For those who are reading the SkyInclude blog for the first time, Handshake (HNS) is a new decentralized root zone on its own blockchain. Basically - instead of ICANN in charge of who has which domain extension (TLD) and the costs of it, which is the current (old) system of DNS.

An easier way to understand, bitcoin is money on the blockchain, Handshake is domain names on the blockchain.

SEO is search engine optimization, basically - building a website that is “friendly” and searchable for the search engines (technical SEO), while also having quality and relevant content for the user (person searching the search engine).

Search engines want to provide quality and relevant content to its users - THE PERSON searching. The website is the supplier, and the person searching is the user/client.

Search engines want to keep their client (the person searching) happy by giving them the best search results.

SEO marketers try to help the content providers (websites) get to the top of the results - but ultimately quality content that helps the user (searcher) will win, long term.

Now, Handshake SEO is putting traditional SEO together with Handshake naming system (HNS)

Really, maybe I am oversimplifying - but basically, we are doing SEO on a Handshake domain name the same as if we are doing SEO on a normal ICANN domain (.com, .org, .io, etc)

Creating content
Getting indexed by search engines
Creating links and awareness of this content.

Let’s highlight some of the Handshake equivalent tools and platforms.

So, for most SEO’rs - we are basically slaves to the Google gods and its algorithm.

One exciting thing is Google is not yet in Handshake. Well, of course there are tradeoffs - by having Google in it would mean that tons of users are coming to Handshake sites.

But I like “new” and I like competition, and I’m excited to say new search engines are being built to crawl Handshake only sites.

So let’s talk about a couple

Yhnsoo (The Yahoo Search of Handshake)
https://yhnsoo.com/

This is the first search engine I saw on the market. The name and the style is similar to Yahoo search.

To get some insights on its algorithm you can see “explore” and then top ranked sites. It is using links as an indicator - as most search engines do.

HNSsearch (The Google of Handshake)
The second search engine we have seen in the market is HNSsearch.hns.to - which is completely on Handshake (you can access it by http://hnssearch/ or if you’re not on Handshake resolver, adding the hns.to - http://hnssearch.hns.to )

This is more similar to the simple layout of Google and has been developing fast.

Ok, now that we got through:

* What is Handshake (domain names on the blockchain)
* What is SEO (optimizing for search engines in the language/platform / naming system we are in)
* The current search engines in the Handshake ecosystem.

What should we do?

You can’t rank a site in a search engine that has no content. So..you need to either

1) Make new content - start blogging on Handshake, etc.
2) port over your ICANN domain content - which is mostly what we have been doing.

We have tons of guides on SkyInclude.com/blog or setup.skyinclude/blog/ that talks about how to port sites, and we even offer this as a service and hosting package.

Obviously the ideal is to have original content on Handshake - which is what we have done for the Handycon.promote conference

And when we link to it - we use HNS.to for those who don’t use HNS resolvers.

http://handycon.promote.hns.to
Or native Handshake
http://handycon.promote/

We even have a handycon.org site that redirects to the hns.to so that it makes it easier for people to remember!

We also made the first forum on Handshake - http://handshake.mercenary/ or http://handshake.mercenary.hns.to

So the hns.to does rank in Google - which I know - is not as good as your own domain - but the goal here is to build more awareness of Handshake.

To make Handshake sites more and more crawled in Google and then they will realize this hns.to thing - what is it - so much content in there that isn’t anywhere else.

We are pioneers now, and hopefully we don’t come back with too many arrows in our back - but this is what trailblazing is.

By being early, there are “hacks” and workarounds. But just like the original internet, the early days had very crude and basic sites and stat counters, and those who were early still are dominant forces in search engines as they have stood the test of time and been consistently online and dependable.

Now - any SEO marketer would say - you need to get that amazing content you have made and get it found by search engines.

As search engines are the gateway to eyeballs (people / visitors).

And in Handshake, it isn’t too much different - but from my understanding - they are crawling HNS sites - so you need to build links on other Handshake sites to get found and crawled.

Here’s a checklist

• Submit to Search Engines - sounds like the 1990s again, ha!
• Submit to https://yhnsoo.com/submit - they let you simply put in your Handshake URL.
  HNSSearch I don’t think has this yet.
• Submit to other directories - Namebase has Namer News and while it is not a handshake site, it is focusing on Handshake sites so if I was a Handshake search engine I would be crawling that list.
• Make a post on Handshake Mercenary - our very own original handshake.mercenary has a showcase section, and the forum has become well established in search engines so this should help you get found and crawled faster (but don’t spam us please!)
• Interlink your Handshake sites, make a listing page of all your Handshake sites - get these sites all connected together (of course depends on your strategy, but we encourage it at this early stage of Handshake SEO). Let the users and the search engine bots be able to find you.

Just like normal SEO - it is not a one time and you’re done thing. Sure, getting the site ported to Handshake is a massive positive step, but to stay relevant, keep adding quality content, keep getting inbound links, keep n top of the updates in the ecosystem.

Basically just like any SEO team or individual should be doing!

We would love to hear from you.

It is super early as we write this, but we are bullish on the growth of Handshake and the dWeb (decentralized internet) and believe early adopters will be rewarded.

Good luck to all.