Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
NEw domain extensions, are they worth it seo wise?
-
Hello I am curious if all of these new extensions for domains are worth it?
So say you are a home builder and you bought homebuilder.construction - where as construction is a new extension, does this help seo? Or is it all just a big sales gimmick?
Thank you for your thoughts
-
Hey Dr. Pete,
Sorry for the late reply.
I will see you in July. I just did SerchLove Boston and immediately after that purchased tickets for SerchLove San Diego in September.
The ROI on going to those events is fantastic and they are awesome to attend.
I have to wait have to purchase my MozCon tickets on Wednesday because might have a second person coming with me.
I will see you in Seattle at MozCon.
All the best,
Thomas
-
Unfortunately, no - still pretty limited on travel - if I take a trip, it's usually to the Moz office. Speaking at MozCon in July and then in the Czech Republic in November.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thank you for the list of universal TLDs they are getting more popular every day.
Will you be at search love San Diego?
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Google has been non-committal on this, other than to say the new TLDs won't get any special preference (which is a bit vague). We don't really know yet if those domain keywords will provide SEO benefit. I think most of these will be treated generically, and the keyword in the domain may carry limited benefits.
Personally, if you have a choice between a lousy domain on a traditional extension and a really memorable domain on a new extension, I might lean toward the new extension. I'm talking about homebuilder.construction vs. great-homebuilder-construction-company.org or something like that.
There's the usability aspect, too - I think it's going to take people a while to adjust. If you owned chicago.attorney, people might pick up on that, but they're still used to thinking in terms of .com, etc. There's going to be an adjustment period.
If the price is right and there's a good one out there, it may be worth buying, but I don't think there's going to be much of a gold rush on these new domains.
-
Thomas is generally correct here, although Google has since begun treating .co as a "generic" TLD, which is to say they no longer geo-locate it to Colombia. See this reference:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en
So, the Colombia association won't hurt, but it won't be geographically connected to Colorado, either. There is some chance that you could pick up the "Co" on a keyword match, if someone searched "Denver, Co" and you owned "denver.co", for example. That's speculation on my part, though. I certainly wouldn't count on any benefit.
-
HI Berner,
thank you for the kind words.
I agree with Jimmy on what he said about .net & .org
remember there are many powerful .net's .org's out there for instance SEOmoz.org was the old URL for Moz.com sum of the best marketing companies in the world like distilled.net uses .net
it really comes down to the website itself being better but why would think about is how many phones have .com built-in to the handset. If you are giving someone your URL and you tell them the name they are going to assume most likely that it is .com and less you had to constantly correct them which would not help in the long run because one day you and be there to remind them.
however if you cannot get the .com for your brand I would strongly recommend either looking for a new name depending on how attached or powerful name is or using a.net/.org
Remember if you are going to go up against a existing website with a .com you have the possibility of serious competition in order to rank for your own name. You should always audit the company containing the domain with .com you wish you use the exact same domain name except for the TLD watch out for trademarks as well.
My best advice is taken a look at all the places where you can purchase a domain if you cannot find the one that you want. You can most likely find it on places like https://flippa.com/ , http://www.namejet.com/ & https://www.sedo.com/us/home/getting-started/ to name a very few.
Definitely do a back link check and run them through http://www.removeem.com/ just to be certain that they have not been hit by a penalty. Which unfortunately if the domain is not new would be passed on to you. Some more information.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi Jimmy,
just so you are aware.co originally was Columbia and still is the country code for Columbia Neustar the second largest domain registrar to VeriSign purchased .co to use as an abbreviation for company it was simply a collaboration between the Columbia and Neustar
Here is Matt Cutts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k0sCnzzVtNs
SEO & .co
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.co
"Neustar has always been a partner with .CO Internet, providing registry services and infrastructure support for .co extensions, the top-level domain assigned to Colombia."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/21/4009212/miami-tech-company-co-internet.html
Just wanted to make sure that you knew and actually was a country based TLD and they went for the money.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
.com is the best by far, followed by .net and .org... I would get the .com if possible and if not, get the .net or .org... I wouldn't write them off.
-
You are correct in regards to the .co not helping rank for Colorado. However .co is not for the country Columbia and made to work for everyone. The .co extension is for company names and branding your name. It is a global extension. .co = company
-
So last question I promise
As a rule of thumb, although .com is king, would you shy away from a .org? or .net?
Or basically its .com or nothing type of thing?
-
Great read, thank you for the suggestion
-
No .co will not help you rank in the state of CO
its Columba but was made to work for everyone.
Hope that helps,
tom
-
Read this as well
-
ok thank you.
On a weird note if I may ask.
I live in Colorado. many times people use the words CO to represent a city, like Colorado Springs, CO
Would a domain like example.co be worth it if the search engine look at CO possibly as a abbreviation for Colorado?
Or is this just stupid to think that way?
Thank you
-
The TLD you use can be worth money as far as SEO I would take .com homebuilder.com over a homebuilder.construction every day.
the power to point a .com .net .org at the country of your choice is a big SEO plus
if you can get the .com it is still #1 in the US at least.
Tom
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain
I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites. This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations. We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different. Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is - Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages? If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website? I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TinoSharp0 -
Can subdomains hurt your primary domain's SEO?
Our primary website https://domain.com has a subdomain https://subDomain.domain.com and on that subdomain we have a jive-hosted community, with a few links to and fro. In GA they are set up as different properties but there are many SEO issues in the jive-hosted site, in which many different people can create content, delete content, comment, etc. There are issues related to how jive structures content, broken links, etc. My question is this: Aside from the SEO issues with the subdomain, can the performance of that subdomain negatively impact the SEO performance and rank of the primary domain? I've heard and read conflicting reports about this and it would be nice to hear from the MOZ community about options to resolve such issues if they exist. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BHeffernan1 -
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Does having multiple Domain aliases hurt SEO rank ?
Our company having multiple domain aliases (DIfferent TLD) like example.com, .net, .org, .club, .win to one site (Same Content). We do this because our country ISP is blocking a few of the domain aliases. Question: Does this hurt the SEO rank? What approach is the best for us to gain SEO Rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | missionunpossible0 -
Linking from & to in domains and sub-domains
What's the best optimised linking between sub-domains and domains? And every time we'll give website link at top with logo...do we need to link sub-domain also with all it's pages? If example.com is domain and example.com/blog is sub-domain or sub-folder... Do we need to link to example.com from /blog? Do we need to give /blog link in all pages of /blog? Is there any difference in connecting domains with sub-domains and sub-folders?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Multiple stores & domains vs. One unified store (SEO pros / cons for E-Commerce)
Our company runs a number of individual online shops, specialised in particular products but all in the same genre of goods overall, with a specific and relevant domain name for each shop. At the moment the sites are separate, and not interlinked, i.e. Completely separate brands. An analogy could be something like clothing accessories (we are not in the clothing business): scarves.com, and silkties.com (our field is more niche than this) We are about to launch a related site, (e.g. handbags.com), in the same field again but without precisely overlapping products. We will produce this site on a newer, more flexible e-commerce platform, so now is a good time to consider whether we want to place all our sites together with one e-commerce system on the backend. Essentially, we need to know what the pros and cons would be of the various options facing us and how the SEO ranking is affected by the three possibilities. Option 1: continue with separate sites each with its own domains. Option 2: have multiple sites, each on their own domain, but on the same ecommerce system and visible linked together for the customer (with unified checkout) – on the top of each site could be a menu bar linking to each site: [Scarves.com] – [SilkTies.com] – [Handbags.com] The main question here is whether the multiple domains are mutually beneficial, particularly considerding how close to target keywords the individual domains are. If mutually benefitial, how does it compare to option 3: Option 3: Having recently acquired a domain name (e.g. accessories.com) which would cover the whole category together, we are presented with a third option: making one site selling all of these products in different categories. Our main concern here would be losing the ability to specifically target marketing, and losing the benefit of the domains with the key words in for what people are more likely to be searching for (e.g. 'silk tie') rather than 'accessories.' Is it worth taking the hit on losing these specific targeted domain names for the advantage of increased combined inbound links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Does domain WhoIs Privacy affect SEO efforts?
Hi guys, I got a hopefully quick question. I am designing a site currently that is made up of many different domain names as part of a network. I've heard that Google will penalize however is linking is passed back and forth between these domains if the registrant information was the same. I have WhoIS privacy information on all the domains to stop telemarketers and spam as well as (hopefully stop Google from getting suspicious). I'm not doing anything bad or against Google rules but I can see how they might think that if I have a huge network and links are being passed between these. It's a friend of mine who owns like 2000 domains and he wants to put legitimate information on each one and rank them higher, it's an interesting concept but I won't go into to much detail. So my question is basically, does having WhoIS privacy on all these domains, will it affect me in anyway in the SEO process? Will google count the links passing back and forth as legitimate? Or might it get suspicious and think I am spam? Are there ways to see what server it's coming from? Should all these sites be on different servers? Any help is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itechware0