Roland LaPlante wrote a piece on Circle ID about new gtlds and SEO. Roland works at Afilias and it is safe to say he is an advocate of the new gtlds with Afilias having a vested interest. There are readers who are trying their hand at developing a new gtld or two so this article may be helpful for those who have questions and concerns with regards to SEO.
From the article:
With the arrival of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), many marketers are excited that they can now get a web address that best describes their business or brand. For instance, a company in the organic business can now get a web address on .ORGANIC, or a brand that’s all about passion and excitement can now get on .RED, etc. At the same time, many are also asking some important SEO related questions:
- Will Google crawl new gTLDs?
- Will new gTLDs automatically score higher in Google’s search algorithms?
- What are the SEO best practices for migrating a site to a new gTLD?
- Should brands REALLY get on new gTLDs and give up the status quo?
Let’s address them one by one.
1. Will Google crawl new gTLDs?
The answer is simple: YES. Rumors were going around a while ago that a new site (on a new domain) may not get ranked as well as a site that has been registered on a domain, say, for three or more years. Google’s staff explained clearly in this video that Google will crawl new sites and determine the search ranking based on the relevance of the site content, not the age of the domain the site is on.
You can read the other three on Circle ID
