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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Domain name suffix impact on SEO
Hello there, We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view. We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com We are based in London and sell world wide via our website. We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com I would appreciate your views... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Redirecting to a new domain... a second time
Hi all, I help run a website for a history-themed podcast and we just moved it to its second domain in 7 years. We've had very good SEO up until last week, and I'm wondering if I screwed up the way I redirected the domains. It's like this: Originally the site was hosted at "first.com", and it acquired inbound links. However, we then started to host the site on blogger, so we... Redirected the site to "second.blogspot.com". (Thus, 1 --> 2) It stayed here for about 7 years and got lots of traffic. Two weeks ago we moved it off of blogger and into Wordpress, so we 301 redirected everything to... third.com. (Thus, 1 --> 2 --> 3) The redirects worked, and when we Google individual posts, we are now seeing them in Google's index at the new URL. My question: What about the 1--> 2 redirect? There are still lots of links pointing to "first.com". Last week I went into my GoDaddy settings and changed the first redirect, so that first.com now points to third.com. (Thus 1 --> 3, and 2-->3) I was correct in doing that, right? The drop in Google traffic I've seen this past week makes me think that maybe I screwed something up. Should we have kept 1 --> 2 --> 3? (Again, now we have 1-->3 and 2-->3) Thanks for any insights on this! Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC1 -
Is having a .uk.com domain a hindrance for long-term SEO?
I know there has been some mention on Moz Q&A for .uk.com, but not for at least 3 years. So I wanted to see if any Mozzers out there knew if having a .uk.com domain would hinder our SEO long-term? Our company is finally now taking SEO seriously and we're planning some great stuff for the year ahead, but I have a feeling that our .uk.com domain may prevent us from out-ranking some of the bigger companies out there. Does anyone have any thoughts about this out there? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason0 -
Buying Expired Domains with Decent DA/PA for SEO Purposes
Hey guys, i've seen some stuff about this before but I recently found an opportunity to put it into action and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into! I am looking at buying a domain (expired and now only 10 dollars) that has a decent domain authority and has some keywords in it related to my clients practice. I plan on using a 301 redirect to pass "link juice" because this client is looking for a quick bump in rankings. Thoughts? Benefits? Problems with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley1 -
Merging Domains... Sub-domains, Directories or Seperate Sites?
Hello! I am hoping you can help me decide the best path to take here... A little background: I'm moving to a new company that has three old domains (the oldest is 10 years old), which get a lot of traffic from their e-letters. Until recently they have not cared about SEO. So the websites have some structural, coding, URL and other issues. The sites are indexed, but have a problem getting crawled and/or indexed for new content - haven't delved into this yet but am certain I will be able to fix any of these issues. These three domains are PR4, PR4, PR5 and contain hundreds of unique articles. Here's the question... They want to move these three sites **to their main company site (PR4) and create sub domains for each one. ** I am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I have merged sites before (creating categories and/or directories) and the end result is that the ONE big site, is much for effective than TWO smaller, less authoritative sites. But the sub domain idea is something I am unsure about from an SEO perspective. Should we do this with sub domains? Or do you think we should keep the sites separate? How do Panda and Penguin play into this? Thanks in advance for the help! SD P.S. I'm not a huge advocate in using PR as a measurement tool, but since I can't reveal the actual domains, I figured I would list it as a reference point.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0