Is having a .uk.com domain a hindrance for long-term SEO?

[JamesPearce]

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

[JamesPearce]

Hi Matt-Antonino,

Great - thank you.

Ok, I'm glad it's not going to be a problem!

Thanks again,

J

[JamesPearce]

That's perfect, thank you for answering my question!

Cheers!!

J

[MattAntonino]

You're asking a slightly different question than what was answered but let me clear it up 100% for you:

Yes, you're on a subdomain.  Yes, that's not generally ideal if you're trying to rank company.com and you also want blog.company.com   You would instead want company.com/blog (in most cases.)

However, you're on a fresh subdomain, as your main URL. That will work just fine.

In fact, the last time I downloaded the Majestic Million there were over 170,000 of the top 1M on subdomains.

Some famous subdomains you may know:

• maps.google.com
• itunes.apple.com
• get.adobe.com
• online.wsj.com
• news.yahoo.com
• abcnews.go.com
• money.cnn.com

Hope that helps!  I wouldn't worry much about it if you're happy with the uk.com address.

[GPainter]

A sub-domain acts like a normal domain, the problem you may find is people looking for your brand etc. so if they type out the URL and go to our company.com which could lead them to a different site etc. So in short you can still rank it fine though its perhaps a bit more complex, I would look at it from a user point of view and a branding perspective and go from there.

Personally I may agree with you on moving to a .co.uk (assuming you are aiming at UK markets) just so its not on a subdomain and its a bit easier to brand etc. but SEO wise its still possible to rank uk.com

Hope that helps a bit, Good luck!

[JamesPearce]

Hey

Thanks for your response! I appreciate it.

Ok, that's good to know. Though we have .uk.com not .uk - e.g. OurCompany.uk.com

My concern is that we are essentially on a sub domain of .uk.com - is this still not a problem? Or would we be beneficial to move to OurCompany.com / OurCompany.uk etc etc..

Thank you again

[GPainter]

in short no.

new TLDS can rank just as well as any other TLD and the .uk is treated essentially the same as .co.uk so as long as you're doing good SEO you shouldn't find it hinders you.