ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing body for internet domain names, recently approved the release of generic top level domains (gTLDs) from its current number of 22. Slated to be released in January of 2012, ICANN’s decision will allow the creation of TLDs in any language or script. So how does ICANN’s decision affect SEO? Probably not as much as we might think. Search engines like Google and Bing do not differentiate between a .com and a .net suffix, and certainly do not give a .com any additional ranking power because of it. Where there might be a bit of opportunity would be the use of keywords within the URL itself, however, keyword rich URLs is only one of many organic ranking factors and are less significant than in the past. SEO requires more than just a great domain name and more TLDs doesn’t necessarily equal more rankings.

We all know that with SEO, content is king. The fact is that if it’s not explicit on your site, you don’t have a chance to rank for it.  That being said, creating a mass amount of content that is both engaging and central to your product is often a difficult, time consuming and expensive task.  A common content creation recommendation is to add a blog to your site, but again, blogging requires an ongoing commitment and leaves the burden of topic creation to one person or a small group. A great way to let your target audience help relieve this burden is to open a public onsite forum.

What is a Forum?

A forum allows people to hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Unlike a blog, where the blogger broadcasts a message and waits for comments, a forum lets users create the initial topic or thread. Then, moderators and participants alike can address the topic with answers or suggestions of their own. Allowing your customers to initiate interaction on your site essentially shifts the responsibility of content creation away from you and onto your most interested consumers. They can ask questions, request advice, post interesting ways they have used your product and get answers or comments from the company and from their peers.

Why are Forums Good for Search?

In most forum applications, each new thread expands the site by a page and all subsequent responses are added as content to that page. This expands the size of the site and gives each new page the opportunity to contain keyword-rich content in your consumers’ voice. Search engines also give merit to pages that are updated frequently. Without a forum or blog, this becomes a very difficult task. Google even recently started to call out these dynamic pages with a ‘Blogs’ and a ‘Discussions’ logo in their left navigation and within their search results pages.