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 do you think of SearchMetrics' claim that there are no longer universal ranking factors?
I agree that Google's machine learning/AI means that Google is using a more dynamic set of factors to match searcher intent to content, but this claim feels like an overstatement: Let’s be quite clear: Except for important technical standards, there are no longer any specifc factors
Algorithm Updates | | AdamThompson
or benchmark values that are universally valid for all online marketers and SEOs. Instead, there
are different ranking factors for every single industry, or even every single search query. And these
now change continuously. Keyword-relevant content, backlinks, etc. still seem to be ranking factors across pretty much all queries/industries. For example, I can't think of a single industry where it would be a good idea to try to rank for [keyword] without including [keyword] in the visible text of the page. Also, websites that rank without any backlinks are incredibly rare (unheard of for competitive terms). Doubtless some factors change (eg Google may favor webpages with images for a query like "best hairstyle for men" but not for another query), but other factors still seem to apply to all queries (or at least 95%+). Thoughts?0 -
Does Google's Information Box Seem Shady to you?
So I just had this thought, Google returns information boxes for certain search terms. Recently I noticed one word searches usually return a definition. For example if you type in the word "occur" or "happenstance" or "frustration" you get a definition information box. But what I didn't see is a reference to where they are getting or have gotten this information. Now it could very well be they built their own database of definitions, and if they did great, but here is where it seems a bit grey to me... Did Google hire a team of people to populate the database, or did they just write an algorithm to comb a dictionary website and stick the information in their database. The latter seems more likely. If that is what happened then Google basically stole the information from somebody to claim it as their own, which makes me worry, if you coin a term, lets say "lumpy stumpy" and it goes mainstream which would entail a lot of marketing, and luck. Would Google just add it to its database and forgo giving you credit for its creation? From a user perspective I love these information boxes, but just like Google expects us webmasters to do, they should be giving credit where credit is due... don't you think? I'm not plugged in to the happenings of Google so maybe they bought the rights, or maybe they bought or hold a majority of shares in some definition type company (they have the cash) but it just struck me as odd not seeing a reference to a site. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | donford1 -
Google indexing https sites by default now, where's the Moz blog about it!
Hello and good morning / happy Friday! Last night an article from of all places " Venture Beat " titled " Google Search starts indexing and letting users stream Android apps without matching web content " was sent to me, as I read this I got a bit giddy. Since we had just implemented a full sitewide https cert rather than a cart only ssl. I then quickly searched for other sources to see if this was indeed true, and the writing on the walls seems to indicate so. Google - Google Webmaster Blog! - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2015/12/indexing-https-pages-by-default.html http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-to-prioritize-the-indexing-of-https-pages/147179/ http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-indexing-https-by-default,30781.html https://hacked.com/google-will-begin-indexing-httpsencrypted-pages-default/ https://www.seroundtable.com/google-app-indexing-documentation-updated-21345.html I found it a bit ironic to read about this on mostly unsecured sites. I wanted to hear about the 8 keypoint rules that google will factor in when ranking / indexing https pages from now on, and see what you all felt about this. Google will now begin to index HTTPS equivalents of HTTP web pages, even when the former don’t have any links to them. However, Google will only index an HTTPS URL if it follows these conditions: It doesn’t contain insecure dependencies. It isn’t blocked from crawling by robots.txt. It doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page. It doesn’t have a rel="canonical" link to the HTTP page. It doesn’t contain a noindex robots meta tag. It doesn’t have on-host outlinks to HTTP URLs. The sitemaps lists the HTTPS URL, or doesn’t list the HTTP version of the URL. The server has a valid TLS certificate. One rule that confuses me a bit is : **It doesn’t redirect users to or through an insecure HTTP page. ** Does this mean if you just moved over to https from http your site won't pick up the https boost? Since most sites in general have http redirects to https? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | Deacyde0 -
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 -
Difference between Google's link: operator and GWT's links to your sites
I haven't used the Google operator link: for a while, and I noticed that there is a big disparity between the operator "link:" and the GWT's links to your site. I compared these results on a number of websites, my own and competitors, and the difference seem to be the same across the board. Has Google made a recent change with how they display link results via the operator? Could this be an indication that they are clean out backlinks?
Algorithm Updates | | tdawson090 -
Did Google Just Punish Organic For Showing Up In Local?
Google pushed the local search results in a prominent spot on a ton of search results. That means (for me) that all first page rankings (including a lot of 1st place rankings) have completely disappeared. Subfolders still rank and homepage still ranks where local search is not included. This is weird. Is this a glitch or is there something we can do about this?
Algorithm Updates | | Discountvc0 -
Has anyone starting using schema.org?
On the 3rd June 2011 Google announced that they are going to start using Schema. Do you think this will change the way search engines find content, from briefly looking at Schema I'm concerned that the proposed tags could just turn into another keyword meta tag and be abused. Have you started using this tags yet and have you noticed a difference?
Algorithm Updates | | Seaward-Group0