undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Let your business shine with Listings AI
    Moz Local

    Let your business shine with Listings AI

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Url with hypen or.co?

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.

Url with hypen or.co?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
9
15
4.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • joechicago
    joechicago Subscriber last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 10:28 AM

    Given a choice, for your #1 keyword, would you pick a .com with one or two hypens? (chicago-real-estate.com) or a .co with the full name as the url (chicagorealestate.co)?

    Is there an accepted best practice regarding hypenated urls and/or decent results regarding the effectiveness of the.co?

    Thank you in advance!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • andresgmontero
      andresgmontero last edited by May 13, 2011, 7:32 PM May 13, 2011, 7:32 PM

      Hi Joe, this is for sure an awesome question, so many different point of views, the problem I see with .co is this one:

      "Sites with country-coded top-level domains (such as .ie) are already associated with a geographic region, in this case Ireland. In this case, you won't be able to specify a geographic location."

      Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399

      So if I understand this correctly, and you want to target real estate clients in the Chicago area (which I love and will be there for the U2 concert on July 4th) and over US/worldwide, a .co domain is probably not the way to go here.

      There has been a lot of talk about .co (TLD for Colombia), same as .ws, supposedly "WebSite", actually West Samoa, so I would advice to make the obvious, look at your competitors, does anyone has a .co domain and are ranking in Chicago? are any of the top 100 results anything but .com? try different keywords just to check if there are any .co sites ranking in the real estate market.

      Hope that helps!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,2 months
      • joechicago
        joechicago Subscriber @sly-grrr last edited by Mar 21, 2011, 3:36 PM Mar 21, 2011, 3:36 PM

        Thanks for the feedback.  Thats the beauty of SEO. The only way to figure out what is the most effective is to try multiple ways and measure. Then, as soon as you get it and have a conclusion, the rules change... 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • sly-grrr
          sly-grrr last edited by Mar 21, 2011, 3:20 PM Mar 21, 2011, 3:20 PM

          At the risk of getting a bunch of thumbs down, between the choices you have specifically asked, I am going to throw in with the .co.

          I think the issue is going to be how you promote the site, where you host it and where you get your links from.

          If you host it in the USA and build a solid local link building campaign no one is going to have any trouble figuring out where you should be relevant. least of all the major search engines.

          The other concern would be when someone tries to type in your url directly. However, There will be a tendency to automatically add an "m" to the end. But will that be any more of a problem then trying to get people to put a hyphen in the right place?

          If people really find your site helpful, they'll just bookmark it in my experience.

          joechicago 1 Reply Last reply Mar 21, 2011, 3:36 PM Reply Quote 0
          • joechicago
            joechicago Subscriber @CPU last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 11:15 PM Mar 16, 2011, 11:15 PM

            Trust me when I say that I didn't think of the .co because of the Super Bowl ad. 🙂  I have heard mixed results on the .co but really haven't seen it in search results but I dont see to many hyphenated urls either. Maybe I will just add a word to the .com?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Goetzman
              Goetzman @CPU last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 10:52 PM Mar 16, 2011, 10:51 PM

              They had an ad in the superbowl, I've heard from 5 different clients about if they should buy the .co after that.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • tgraham
                tgraham Subscriber @joechicago last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 6:13 PM Mar 16, 2011, 6:13 PM

                This link might help as well...

                http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/110316-150000

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CPU
                  CPU last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 12:31 PM Mar 16, 2011, 12:31 PM

                  Completely disagree with you Korgo the average user doesn't even know there is a .co TLD that exists.

                  They have been available for a while, I spend a lot of time online through work and play and have never seen a site using one so not sure why you think they will take off if they haven't already despite virtually ever domain seller pushing them heavily last year.

                  Goetzman joechicago 2 Replies Last reply Mar 16, 2011, 11:15 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • CPU
                    CPU last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 11:58 AM Mar 16, 2011, 11:58 AM

                    I agree with James and would aim for one hyphen on the .com TLD. I did some unscientific user testing in this area and one hyphen was fine, 2 or more was a turn off for the user.

                    The same users expected a site to be .co.uk (I'm in the UK) or .com and some were confused by the existence of different TLD's wondering where the .co.uk or .com was and thinking the URL might not work without them.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • TellThemEverything
                      TellThemEverything last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 12:10 PM Mar 16, 2011, 11:25 AM

                      I would pick hypenated over anything but .com. I would nt even use .net - .org is the only one I would consider for a true non-profit organisation.

                      I have some hyphenated domains for ecommerce websites, and have found no big problem with them personally.  Of course go with non-hyphenated .com's if you can!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • moldybacon
                        moldybacon last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 11:26 AM Mar 16, 2011, 11:21 AM

                        I don't like hyphens, but I don't like foreign domain extensions even more (Columbia!) despite what they say about it meaning "company", no, no. They pulled the same stunt with .me it's not on.

                        It depends how competitive the niche is and how much you want it. I have a feeling EMD won't be as strong in the coming months for long tail searches like this, but for now I guess it will give you the edge, what I'm trying to say is if you don't like the domain don't go with it, follow what you feel is most logical, as that is probably best for long term SEO success.The EMD benefit is nowhere near the same (in my exp) with hyphenated or foreign domains, don't get me wrong they are a benefit, but a .com, .org or net will always outrank (for now).

                        So in response to your question, If I was you I would buy them both (so comp. can't steal em' later), make them both blogs and get a nice brand-able domain for your business, use the two blogs as feeders for your business.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • joechicago
                          joechicago Subscriber @tgraham last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 11:21 AM Mar 16, 2011, 11:21 AM

                          Thanks for your reply.

                          tgraham 1 Reply Last reply Mar 16, 2011, 6:13 PM Reply Quote 0
                          • joechicago
                            joechicago Subscriber @wissamdandan last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 11:20 AM Mar 16, 2011, 11:20 AM

                            Thanks! I figured two hyphens wouldn't be a good idea but it's sure tempting.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • tgraham
                              tgraham Subscriber last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 10:51 AM Mar 16, 2011, 10:51 AM

                              According to the book The Art of SEO, my personal SEO bible, if you're not concerned with type-in-traffic, branding or name recognition, you don't need to worry about this. However to build a successful website long term you need to own the .com address and if you then want to use .co then the .com should redirect to it. According to the book, with the exception of the geeky, most people who use the web still assume that .com is all that's available or these are the domains that are most trustworthy.  So don't lose traffic by having another address!

                              joechicago 1 Reply Last reply Mar 16, 2011, 11:21 AM Reply Quote 1
                              • wissamdandan
                                wissamdandan last edited by Mar 16, 2011, 10:49 AM Mar 16, 2011, 10:49 AM

                                Hi Joe,

                                I wont go after 2 hyphens, usually if the .com is not available i go after a .net.

                                But in your case, i would go with a .co

                                joechicago 1 Reply Last reply Mar 16, 2011, 11:20 AM Reply Quote 0
                                • 1 / 1
                                1 out of 15
                                • First post
                                  1/15
                                  Last post

                                Got a burning SEO question?

                                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                Start my free trial


                                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.

                                • See all categories

                                Related Questions

                                • Hermski

                                  Solved hreflang href: Should Japanese URL characters be encoded

                                  hreflang hreflang tags japanese hreflang urls

                                  Hi all, I have searched in vain for a concrete answer to this question. If you're dealing with the hreflang tags yourself (i.e. don't use automation plugins etc.), is it okay if the URLs (e.g. in Japanese) remain unencrypted? Example (not encoded):
                                  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://domain. com/エグザイルリンク/" /> The same encoded:
                                  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://domain. com/%e3%82%a8%e3%82%b0%e3%82%b6%e3%82%a4%e3%83%ab%e3%83%aa%e3%83%b3%e3%82%af" /> When checking the unencoded tags in hreflang checkers, they don't seem to have a problem with this (they don't flag any issues). Also on other websites I see both approaches with unencoded and encoded hreflang variants. What is your opinion on this, could there be conflicts and/or is there a best practice? Thanks all

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 5, 2023, 9:28 AM | Hermski
                                  0
                                • viatrading1

                                  Faceted Navigation URLs Best Practices

                                  Hi, We are developing new Products Pages with faceted filters. You can see it here: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ We have a feature allowing to Order By and Group By, which alters the order of all products. There will also be the option to view Products as a table, which will contain same products but with different design and maybe slightly different content of each product. All this will happen without changing the URL, https://www.viatrading.com/all/ Is this the best practice? Thanks,

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 14, 2017, 5:25 PM | viatrading1
                                  0
                                • Ullamalm

                                  Wrong URLs indexed, Failing To Rank Anywhere

                                  I’m struggling with a client website that's massively failing to rank. It was published in Nov/Dec last  year - not optimised or ranking for anything, it's about 20 pages. I came onboard recently, and 5-6 weeks ago we added new content, did the on-page and finally changed from the non-www to the www version in htaccess and WP settings (while setting www as preferred in Search Console). We then did a press release and since then, have acquired about 4 partial match contextual links on good websites (before this, it had virtually none, save for social profiles etc.) I should note that just before we added the (about 50%) new content and optimised, my developer accidentally published the dev site of the old version of the site and it got indexed. He immediately added it correctly to robots.txt, and I assumed it would therefore drop out of the index fairly quickly and we need not be concerned. Now it's about 6 weeks later, and we’re still not ranking anywhere for our chosen keywords. The keywords are around “egg freezing,” so only moderate competition. We’re not even ranking for our brand name, which is 4 words long and pretty unique. We were ranking in the top 30 for this until yesterday, but it was the press release page on the old (non-www) URL! I was convinced we must have a duplicate content issue after realising the dev site was still indexed, so last week, we went into Search Console to remove all of the dev URLs manually from the index. The next day, they were all removed, and we suddenly began ranking (~83) for “freezing your eggs,” one of our keywords! This seemed unlikely to be a coincidence, but once again, the positive sign was dampened by the fact it was non-www page that was ranking, which made me wonder why the non-www pages were still even indexed. When I do site:oursite.com, for example, both non-www and www URLs are still showing up…. Can someone with more experience than me tell me whether I need to give up on this site, or what I could do to find out if I do? I feel like I may be wasting the client’s money here by building links to a site that could be under a very weird penalty 😕

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 24, 2016, 4:12 PM | Ullamalm
                                  0
                                • jayoliverwright

                                  Duplicate URLs ending with #!

                                  Hi guys, Does anyone know why a site can contain duplicate URLs ending with hastag & exclamation mark e.g. https://site.com.au/#! We are finding a lot of these URLs (as duplicates) and i was wondering what they are from developer standpoint? And do you think it's worth the time and effort adding a rel canonical tag or 301 to these URLs eventhough they're not getting indexed by Google? Cheers, Chris

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 2, 2015, 5:34 PM | jayoliverwright
                                  0
                                • JohnPeters

                                  Strange URLs, how do I fix this?

                                  I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this: http://www.dwww.mysite.com
                                  http://www.eee.mysite.com
                                  http://www.w.mysite.com The site these links are coming from is a html site. Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls? When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 11, 2013, 2:51 AM | JohnPeters
                                  0
                                • seoppc2012

                                  Does Google index url with hashtags?

                                  We are setting up some Jquery tabs in a page that will produce the same url with hashtags. For example: index.php#aboutus, index.php#ourguarantee, etc. We don't want that content to be crawled as we'd like to prevent duplicate content. Does Google normally crawl such urls or does it just ignore them? Thanks in advance.

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 16, 2013, 4:56 PM | seoppc2012
                                  0
                                • WebMarketingandDesign

                                  Multiple URLs for the same page

                                  I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
                                  http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
                                  http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
                                  http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
                                  http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
                                  http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
                                  http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
                                  http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
                                  http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 17, 2011, 11:15 PM | WebMarketingandDesign
                                  0
                                • kylesuss

                                  Should I Use City Name in URL?

                                  Having a website designed for a car dealership and deciding what attributes to use in the URL. Should I include the city name in the URL? Or does that help for SEO purposes? Other ideas of what to research or try are appreciated too. Thanks 🙂

                                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 9, 2011, 12:48 PM | kylesuss
                                  0

                                Get started with Moz Pro!

                                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                Start my free trial
                                Products
                                • Moz Pro
                                • Moz Local
                                • Moz API
                                • Moz Data
                                • STAT
                                • Product Updates
                                Moz Solutions
                                • SMB Solutions
                                • Agency Solutions
                                • Enterprise Solutions
                                Free SEO Tools
                                • Domain Authority Checker
                                • Link Explorer
                                • Keyword Explorer
                                • Competitive Research
                                • Brand Authority Checker
                                • Local Citation Checker
                                • MozBar Extension
                                • MozCast
                                Resources
                                • Blog
                                • SEO Learning Center
                                • Help Hub
                                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                • How-to Guides
                                • Moz Academy
                                • API Docs
                                About Moz
                                • About
                                • Team
                                • Careers
                                • Contact
                                Why Moz
                                • Case Studies
                                • Testimonials
                                Get Involved
                                • Become an Affiliate
                                • MozCon
                                • Webinars
                                • Practical Marketer Series
                                • MozPod
                                Connect with us

                                Contact the Help team

                                Join our newsletter
                                Moz logo
                                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                • Accessibility
                                • Terms of Use
                                • Privacy

                                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.