 April 2011 20:34; Hits: 427

Nothing is more frightening than freedom and complete freedom is the most frightening of all. ICANN the governing body that was set up in 1998 has now sanctioned the de-regulation of top-level domain names making it possible for a company, small business or an individual to use their name (for example) as a web domain name.

While those of us who for years have been struggling against the restrictions of the web domain naming system and have had to brainstorm like mad each time a website needs to be built so that it has the right domain name for SEO purposes and what it does have is memorable, avoids mistakes and actually helps it get traffic, find it’s about time we live in a wired world without domain name restrictions, it does now pose a whole lot of SEO issues for each new business.

With an infinity of domain names to go for and the potential to actually create a valuable brand out of almost any set of words the choice now has to be made in an even more careful manner than before. It also means that in terms of your search engine optimisation the potential to get it wrong is so much greater.

To give you an example suppose your name happens to be Brad Pitt (not the actor) and you decide to make that your online business URL. Since legally it is your name there is nothing to stop you from registering it and going with it (provided you can show your business plan and how you will use it) but when it comes to SEO you’re sunk unless you happen to have about he same amount of money to sink on this as Brad Pitt, the actor, makes in a year.

You now begin to see the enormity of the task associated with choosing your domain name when there are no restrictions to stop you. The SEO problems associated with the ICANN domain name change do not stop there either. Not only will you have to be careful choosing the right domain name but also when there are no restrictions online visitors will find it next to impossible to remember domain name addresses. This means that in order to succeed your site must come up when the relevant search term is put in a search engine query box.

So, if your Brad Pitt domain happens to trade in kitchen cabinets making that come up on Google’s first page organically each time someone inputs ‘kitchen cabinets’ in the search engine search field is going to take some serious work and it’s likely, depending on the competition that it might be more costly therefore not making worth your while.

All this, at this exact point, is purely academic speculation based on current search engine algorithm settings and search engine algorithms will change to compensate for the inevitable increase in search engine spam activity that will happen.

From a purely search engine optimisation and search engine marketing point of view it is worth starting to think now if there is any way you can benefit by the change of ICANN domain name regulations and what exactly these benefits to your website might be. This way you will be in the best possible position to take advantage of the new domain name changes before anyone else.