.biz and .xxx and the latest and greatest.co
-
We are designing a .BIZ site where we will push a high percentage of the traffic ourselves. In other words, we aren't relying heavily on SEO for being found.
I have a two part question:
1. Is there really any reason for a young start up .biz company to buy a $100 / year .XXX extension?
2. We don't have the .com (and can't afford it at the moment) but we do have the .co
Does the .co have any upside to it that the .biz does not in SER?And do we get penalized for using the .biz? In other words, do SEs prefer the .com and nothing else will do quite as well?
Thanks!
-
As I understand it, the .XXX TLDs are pushing for exclusive adult use. Therefore if your site has no adult content then you may be in violation of the terms for that TLD.
As Ryan stated, the search engines have no real prefrence to the TLDs, except for in the fact that the users trust them more. Therefore, your CTRs will be higher, which in turn would effect your rankings. When possible .com is the best for most websites.
The .co's have a benefit of being shorter, but they have a huge downside for being too similiar to the .com and that they are not yet widely recognized. Put a .co on the side of service truck and the majority of people are bound to think that you simply forgot the 'm' for the .com.
-
Search engines do not have any preference as to the extension used for your site. A .com has no advantage over a .net or .info from a search engine ranking perspective.
Users have a strong preference towards .coms. A .com site is viewed as a sign of legitimacy. If you take the name of almost any major company in any such as McDonalds, Facebook, IBM, BankOfAmerica, etc. and you add .com to the end, you wind up on the company's website. Even if you rank well for your site, some users are prejudice and are less likely to click on uncommon TLDs.
If you purchase a non-.com extension there is a high likelihood at times you will lose traffic to the .com. You can explain to users your website is watches.biz but a percentage of them will go to watches.com when trying to get to your website. This issue can impact your business.
With respect to the .xxx domain, I would not recommend acquiring that TLD for business purposes except to protect your brand. Many filters will likely block all .xxx TLDs.
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
-
Newbie: .co.uk site redirecting to .com.
If I run a Moz report on the .co.uk site I get a domain authority reading but if I do the same on the .com site there is no authority. How do I get authority passed to the .com (the domain name is the same in both cases)
Technical SEO | | timgtheo0 -
Sudden drop in ranking google.co.uk ranking
Anyone else had any sudden drops in rankings this week? Is there an update going on? One of my primary keywords has dropped from 6th to 49th in the google.co.uk search results. Not in webmaster tools to flag an issue. I have downloaded the links from webmaster and it does look if some content has been scraped and then linked back to us from a large number of sites that we have never sort links from. I have upload the google disavow link tool. Only one keyword appears to be effected not all of them? Any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | highwayfive0 -
Blog.domain.co.uk or domain.co.uk/blog
Hi Guys, I'm just wondering which offers more SEO value and which is easier to set up out of: blog.domain.co.uk domain.co.uk/blog Thanks, Dan
Technical SEO | | Sparkstone0 -
How to redirect home.co.uk to home.co.uk/
Hi, We recently moved to shopify and noticed that our home page is now .co.uk/ (with backslash) instead of .co.uk As both are returning 200 ok I am concerned that this could cause a duplicate content issue. Could anyone please advice on the best way to fix this? Thanks, Paul
Technical SEO | | devoted2vintage0 -
Looking to rank a .co.uk domain in the USA
Hello Mozzers, One of my clients sites is "domain.co.uk" and they are looking to rank in the USA with the same domain. They are looking to change host (for unrelated reasons) and I think it may be beneficial for them to get hosting in the USA. Essentially the business is moving to the USA but they want to retain their domain name as they cannot get their hands on a domain with their company name in that is .com / .net / .org etc. . . I know that the .co.uk domain will adversely affect click through rates in the states, but there seems to be no way around this if they want their retain the company name as their domain name. Would American based hosting help them rank better for searches from the USA or is the benefit of this negligible? Net66
Technical SEO | | net660 -
KW Targeted Domain Format For Local Biz
My brother owns a laundromat...Im putting together his site.....I am targetinga small geographic area obviously.... Which domain is more seo friendly for the kw north brunswick nj laundromat? northbrunswicknjlaundromat.com north-brunswick-nj-laundromat.com northbrunswick-nj-laundromat.com northbrunswicknj-laundromat.com I doubt there is a huge difference between any of them and my first instict was to go with "northbrunswicknjlaundromat" but it seems it may be too wordy to not use hyphens. Do search engines care? Thanks in advance for any and all help Nolan
Technical SEO | | NInc810 -
UK website ranking higher in Google.com than Google.co.uk
Hi, I have a UK website which was formerly ranked 1<sup>st</sup> in Google.co.uk and .com for my keyword phrase and has recently slipped to 6<sup>th</sup> in .co.uk but is higher in position 4 in Google.com. I have conducted a little research and can’t say for certain but I wonder if it is possible that too many of my backlinks are US based and therefore Google thinks my website is also US based. Checked Google WmT and we the geo-targeted to the UK. Our server is also UK based. Does anyone have an opinion on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tdsnet0