Monero Economy Workgroup - The MEW Thread

[ArticMine]

ArticMine I'm not at all an expert on SEO and you seem to know something about it, so I would ask whether xmr not being a word makes a difference. I'm thinking that bitcoinfoundation may be parsed by search engines as "bitcoin foundation", as would likewise moneroeconomy, but xmrmonero but they might have trouble with?

I also wonder how much domain names matter to SEO. Isn't it mostly based on linking? I would think any of these sites would become well-linked on the web from all sorts of cryptocurrency sites and articles as long as Monero continues to grow and MEW continues to be active in efforts to promote it.

My experience with SEO is that it is as much an art as a science. We are dealing in fact with the constantly changing  propriety algorithms of Google and other search engines who are trying to provide relevant search. What matters is that the keyword or term is naturally used within the site, linking can play a key role particularly if the site that is doing the linking is not seen by the search engine as related (Sharing an IP address for example).  If it is also present in the domain name then that strengthens the SEO provided it is seen as a natural use of the word. The whole here is not the sum of its parts.

To understand SEO one must understand the conflicting interests. In the classic SEO battle the site is aiming for a very profitable highly competitive and generic keyword such as hotels or travel, while the search engine is trying to provide the most relevant results for say travel and Joe's recent affiliate travel site is not even close. If Joe's affiliate travel site tries to artificially push for travel or hotels and the search engine detects this expect a severe penalty on the site. My take is that highly generic terms such as "economy" or "money" in a domain name can actually hurt SEO for this reason if the search engine thinks the site is aiming for a not justified ranking on say economy, money etc. If the goal is a ranking on economy then that of course is an entirely different objective and the SEO has now increased in difficulty by many orders of magnitude.  

The way to compare how generic a search term is,  is to search each term and see what the competition is like by looking at the number of results. It is also very important to start with a fresh browser session with no search engine cookies saved. One also has to consider that the search engine may skew results based on the location from which the search in made. Finally one must not log into the search engine while doing these kind of tests.

We start with:

Monero: 550,000 results. Dominated by Monero the currency. The first non Monero as a currency results are on page 3 of Google. one of which has the term in the domain. without a dash I must add.

XMR: 1,050,000 results. Here XMR as the currency is strong but is in competition with XMR as an ATV, clothing etc.

Economy 696,000,000 results. Way to generic to even consider targeting.

Strengthening our position on XMR as a search term while supporting our position on Monero as a search term seems like a reasonable and achievable objective here.

A site about Monero will naturally use the terms "Monero" and "XMR" so a search engine encountering for example xmrmonero.com would parse the name since it is considering the whole site not just the domain name when ranking the site. If there is one thing about SEO that I have learned over the years is that one has to consider the whole site not just the domain name, keywords, links, content etc. A possible concern that the search engine would not parse XMRMonero,  because the terms are not that well known, is why I considered xmr-monero.com at a point; however upon giving this more thought I still consider xmrmonero.com the best choice since the site will naturally use both of these terms.

[David Latapie]

A site about Monero will naturally use the terms "Monero" and "XMR" so a search engine encountering for example xmrmonero.com would parse the name since it is considering the whole site not just the domain name when ranking the site. If there is one thing about SEO that I have learned over the years is that one has to consider the whole site not just the domain name, keywords, links, content etc. A possible concern about this is because the terms are not that well known is why I considered xmr-monero.com at a point; however upon giving this more thought I still consider xmrmonero.com the best choice since the site will naturally use both of these terms.

Do you mean we should focus on the use case being "type monero on Google" and not "go to something.com"?

I have the feeling that when asked to go to something.com, people actually go to google and type something.com.

[ArticMine]

A site about Monero will naturally use the terms "Monero" and "XMR" so a search engine encountering for example xmrmonero.com would parse the name since it is considering the whole site not just the domain name when ranking the site. If there is one thing about SEO that I have learned over the years is that one has to consider the whole site not just the domain name, keywords, links, content etc. A possible concern about this is because the terms are not that well known is why I considered xmr-monero.com at a point; however upon giving this more thought I still consider xmrmonero.com the best choice since the site will naturally use both of these terms.

Do you mean we should focus on the use case being "type monero on Google" and not "go to something.com"?

I have the feeling that when asked to go to something.com, people actually go to google and type something.com.

A lot of people do this. My favourite case was once watching an Internet novice teach another Internet novice how to use the Internet 10 years ago. The instruction was to type "Google" into the MSN search bar on the default IE5 home page on Windows XP.

SEO is always about the generic term not the domain name. If someone types example.com into Google and it resolves Google will take you there as the first search result. If it is typed into the browser bar then a good browser will bypass search and take you there directly.

Edit1: So yes the focus is on someone typing Monero or XMR into a search engine.
Edit2: Try typing monero.com and go monero.com into Google with a space  between the "go" and "monero.com". This is a classic example of the domain not supported by content.

[papa_lazzarou]

What do you guys think of monerocentral/monerohub as in "a hub for info and discussion about monero (XMR)"?

If this sucks my vote goes to xmrmonero.com

EDIT:
Regarding SEO,. Wouldn't we want to focus that effort around words like "privacy", "security", "cryptocurrency". I mean, if someone is googling monero most of the work is already done - at least at this stage. We should target people who are unaware of the existence of monero or of its importance to privacy minded individuals.

I agree that this will be all about content, hence the importance of the Blogs (if i'm not mistaken google gives more weight to constantly updated content).

[smooth]

Regarding SEO,. Wouldn't we want to focus that effort around words like "privacy", "security", "cryptocurrency". I mean, if someone is googling monero most of the work is already done - at least at this stage. We should target people who are unaware of the existence of monero or of its importance to privacy minded individuals.

I agree that this will be all about content, hence the importance of the Blogs (if i'm not mistaken google gives more weight to constantly updated content).

Excellent points.

[Shrikez]

My vote goes to xmrmonero.com although I find it to be slightly generic considering it is intended for the MEW and thus only a subset of the monero community.

[David Latapie]

What do you guys think of monerocentral/monerohub as in "a hub for info and discussion about monero (XMR)"?

If this sucks my vote goes to xmrmonero.com

EDIT:
Regarding SEO,. Wouldn't we want to focus that effort around words like "privacy", "security", "cryptocurrency". I mean, if someone is googling monero most of the work is already done - at least at this stage. We should target people who are unaware of the existence of monero or of its importance to privacy minded individuals.

I agree that this will be all about content, hence the importance of the Blogs (if i'm not mistaken google gives more weight to constantly updated content).

Shall I add you on
monerocentral (dot what?)
monerohub (dot what?)
xmrmonero.com

[NeuroticFish]

monerohub (.com?) sounds interesting to me too, but it may be even farther from the initial idea - support for MEW.

Also, as idea: voting for these ideas should be "checkbox based", not "radiobutton based" (I don't know how to explain better/easier). And the name with more points will "win".
Just.. yeah... this idea came a little late and may not be useful for current voting, for the main reason that the voting has already started with another "set of rules".

[David Latapie]

monerohub (.com?) sounds interesting to me too, but it may be even farther from the initial idea - support for MEW.

Also, as idea: voting for these ideas should be "checkbox based", not "radiobutton based" (I don't know how to explain better/easier). And the name with more points will "win".
Just.. yeah... this idea came a little late and may not be useful for current voting, for the main reason that the voting has already started with another "set of rules".

You mean a binary Instant-runoff voting? That is, several yes, but no ranking between the yes?

There is no voting in the community (the Drupal module advanced poll may allow the technical part of it, though). MEW uses First-past-the-post voting with weighted voting (Risto calls it "stake-o-cracy") and show of hand. Not this is is a MEW vote (so it doesn't apply here), just for information.

[David Latapie]

The most popular proposals are moneroeconomy.com, monero-economy.com and monero-mew.com, all ex aequo.
Now if we consider only votes after the final list (some people updated their votes, some did not so we don't know if they decided to stick with their choice or did not know about the new options) then we have moneroeconomy.com, with 4 "updated" vote
(all the othe have less "updated" votes - the closest contender is xmrmonero.com with 2 votes or 3 if we consider that smooth, being active here, just did not change his mind.

Reminder: community voting is consultative only - see it as a "primary". Internal voting at MEW will decide.

[GingerAle]

The most popular proposals are moneroeconomy.com, monero-economy.com and monero-mew.com, all ex aequo.
Now if we consider only votes after the final list (some people updated their votes, some did not so we don't know if they decided to stick with their choice or did not know about the new options) then we have moneroeconomy.com, with 4 "updated" vote
(all the othe have less "updated" votes - the closest contender is xmrmonero.com with 2 votes or 3 if we consider that smooth, being active here, just did not change his mind.

I support the moneroeconomy.com decision.

[NeuroticFish]

monerohub (.com?) sounds interesting to me too, but it may be even farther from the initial idea - support for MEW.

Also, as idea: voting for these ideas should be "checkbox based", not "radiobutton based" (I don't know how to explain better/easier). And the name with more points will "win".
Just.. yeah... this idea came a little late and may not be useful for current voting, for the main reason that the voting has already started with another "set of rules".

You mean a binary Instant-runoff voting? That is, several yes, but no ranking between the yes?

Wow, I didn't expect to see a wiki about voting! Yes, that's what I meant.

There is no voting in the community (the Drupal module advanced poll may allow the technical part of it, though). MEW uses First-past-the-post voting with weighted voting (Risto calls it "stake-o-cracy") and show of hand. Not this is is a MEW vote (so it doesn't apply here), just for information.

OK. (I am still impressed by so many info).

The most popular proposals are moneroeconomy.com, monero-economy.com and monero-mew.com, all ex aequo.
Now if we consider only votes after the final list (some people updated their votes, some did not so we don't know if they decided to stick with their choice or did not know about the new options) then we have moneroeconomy.com, with 4 "updated" vote
(all the othe have less "updated" votes - the closest contender is xmrmonero.com with 2 votes or 3 if we consider that smooth, being active here, just did not change his mind.

Reminder: community voting is consultative only - see it as a "primary". Internal voting at MEW will decide.

This clears up the things. And yes, MoneroEconomy.com may be better choice than monero-economy.com

[papa_lazzarou]

Shall I add you on
monerocentral (dot what?)
monerohub (dot what?)
xmrmonero.com

Since there's no support for my suggestions add my vote to xmrmonero.com


PS- Just to clarify, the site is NOT primarily about MEW, right?

[GingerAle]

from what I gather its about the monero economy.

[equipoise]

It seems moneroeconomy.com is a better choice then monero-economy.com. It's also easier to tell it to a friend.

[Lloydimiller4]

I would like to change my vote to moneroeconomy.com

I also really like monerohub.com

[David Latapie]

Updated the list (ANN - MEW)

moneroeconomy.com is first (5 voices), xmrmonero.com and monero-economy.com are second (4 voices each)

[ArticMine]

from what I gather its about the monero economy.

My understanding is that the primary purpose of the site is to promote Monero. It is not a site specifically about the MEW or specifically about the Monero Economy.

[David Latapie]

from what I gather its about the monero economy.

My understanding is that the primary purpose of the site is to promote Monero. It is not a site specifically about the MEW or specifically about the Monero Economy.

I confirm your understanding. At least at the beginning, everything about MEW itself will be in an "about us" section and a private forum.

[smooth]

This might be a good site/redirect for the "how do I get started" educational resource (like https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet )

For anyone that would like to create a nice website that shows all current and future monero accounts(The wallet will be the general term that encompasses Accounts, as I just noticed Monero is using the word account instead of wallet similar to what consumers use irl, "Bank accounts, paypal accounts" , I'll give you monerowallets.com, for free(initially it will be leased so I can make sure it's being used for it's intended purpose)