Reuters reports today that MTV will launch thousands of sites to compliment its 150 websites — including Comedy Central properties — in 162 countries. MTV wants to target niche interests as a way to match its media competitors like News Corp., which owns MySpace, that have outpaced it in on-line penetration.
The article states that “MTV Networks’ new strategy is part of an effort by Viacom to reach a wider audience that is spending as much time on the Internet and on video games as watching television, and no longer cares when or where programming is shown.”
From a SEO standpoint this seems like a strategy that is DOA (dead on arrival) for a couple of reasons. First, unless MTV will focus on the ultra long tail where it can throw up a page with some content and a little work, many of these sites will likely not perform well on SERPs. Further, the sites may even compete with each other when niches overlap closely.
Launching targeted pages or sections on its already established domains, like www.mtv.com, seems more reasonable since these pages could benefit from the domains’ existing strength. Also, links to these niche pages will help boost these existing domains — see Daniel Tynski’s Anatomy of a Super Digg post for evidence that links benefit the entire domain. Therefore, all the domains and new pages will benefit.
This move also seems rife with user experience challenges. Most webmasters and support staff who have worked on even small sites understand that web development and creating meaningful content are time and capital intensive activities. MTV seems like it is spreading itself way too thin as it casts a large net (pardon the pun) to capture as many people as possible with their diverse interests. Unless, it commits astronomical amounts of investment to these new sites, the net will remain very weak. Many people will probably find these sites thin and impotent to provide them with a meaningful experience and content and will not return to these sites since there is little reason to do so.
This does not seem like a smart move. What are some other reasons why this is a bad strategy for MTV? How could MTV pull this initiative off successfully?
