.com or .me for freelance business?
-
Hey there,
Which domain do you think is better and why?
(1) surnamename.com or (2) surname.me?
Since Google treats both the same in terms of the rankings, my biggest concern is about the branding. (1) is longer but is .com (people usually see .com as more trusted one). (2) is shorter, easier to remember, but less tech savvy people might be confused with .me.
Purpose of the site is personal/freelance profile. Other domain versions are already taken.
Shoot the ideas! Cheers, Martin
-
I would really try to get a ".com" even if you have to slightly alter your URL to not just be your brand name. Alot of people will add their city or a service that they are associate with or provide after their brand name ("www.abcwebsitedesign" or "adcnewyork" as examples).
-
I would argue that .me is easier to remember since, .com is basically an embedded second nature to add after a brand name in terms of direct or navigational traffic. However, since you're interested in .me you should consider creating the .com and forward the .me domain back to it in-case you would like to use it on business cards or other material.
I personally think .com is the way to go and it is almost instinctive to type that in as searcher or user.
-
Hi Martin,
I believe I would. What about name-surname.com?
If the namesurname.com is taken, there is a risk that your own namesurname.me will be often confused as .com and you will just send traffic to the .com domain owner.
Obviously, I don't know your intentions but perhaps make the 'surnamename' order your signature/brand - sign your articles in this order, if you have videos, introduce yourself in this order, make your social media named after it. This say it might be a bit unusual, but perfectly memorable and maybe seen a bit 'cool/different'.
Are you considering surname.com?
Thanks
Katarina
-
Hi Katarina,
Thanks for your response.
The thing is that the version _**"**name surname . com" _is already taken. Otherwise, I would definitely go for this option.
That is why I am not 100 % sure about the _"surname name . com"_version.
Would you go for it anyway istead of **"surname . me" **?
Thanks, Martin
-
Hi Martin,
Why do you think .me is easier to remember? I agree, people might remember the surname (instead of name & surname), but at the same time they might assume it's .com. And if this goes to 'page not found', will they figure out it's .me?
I think you cannot beat .com - it has a psychological effect and people expect professional websites to be .com. Is there an option for you to have the format namesurname.com? Or is the domain taken? That's what works well in general.
.com is a global standard for business online and many businesses fight for and pay thousands for .com's. I hope this helps with your decision a bit.
Thanks.
Katarina
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
-
Moving .com to .co.uk without compromising .com
Hey guys, I have spent a little time searching for a suitable solution, but I feel like maybe directly asking my specific question is the best way to go about this: We have a site www.mywebsite.com and it serves all UK customers (right now, the site is useless for US customers). We would like to move those customers to www.mywebsite.co.uk and carry all the google points we have accrued with it but unfortunately, I feel like a 301 redirect would cause a big issue because in January, we want to launch a new site which will have very similar if not the same urls but the content will target our new US customers. I don't want to end up in a position where our customers end up with redirect loops or where we end up confusing customers. For now, our solution is this: make our site available on both .com and .co.uk canonical tags on both sites will be set to the UK version of the site. if the user enters the homepage on .com, we show a page saying: "hey, we are launching a US site soon, click here to read more and sign up, or click here to go to the UK site." - this page will not have a UK canonical tag because it has no equivalent on the UK site. If the user clicks on the "goto uk site" button, they have acknowledged that we have 2 sites now and we can 302 redirect them to the equivalent .co.uk page every time they go to .com until we get .com live (powered by a cookie). -- we hope that bots won't be affected by this. It would be good to know if it will affect bots or have any negative SEO side effects. at this point, we have 2 types of users, informed and uninformed users. Informed if they clicked the button described above. if the user enters any other page on .com, we don't redirect uninformed users, we just let them use the site as normal because we don't know if 302 redirects will cause issues for our ranking. if the user enters any other page on .com, we redirect informed users to the .co.uk site... this includes the .com homepage If the user goes to .co.uk, the site is normal. No special landing pages, no redirects, no extra cookies. We want to start changing external .com links to .co.uk and new content we write about our site will start going to .co.uk When .com goes live, we will remove the redirects and people using .com will start seeing US content instead of UK content. People using co.uk will be unaffected. Hopefully, google is directing most of our customers to .co.uk by now. Ideally, we want to transfer our google ranking from .com to .co.uk since it is technically a move, but I need to be sure there will be no side effects from using 301 redirects when we put the US site live... Both SEO wise and UX wise. Anyways, does anyone see any potential problems with our current plan? are 302's problematic for our SEO goals (moving .com points to .co.uk)? will changing canonical from .com to .co.uk have positive or negative effects? Can we safely apply 301's and is it necessary... esp. considering the short timeline (releasing US in Janurary). Are there any extra steps we can take to maximise our efforts and/or speed up the site transfer. Is it a bad idea to allow .com to serve the same content as .co.uk except the homepage? Any gotchas you can think of? Thanks in advance, Dipun
Branding | | dipunm0 -
Which domain will perform better on google.com? californiaweb.co OR webthreedesign.com ?
Which domain will perform better on google.com? californiaweb.co or webthreedesign.com ?
Branding | | Web3Marketing871 -
.org EMD - worth it or should we go with a lesser keyworded .com
Hello, A client of mine really wants to go with a 3 keyword EMD .org kw1kw2kw3.org The other option is to buy a non EMD .com with 2 of the keywords in it. I am leaning towards the .com, I don't think .org's are very professional, and EMDs seem to be going out of style, but please give your honest opinion now and what will happen in the coming years. Thanks
Branding | | BobGW0 -
My 40 year old, well established business has a brand name that I think is hurting my SEO. Need advice please.
Our business brand name has words in it which when we were using it as our domain name, was a) bad for our SEO and b) got our emails marked as spam in our client's inboxes. This was not a problem when we first got online, years ago. It eventually became problematic, but we didn't realize it for some time. When we realized the issue, we simply changed our domain name to something more SEO friendly, using exact match keywords. This was fine for a while, but eventually, algorithms changed again, and now with Google putting an emphasis on Brand Names and not looking as kindly on exact match keyword type domains, we are again at a place where we don't know what to do. We can't change our brand name. I don't want to post our real name or business here, but I will give an example. Brand Name: Living Free Travel The Issue: "Free Travel" gets blocked by spam filters, gets us useless traffic from people looking for free travel (which makes out bounce rates very high), gets our domain blacklisted. The Solution: travel2europe.com is the website of Living Free Travel The New Issue: travel2europe.com is not our brand, and probably doesn't look like one to Google, especially since on our site, travel2europe.com is never really mentioned because it is only our domain, not our brand. "Living Free Travel" is generally the anchor text for travel2europe.com wherever we are linked to. We assume this mismatch is problematic for us in ways we don't even know. Are we screwed? Need advice, please. THANK YOU.
Branding | | benenjerry0 -
YouTube won't let me disconnect a Google+ business page from my channel.
Hello! Here is a good one. My YouTube channel is connected to a Google+ page a created by accident. Since I named this accidental page as a business, when I go into advanced setting to disconnect it from YouTube, it says "This feature is not available for this account." Does anyone know a way around this? I don't want to have to rebuild my Google+ page on the new, accidental page. I have put quite a bit of time onto my current page and would like to get it hooked up to YouTube. Please help! Thank you!
Branding | | sarita3450 -
How to Force Merge 2 Place Listings (Both Incorrect & Different) for Same Business
Hi,
Branding | | emerald
I'm not sure what action to follow as nothing online seems to describe my Google Place situation - trying to merge 2 completely incorrect business listings for our company, that are also not identical. We have 2 listings on Google Places for our 1 company but a recent address number change has added further complication to already incorrect and different listings. our first/oldest listing was created by google but with incomplete business name, wrong map pin, completely wrong address, but shows our trip advisor reviews. created by us a year ago (we didn't realize the dupe issues) with full business name, correct address at the time (now incorrect since address number change), correct map pin, full description photos and info. This does not link to our trip advisor reviews. How to merge these when they aren't curently identical or correct? All online help seems to explain identical dupes but not this situation. What updates I tried recently: After some research, I changed all citations on the web to no.2 business name (except trip advisor who would not change), our new address number and then updated our no.2 address listing. But has stayed pending for months. It seems to be live, but still with the old incorrect address that does not match citations or our website. When I tried claiming both places with same account it showed the same pending new info I updated for no.2 in dashboard (so I can't edit no.1), but this data is not is not live on either. Last week I decided to do something radical, so logged in with a different account to reclaim no.1 and copied all information pending in no.2 to no.1 so that they should be exact same and hopefully force to merge. Both are pending and 2 different accounts now. What else can I do? We can rank locally while the 2 listings are like this. Should I call Google helpline and explain?0 -
Social Network or Blog? Which is best to start for business purposes?
I am a Realtor and was wondering which is better to start for Lead generation? A social network for local professionals or a blog?
Branding | | bronxpad0