Why doesn't everyone just purchase a .org tld?
-
Hi,
I am new-ish to SEO, and something just dawned on me today. I have read in many places that .org domains rank higher (even if slightly) than .coms.
Then why doesn't everyone just purchase .org TLDs?
For example, in my industry, most good .com domain names are taken, but .orgs are almost all free. Why not purchase a .org and capitalize on exact match search results?
seomoz is .org and it's far from being a non-profit
-
vishalkhialani, a quick note that only higher education institutions can get a .edu extension, it's not available to just anyone who wants to pick one up.
-
Thank you for your detailed reply Ryan.
I see what you're saying. I was thinking of .org domains mainly for the exact search term match domain names. If .org had any other inherent advantages, it would be a small bonus.
Since on-page is a very strong factor for my target keywords, I think this might give me some advantages.
-
Hi Elad.
Alan's answer is 100% correct. A .org site has absolutely no inherit value greater or less then a .com site with respect to search engine ranking. In fact, all the domains ranging from .net, .info, .edu, .gov etc all have the same value, zero. The value they gain is by building your site, adding content and earning links.
Where a particular domain has increased value is in public perception. A .com is seen as the legitimate business domain, which is as the domain was intended. Think of any major business such as McDonalds, Walmart, Facebook, Google, ATT, etc. and simply add a .com to it, you will land on the company's site. That is not the case of any other domain.
In that sense, .org is seen as for non-profits, .edu for educational institutions, and so forth. This is the public perception and it is by design. If you attempt to run a .org as a commercial site, you are likely to lose some traffic due to people not willing to conduct normal commercial business (i.e. shop online) with a .org site. SEOmoz pulls it off nicely in large part because of all the free SEO offerings: blog articles, Q&A, tools, etc. The basic services are offered for free and users can pay for upgrades. This business model combined with an exceptionally friendly organization and customer service works, but most businesses would not be able to pull it off.
With respect to an exact match, an Exact Match Domain (EMD) has been devalued and it is ridiculously overvalued by people who do not understand SEO. The domain name is one of over 200 ranking factors. You will find all the best names such as "insurance.org" have been taken. If you find a name left, it is because no one else wants it. The bottom line, the amount of traffic you can obtain with the EMD is not worth the effort it takes to provide the content and backlinks to make it work. You will receive a ranking boost for the exact match search, but not the rest of the searches for your site.
You clearly have a firm belief a .org site is advantageous. I am certain it is not, but feel free to purchase the domain and prove us all wrong. You clearly will have a bargain as there are plenty of domains available.
-
another view point is why don't you thin about the end user ?
What is it that you are selling or service your are providing ?
Example : if you are selling your consultancy services then i wud go for .com educational .edu.
Why ? cause of linkbait. Other edu will link to another edu but .com or .org might not get it.
-
-
That's just not true, as sad as it may be. $6.99 on GoDaddy, not questions asked. Even cheaper than a .com.
-
I know, my question is why not use it anyway?
-
Well... if two sites have more or less the same level of trust in the eyes of Google, I am betting the .org will get a little nudge.
-
-
Even if that is true (and I'm not sure it is), I was thinking of getting .org for the exact search match, more than for the .org-ness of them.
-
-
cause you can't get .org tld easily.
-
What ever said and done .org is considered more for non profit .com is more for commercial. Even if seomoz.org has it the other way.
-
its not true that .org gets higher rankings.
-
-
.orgs and .edus do not rank higher just because they're .orgs. or .edus. They rank high when they are truly worthy sites that have content of tremendous value and earn trust signals on a large scale naturally as a result of the quality they offer.
.orgs rank when they're purely focused in a laser-focus type way on the topic central to their non-profit mission. They earn links simply by offering some significant positive contribution to the world. They earn social media mentions for the same reason. People who care about the topic the site focuses on naturally want to share that and point to it and discuss it.
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
-
What tools and metrics do you use to show a topic's search interest over time?
I have a foundation repair client that is down in leads for the structural repair portion of their business. They have not lost any major rankings, but leads are down compared to last year. They asked if people are searching for this type of work less this year compared to last. I checked Google Trends and Keyword Planner data but found very different results. Is either of these tools accurate, or is there a better tool to use?
Algorithm Updates | | DigitalDivision1 -
URL in SERP: Google's stand
Months back, we can notice "keyword" will be bold and highlighted if its in the SERP URL. Now Google no more highlights any URLs even with exact match of keyword we search. Beside UI, Does this mean Google might devalued or reduced the importance of URL as ranking factor? We can see many search results match partially or completely in URL with search keywords.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Studies showing that social sharing does/doesn't affect rankings?
I'm currently researching this area in order to show to a client that social shares aren't as valuable for SEO as they might think. Can anyone point me in the direction of the best studies done on this topic? Thanks in advance!
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO0 -
Why isn't our structured markup showing in search results
Hi All, We installed Schema.org structured markup on our pages nearly 1.5 months ago at this point and we have yet to see the markup show in the search results. It also checks out in Webmaster tools and Google's structured markup language testing tool. So, I'm just confused why it's not even showing up site a "site" search in Google either. Here's an example of two such pages on our site: http://www.learningtree.com/htfu/usdc01/washington/java-perl-and-python-programming-training and http://www.learningtree.com/htfu/usat40/alpharetta/it-and-management-training Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | CSawatzky0 -
Who's doing canonical tags right, The Gap or Kohls?
Hi Moz, I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com. Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com? I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order. What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
I can't understand why I am not rank one on SERPS
Hi Guys, I really cannot understand why I am no longer rank 1 on SERPs? My link data shows great weight in comparison to competitors, my on page SEO is good, nice and diverse on the alt text. I know there are a lot of factors that effect SERPs but I believe I have done well but am still not ranking? Have I missed something?
Algorithm Updates | | TomLondon
I really appreciate any thoughts and ideas. Thanks,
Tom0 -
Changing in website design reduce traffic? I don't think so.
HI, Around the month of Nov I was working on the website. Due to some reasons I have to change the design of website. I saw my traffic going down and down(70 - 100/day) so roll back it on previous one. after that it improve little bit but not as on previously. (traffic 250 - 300/day). Question: All Urls, content and links are same then how that can effect on the traffic. We have removed all the errors that was shown in the seomoz report.But traffic is still the issue here. We are working on SEO area enough and try to recover from it. Your suggestion may be helpful for us.So I am looking forward for your answers. how i can over come with it. Thanks Regards
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
If Google doesn’t know we’re hosted in the UK, does that affect our SERPs?
Hi, In November 2011 our eCommerce website dropped from between 3rd and 4th position in the UK SERPs down to 7th and 8th. A year after this happened, we still haven’t moved back up to the original ranking despite all our best efforts and we’re looking for a bit of insight into what could have happened. One of our theories is this, do you think it might be the problem? In October 2011 we moved from a single-site custom built CMS hosted in the UK to a multi-site custom built CMS hosted on a much better server based in the UK. As part of this move we started using CloudFlare to help with security and performance (CloudFlare is a security CDN). Because CloudFlare’s servers are in the US, to the outside world it almost looks like we went from a slow hosting company in the UK to a much quicker hosting company in the US. Could this have affected our rankings? We know that Google takes the server IP address into account as a ranking factor, but as far as we understand it’s because they (rightly) believe that a server closer to the user will perform better. So a UK server will serve up pages quicker to a visitor in the UK than a US server because the data has a shorter distance to travel. However, we’re definitely not experiencing an issue with being recognised as a UK website. We have a .co.uk domain (which is obviously a big indicator) and if you click on “Pages from the UK” in the SERPs we jump up to 3rd place. So Google seems to know we’re a UK site. Is the fact we’re using CloudFlare and hence hiding our real server IP address – is this penalising us in the SERPs? Currently out of the 6 websites above us, 4 are in the US and 2 are in the UK. All of these are massive sites with lots of links, so smaller ranking factors might be more important for us. Obviously the big downside of not using CloudFlare is that our site becomes much less secure and it becomes much slower. Images and some static content is distributed via a local CloudFlare server, which means it should tick Google’s box in terms of providing a quick site for users. CloudFlare say in a blog post that they used to have Google crawl rates and geo-tagging issues in the past when they were just starting out, but in 2010 they started working with “the big search engines” to make sure they treated CloudFlare like a CDN (so special rules that apply to Akamai also apply to CloudFlare). Since they’ve been working with Google, CloudFlare say that their customers will only see a positive SEO impact. So at the moment we’re at a loss about what happened to our ranking. Google say they take IP’s into account for ranking, but by using CloudFlare it looks like we’re in the US. We definitely know we’re not having geo-tagging issues and CloudFlare say they’re working with Google to ensure its customers aren't seeing a negative impact by using CloudFlare, but a niggling part of us still wonders whether it could impact our SEO. Many thanks, James
Algorithm Updates | | OptiBacUK0