In this XYZ Quarterly we’ll cover seven examples of how to improve SEO and increase traffic to your website. We’ll also provide a recap of XYZ’s Q2 2022 activity.
Your selection of a memorable and easily discoverable domain name is an epic start in your quest for a powerful online presence. In today’s digital world, potential shoppers, collaborators, and clients come across countless websites on a regular basis. There are things you can do to help your website stand out, to appear first in internet searches, and to provide potential visitors with a sense of confidence about your website. This fundamental aspect of a strong online presence is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Strong SEO can lead your website to appear in more search results, which can generate authority and trust. Appearing in more search results can also generate more traffic to your website. More visits to your website means more people are experiencing your online presence, considering your products and services, and learning about your skills and talents.
For a strong online presence, complement your domain name with SEO strategies that can help deliver more of what you want the most – engaged visitors. That’s the reason we’re sharing SEO tips, to help increase traffic to your website, as part of this year’s XYZ Quarterly theme of Back to Basics. We’ll provide you with seven SEO tips that can help generate more traffic to your website, as well as seven .xyz websites that are already putting these tips to use.
Read on for Part 1: “Seven SEO tips to help drive traffic to your website”
Or jump down to Part 2: “XYZ’s Q2 2022 Recap.”
When people visit your website, your goal should be to provide them with the information they are looking for and make it easy to take full advantage of your website. This can be accomplished with thoughtful consideration of the design and organization of your website. A common feature of a successful website is the smart layout of its content. Your website should be structured and organized in a logical way with an easy-to-follow navigation system. Visitors should feel encouraged to explore the content. Encouraging exploration with an inviting layout will help your visitors gain access to all the content you want them to find, absorb, and share. If your website’s layout is confusing or the content is difficult to find, your visitors may decide to quickly move on to the next website where they might have an easier time finding what they’re looking for. A well-thought-out layout can keep your visitors engaged and interested in continued or regular use of your website.
Questy.xyz is an example of a website with a structured layout of its content and an easy-to-follow navigation system. This digital talent measurement solution aims to help organizations automate recruitment workflow, assess candidates’ skills, and map a complete employee development lifecycle. The top of the homepage features an easy-to-navigate menu to help visitors learn more about the company and their services. By clicking on the Education page, you can learn more about Questy.xyz’s multidisciplinary assessments, which can help organizations screen, select, and hire appropriate candidates. This page also details Questy.xyz’s library of questions, which contains curated questions of varying difficulty levels designed to measure domain knowledge, aptitude, cognitive, behavioral, and technical skills. On the company’s Remote Hiring page, you can learn about features such as the “Interviewee Only Test.” At the base of their website, Questy.xyz makes additional features available under the “Company” heading. This includes a Blog, with insightful posts such as Live Video Assessment: An Aid for Those Who Want to Hire the Best Remotely, which reviews the benefits of conducting video interviews with potential employees. Questy.xyz also provides a Sitemap that clearly illustrates the logical organization of their content. With Questy.xyz’s organization method, potential clients can quickly see the variety of services being offered. The cohesive organization of Questy.xyz makes it inviting for visitors to explore the website and gain a strong understanding of each of the available features.
A structured and logically organized website can encourage visitors to explore, absorb, and share your content. A straightforward design can help your visitors find the information they are looking for and make it easier for them to take full advantage of your website.
The content of your website can influence your ranking in search results. The value of your content determines whether or not your visitors will come back for repeated visits. A great way to provide value is to focus your content on a specific topic, and break that topic down into subtopics, called content hubs. This can encourage visitors to discover and absorb your full range of expertise. Providing valuable content can demonstrate that you’re an expert in your niche, which can help your website show up more frequently in search results.
BostonSeaport.xyz is an example of a website that features content hubs that break down and categorize its content. Boston Seaport is a 7.6 million square foot lifestyle center in Boston’s Seaport district. It is comprised of residential, hotel, office, retail, entertainment, and public open spaces. The overall topic of the website is the lifestyle center, but the content is broken down into hubs, including a regularly updated calendar of events, transportation services, parking information, lists of services and amenities, and more. There’s also a comprehensive directory of over 35 shopping destinations. BostonSeaport.xyz has become an online information hub for all things related to the development project. By breaking their content down into hubs and silos, BostonSeaport.xyz demonstrates they are the authority on all things related to Boston Seaport. This may also be helping them rank higher in search engines. If someone is searching for information about “snowport winter village” or for “lolita boston,” BostonSeaport.xyz will appear on the first page of Google search results with information about the center’s Snowport winter holiday market or the Lolita restaurant and tequila bar (as of July 11, 2022).
A website with focused and unique content that is broken down and categorized into hubs can help you demonstrate authority and help you rank higher in search engine results.
Images play an important role on your website. They can keep your visitors engaged by enticing them to check out your products and services or entertaining them while breaking up large blocks of text. It is important to ensure your images are sized correctly and are not so large that they take too long to download. Making sure your website loads quickly is a good experience for the user, which is factored into search results. Another way to optimize your images is to utilize alt text. Also called alt tags and alt descriptions, this text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers, and allows search engines to showcase your content for the appropriate keywords.
SuperstarX.xyz is an example of a website that optimizes images and implements alt text. The multimedia collective is aimed at destigmatizing and celebrating our differences, with a goal of connection and eradicating oppression. They work to support their goals through the production of art, film, music, and fashion. SuperstarX.xyz shares the work of their collective through assorted channels such as TheXShop.xyz, an e-commerce art gallery with products that feature artwork by the collective’s artists. The online catalog of products includes items like hoodies, tote bags, and kitchenware, and the imagery is properly sized and optimized for immediate display. They highlight the products for sale, and break up large text blocks to keep visitors engaged. They also utilize alt text, which contributes to their keyword strategy. Take for example the WOMXN’S ALL-OVER-PRINT T-SHIRT. The main image is using the following alt text:“X” by Edward K. Weatherly – Womxn’s All-Over-Print T-Shirt. If you search Google simply for “Edward Weatherly T-shirt,” TheXShop.xyz’s listing is the very first result (as of July 11, 2022).
Optimized images can decrease download times, highlight the product or services that you want to sell, break up large text blocks to keep your visitors engaged, and contribute to better SEO.
When you want to link certain words in your content to other pages, there are two main types of links. Internal links point to other pages on the same website, and external links point to pages on other websites. Linking to pages within your own website can send visitors deeper into your site, allowing them to interact with more content and keeping them engaged longer. For SEO purposes, internal links help search engines find, index, and understand all of the pages on your site. When implemented strategically, internal links can show search engines the relevancy of your content, which can help increase your website’s position in search results.
TimeMarket.xyz is an example of how internal linking can help lead visitors deeper into your website, and encourage them to explore more of your content. Tucson-based TimeMarket.xyz is a bakery, restaurant, grocery store, and gift shop located near the University of Arizona. Their online store makes it easy to enjoy their selection of products if you’re unable to shop there in person. The marketplace has categories of products such as Cookware, Candles, and Cookbooks. When a visitor selects a product, such as the hand-stitched full grain leather potholder in the Cookware section, they will discover additional selections at the bottom of the screen under a heading of “You may also like.” This is designed to help make sure visitors don’t miss out on any available options. The multiple opportunities to access each of their products and dig deeper into the selections helps ensure that visitors will fully explore all of the available content on TimeMarket.xyz. These internal links show search engines the relevancy of the content.
Implementing internal linking can encourage visitors to dive deeper into the content throughout your website. Internal links can also demonstrate the relevancy of your content to search engines, which can help increase your website’s position in search results.
Using strategic keywords can help improve your SEO. These are words and terms that help define what your website’s content is all about. Keywords are often the most popular search terms that users enter into search engines. You should aim to make the keywords on your page relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results. You can also consider backing up standard keywords with long-tail keywords, which are more specific searches. You may find that long-tail keywords have less competition, allowing opportunity for a smaller website to appear on the results pages. For more information about the importance of keywords and implementing keyword research, look into popular keyword research platforms.
Foodism.xyz is an example of a website that uses keywords. The food-centered social media platform aims to gather all food enthusiasts under a single digital roof. What began as an online presence for their print magazine evolved into a full-fledged platform with content including user-submitted recipes and blog posts written by the Foodism staff. These posts have topics from “what is continental food” to “why it’s time to change up your cooking oil.” The platform’s website uses keywords that may be contributing to their visibility in Google searches. Searching keywords such as “continental food,” and the popular Indian dessert “paisam” in Google shows Foodism.xyz at the top of the results page (as of July 11, 2022).
If your website uses relevant phrases and content that matches people’s search intent, there is a greater chance that your website will appear when someone performs a search.
An excellent way to increase the chances of return visits to your website is by regularly updating your content. Keeping things fresh and exciting on a regular basis provides value that can make people want to return and see what’s new. There are many ways to keep your content updated, depending on the nature of your website. You can update landing pages with seasonal promotions, feature an active blog with a consistent schedule, or even add new videos that visitors will want to watch and share. The idea is to keep your great website updated with quality content that will encourage people to revisit.
TrashMag.xyz is a prime example of a website that encourages return visits to their page by regularly updating content. Trash Mag is a women and queer-led independent zine aimed at cultivating community through creativity. The zine has core values such as independence, empathy, vulnerability, community, and representation, which help inform and guide their issues. Each issue features submissions from around the world, including an interview with Madison Sinclair from the Harry Styles-focused merch brand, BugGirl200, and an essay on normalizing embarrassing moments, because we all have them. New essays, features, and merchandise selections are added nearly every week, which can help capture their audience’s attention and encourage a positive impression on their brand.
Showing your brand is active and cares to provide value to visitors can help establish trust and foster a positive association with your brand. Regularly updating your website with high quality content can increase the chances of return visits, which is a factor that contributes to your overall ranking in search engines.
Last but not least, including a Call to Action (CTA) on your website can provide your visitors with added value and help encourage them to complete an action to unlock that value. A CTA is simple instructional text guiding the visitor to take an action that aligns with your shared goals. For example, if your goal is to be able to connect with your visitor after they leave your website, and your visitor likely wants to get reminders and future information, your CTA might be “Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated!” Encouraging subscriptions and collecting a mailing list creates a great opportunity to keep subscribers informed. If your goal is to bring awareness to helpful resources and organizations that align with your own mission, and your customer is interested in learning more about the topic, your CTA can be “Visit these resources to learn more!” Sending visitors to like-minded organizations can help them better understand your mission and gain the helpful resources they may need.
Launchpool.xyz is an example of a website that implements clear and obvious CTAs. The London-based cryptocurrency investment platform operates under an egalitarian investing philosophy that states “all project stakeholders are as important as each other.” Launchpool.xyz aims to connect investment funds and communities to work together towards the same goals. They host investment projects and offer valuable exposure to their growing community, who combines their knowledge and pools their resources. Launchpool.xyz’s website features a CTA encouraging visitors to “Launch App.” By reminding visitors to take the action of launching the app, Launchpool.xyz stands to increase usage of their platform, which can help the platform and all involved stakeholders to prosper. The website also has a CTA recommending that visitors “Buy $LPOOL,” the platform’s crypto token. $LPOOL is needed to register your interest in the platform’s investment projects, and with more community members involved, there can be greater benefit to the platform and all stakeholders.
Including CTAs on your website can simplify the user experience, and help your visitors determine what to do next. A strong CTA can provide added value to your visitors and help you achieve your desired goals.
Mindful SEO practices can help you reach a global audience and keep their attention. Recognizing the importance of your website’s structure, demonstrating your subject matter expertise, and careful attention to search terms can keep your quest for a powerful online presence on the right track. Following the examples of the seven .xyz websites above can help increase the amount of traffic you receive.
We are sailing through 2022 and still riding the wave of joy from our recent 8th anniversary celebration. For XYZ, the second quarter of 2022 was packed with great ways to help the new generation of internet users to get online. We celebrated our anniversary with an 8-day sale, featured #WebsiteWednesday posts that showcase our creative community members, supported 39 hackathons and their dedicated student participants, and more. Here’s everything we accomplished during Q2.
We spent the month of June celebrating the 8th anniversary of .xyz’s launch! Now with over 4 million registrations, we are excited to share that .xyz surpassed .info in 2022, becoming the #4 generic domain ending. That’s right – at only 8 years old, .xyz is only trailing 3 generic domains from the 1980s. Many thanks go to our global network of registrar partners and their customers whose support has helped make .xyz a top choice worldwide. To make the anniversary celebration extra special, our retail partners offered .xyz domains for as low as $0.88 for 8 days only!
Every Wednesday we present a #WebsiteWednesday blog post highlighting an innovative and creative member of the .xyz community.
Blockchain and web3-focused developers are continuing to build on .xyz domains, and we featured some very awesome websites this quarter:
Some memorable music, culture, and lifestyle websites have been developing in the .xyz community. We showcased a few:
Unique businesses and changemaking organizations establish their online homes on .xyz domains. Here’s a couple of standout organizations that we’ve recognized:
Useful digital solutions and innovative services are setting up shop on .xyz domains. We had the pleasure to highlight a couple:
At the start of the quarter, the XYZ Registry’s no-tolerance policy for abuse in our zones was recognized by Spamhaus, the leading authority on IP and domain reputation data. Spamhaus published a 3-part series of collaborative blog posts with XYZ regarding domain abuse, combating bad actors, and best practices when emailing from a new domain.
Getting the low-down from XYZ Registry on combating domain abuse – Spamhaus Technology
We started off our series diving into what XYZ considers abuse, the XYZ Anti-Abuse Policy and the process we use to protect the internet from bad actors.
XYZ discusses industry collaboration to ban bad actors – Spamhaus Technology
For this installment, we discuss how the registry, registrar, and cybersecurity organizations should work together to stop bad actors.
XYZ’s best practice on new domains and email deliverability
In the final part of this series, we identify what it takes to get you flagged for spamming, and common deliverability issues that new domain users come across and ways to potentially overcome them.
The XYZ Registry continues to enhance the Anti-Abuse process by partnering with cybersecurity companies, regularly scanning our zones for bad actors and seeking out more ways to keep the XYZ namespace safe. For more information on reporting abuse or partnering with the Anti-Abuse Team please visit https://gen.xyz/abuse.
With 33 amazing domain endings in the XYZ family, there are individuals, businesses, and brands from all over the world using our diverse range of options to launch their ideas. We continue to see unique projects ranging from innovative blockchain based games and cyber awareness solutions to cosmetic beauty services based all over the world. Some of the remarkable websites we highlighted this quarter include:
Innovators, creators, and makers have 33 versatile domain extensions to choose from within the XYZ family. Now’s your chance – register your own domain today!
Small businesses, creative individuals, and dynamic brands all over the world have already started building on our newest selection of domains: .Game, .Guitars, .Audio, .Christmas, .Diet, .Flowers, .Hosting, .Pics, .Mom, and .LOL. Here are a few more unique projects on our newest selection of domains that we’ve recognized this quarter:
Use these descriptive, memorable, and keyword-rich domains to establish your brand online and stand out to your audience. Don’t miss out – register your .Game, .Guitars, .Audio, .Christmas, .Diet, .Flowers, .Hosting, .Pics, .Mom, or .LOL domain names today!
XYZ helped support participants at 39 hackathons in the second quarter of 2022! Inspired coders received .xyz domains to help encourage them to develop their creative ideas online. Many hackathons were held virtually, while others took place throughout the world:
HACKTRIX, MEGAHacks2022, Techotsav, Ctrl Alt Delete, HackOFiesta v3.0, TechX’22, GDSC – VIT Vellore, Jaypee Hacks, Pitcher’s Den, RECURSION 3.0, Hack 36, HackNUthon 3.0, Multiverse Of Coding, Design-a-thon, HACKFIT, GATES 2022 ,Chimera, Labyrinth, MasseyHacks VIII, InnoHacks, HACKFLEDGE, HackMoreish Hackathon 2022, Holiday Hacks, ML Hacks, JAMHacks, NHacks VII Hackathon, Execute Hackathon 2.0, StuyPy-a-Thon, Hack the Woodz, Devhost:22, Hydra Hacks, MontyHacks, V Hack-a-bit, Hacking Heist 2.0, Quantum v1.0, FreyHacks, VSHacks, Learnathon22, SPSHacks
XYZ is dedicated to helping young coders share their concepts and ideas with a global audience on their own .xyz domains. If you are interested in signing up your own hackathon with XYZ to help the next generation of internet users build the future of tech, contact us today!
We are enthusiastic to see continued growth and more exciting development in the .xyz community for the second half of the year. We will continue helping the next generation of internet users bring their amazing ideas to life… 4 million domains and beyond.
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XYZ is proud to share about the many incredible members that make up the XYZ community! We encourage you to do your own research before using the products and services of the websites we feature. The information about products and services contained in this blog post does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by XYZ.
