The other day I blogged about the announcement, by ICANN, that they will be offering custom domain TLDs. But the biggest thing, for me anyways, was the idea that they will start the bidding at $100,000 for a custom TLD. With that being said you can count out the small businesses and individuals when it comes to all of the new domain fun. And usher in the big boys. Think .bigmac, .ibm, .google, and .schick.

Many people have asked me over the past few days what my thought are on the subject. I think that it is an overall good thing. But what really grinds my gears about it is, how are all of the poor people going to get in on the fun? Well, it has been proposed by Barry Schwartz that Internet marketing professionals ban together under the wings of their trade industry organization SEMPO and pool money together to secure TLDs such as .SEO and .SEM.

What I think will happen is that companies, probably domain registrars, will snatch up as many popular TLDs as they can and will end up selling domain names with their custom TLDs to the masses. Of course I am sure that they will keep all of the best ones, or auction those off to the highest bidders. What will also happen is that large brands like McDonalds, Coca-Cola, etc., will be forced to secure their TLDs before someone else does! That should net ICANN a pretty penny.

Optimizing for keywords in your code is one of the basic tenants of SEO. But any professional SEO consultant will tell you that you need to support that with the proper keywords in your content. If you cannot properly describe the topic that you are writing about then the search engines will not be able to properly index and rank your post. The search engines are not as smart as you may think, that is why SEO people have jobs. That is also why it is important to both optimize your site on the back end, in the code, and to also optimize your site on the front end, in the content. The content and the code optimization must match up with each other, otherwise the search engines may get confused.

So when you are writing your next post you need to pause and think to yourself, "did I use the right keywords in my post?" You can use various keyword analysis tools like Wordtracker or the Google keyword tool in order to get a better idea of what users are typing in to Google when searching for information on your topic. And use many different variations of your main keyword in order to cover as many bases as you can. After all, you DO want people to find your post and read it, don't you?

A 2006 study by Cornell University, using eye racking and control groups of undergrad students, showed the breakdown of how many clicks each listing (1-10) get in the Google SERPs. This has been an age old question that professional SEO consultants have been trying to figure out.

As you can see by the chart above there is a significant difference between being #1 and being #2! The top spot gets you over 56% of the clicks and the #2 spot only about 13%. That is a gigantic difference. Also of important note is the difference between #4 and #3. At the #3 spot you get 9.82% of the clicks and the #4 spot only gets you 4%. I have known that there are huge differences in being #1 and not from experience with clients I have worked with. But having a formal study done by Cornell is nice because it validates things more. Of course these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt because each keyword search could result in different click behaviors. Actually there are many things that could skew the results. But the idea is to show that there are significant differences within the top 4 or 5 spots.

In a huge announcement today ICANN announced that they will launch an unlimited amount of top level domain (TLD) suffixes. Tired of your old .com, .net, or even your .travel? Well now you can get TLDs like .webmaster or .superman. What I find unbelievable about today's announcement is that ICANN admitted that they have spent $10 million on researching this initiative and plan to spend another $10 million to implement it! It doesn't take a room full of Phds to figure out that this is a good idea, nor does it take $10 million. This is a good move because it opens up a huge opportunity for marketers and business to get really creative with their domain branding. It is also good for ICANN and the various domain registrars because they will make a mint on this deal! I foresee many 301 redirects in the near future as people will be moving their sites from the old and stale .com to the new .whatevers. Except that bidding for a new custom TLD will start at $100,000. Sorry, no small business opportunities here.

I often curse, celebrate, and enjoy Google each day. Being a professional SEO requires a love/hate relationship with the search engine giant. But I really need to applaud the recent attempts of Google to reach out the the webmasters of the universe.

Google analytics is an excellent FREE analytics program and the best FREE analytics to ever come out so far. Google Webmaster Tools is another great toll that offers webmasters a wealth of information on how Google perceives your site and its pages. Previously this information was not directly available to the public and I think that it has done nothing but good for everyone since its launch. There was a while there where it seemed that Google would never reveal such things to webmasters and SEOs. And the Google Website Optimizer is the latest of the bunch.

Checkout this great post with cartoons depicting Google's newfound friendship with webmasters.