What Domain Name Extensions are Worth Registering
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Sunday, 16 of December , 2007 at 6:00 pm
Not all extensions are equal, half the domain extensions are worthless when it comes to SEO. If you are registering domain names then you ought to be aiming for any of the following in the order that they appear:
- dot com
- dot net
- dot org
I prefer to run a dot info in preference to a sub domain. Dot info sites are great for hosting blogs or support forums. Nothing looks worse than a crumby /blog or blog.domainname.com. Putting in the parent directory of a .info that is linked to from your main site seems to have a little bit more class. .info is worthless as a commercial domain extension on its own, but in conjunction with any of the big three is very good.
The dot us and dot biz extensions are not worth your efforts unless you can manage something clever like del.icio.us. When it comes time to register domain names, Go Daddy offers some of the best registration deals on the Internet and handles multiple domain registrations better than any other registry I have come across.
Category: Domain Names
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Comment by Matt Foster
Made Monday, 17 of December , 2007 at 5:03 pm
Simply not true. The most relevant sites for any given keyphrase will rise to the top. The domain extension is irrelevant. I would much rather have a .biz several years old (as I do) than I would a new .com.
The age of the domain, reputation of it, and quality of inbound linkage are so much more important that the domain name extension. In fact, the domain name extension is not part of any ranking algorithm at all (unless it is a .edu or .gov). Other than that, get what you want.
Comment by namecritic
Made Tuesday, 18 of December , 2007 at 8:36 am
I have to agree with Matt. What is after the dot, the TLD has no bearing on seo. On dot info if there is any bearing it’s that dot info is suspect because so many spammers are using it.
A ccTLD works just as well. The only time dot com is the preference is if you are going to be advertising on the radio or on tv. People do remember dot com better, so in advertising it is the preferred TLD.
But if your traffic comes mainly from search and from web links, then the TLD doesn’t matter. people click links and bookmark so they rarely know the name of the domain anyway, unless it’s amazon, google, yahoo, cnn, etc.
Having the right generic search phrase before the TLD matters much more than which TLD you pick.
Comment by Allen Taylor
Made Tuesday, 18 of December , 2007 at 9:31 am
The only real time domain extensions are important for SEO is with the use of country codes. Those are included in search engine algorithms because few people in the U.S. are going to be interested in sites targeting China, and vice-versa. Otherwise, domain extensions are not all that important. However, as NameCritic says, most people will remember dot com more because it is in the cultural consciousness. It just rolls off the tongue because we’re used to saying it. But it doesn’t help you with SEO.
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Made Tuesday, 25 of December , 2007 at 8:46 pm
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