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.
Does it matter if your URL ends in .net or .com?
-
Someone told me that having a URL that ends in .net (instead of .com) will hurt my site's SEO. Is that true?
-
One way it could hurt your SEO is if people who link to your site mistakenly link to .com instead of .net which could reduce your inbound links.
-
It depends on what you're using the site for. If you're wondering about straight SEO results for .net or .com, there likely won't be a difference as they're both main TLDs. If the site is used for mainly one time visitors or is strictly online, you should be fine with a .net. If people are mainly getting to your site by searching or possibly bookmarking your site, it won't matter between the two.
On the other hand if you have an offline business, I would definitely go with a .com. 9 times out of 10 if you give someone a business card with MyCoolDomain.net, they will type in MyCoolDomain.com. It's just habit. Try it with friends and tell them to go to YourSite.net while standing over their shoulder. I bet even then you get most people going to YourSite.com. If it's off-line, you want people to remember the main domain and not have to worry whether the TLD is .com or .net. They just automatically guess as .com.
-
I do not believe that there is a ranking difference between widgets.com and widgets.net (I am getting my ass kicked right now be a couple of .net sites - those rats!).
However, I would not want to use a .net site because a lot of my return customers would by habit type egol.com as the URL.
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
-
URL keyword separator best practice
Hello. Wanted to reach out see what the consensus is re-keyword separators So just taken on a new client and all their urls are structured like /buybbqpacks rather than buy-bbq-packs - my understanding is that it comes down to readability, which influences click through, rather than search impact on the keyword. So we usually advise on a hyphen, but the guy's going to have to change ALLOT of pages & setup redirects to change it all wasn't sure if it was worth it? Thanks! Stu
On-Page Optimization | | bloomletsgrow0 -
City Name in URL structure
I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Are the prepositions and separate letters in URL bad for website optimization?
Is it ok for website optimization to use prepositions and separate letters in URL ? Examples: -i-series ; -salad-with-avocado etc.
On-Page Optimization | | adrecom0 -
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
Hi there,
On-Page Optimization | | doctecs
my question is as follows: How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?) This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail. Answers should include source Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc. We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.0 -
Canonical URL, cornerstone page and categories
If I want to have a cornerstone "page", can I substitute an actual page with a category archive of posts "page" (that contains many posts containing the target key phrase)? This way, if I make blog posts about a certain topic/ key phrase (example "beach weddings") and add a canonical URL of the category archive page to the individual posts, am I right then to assume google will see the archive page as the cornerstone page (and thereby won't see the individual posts with the same key phrase as competing)?
On-Page Optimization | | stephanwb0 -
URL best practices, use folders or not ?
Hi I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | 77Agency0 -
Does having a "+" in a URL hurt SEO? Would much value be gained changing it to a hyphen?
There's a site that contains "+" signs in the URL in order to call different information for the content on the page. Would it be better to change those to hyphens (-), or not that much value will be gained, so leave them as is? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MitchellStoker0 -
Does Code Order Matter?
I read/was told that it was a good idea to order your HTML to show the most important content first. So, on many sites I had put my global navigation div, for instance, below my main content div. Does this still apply? And does wise use of HTML 5 mean this is no longer necessary (eg use of "nav" section tag to indicate this section is about navigation). In the same vein, how does Google know that my sidebar nav is my sidebar nav (which your site seems to say is probably given less weight than top nav), and how does it know my topnav is my top nav? Maybe a daft question, but when someone asked me yesterday I realised I didn't know! (Phew - at last I have asked a short question!).
On-Page Optimization | | PeterMurray0