Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
NEw domain extensions, are they worth it seo wise?
-
Hello I am curious if all of these new extensions for domains are worth it?
So say you are a home builder and you bought homebuilder.construction - where as construction is a new extension, does this help seo? Or is it all just a big sales gimmick?
Thank you for your thoughts
-
Hey Dr. Pete,
Sorry for the late reply.
I will see you in July. I just did SerchLove Boston and immediately after that purchased tickets for SerchLove San Diego in September.
The ROI on going to those events is fantastic and they are awesome to attend.
I have to wait have to purchase my MozCon tickets on Wednesday because might have a second person coming with me.
I will see you in Seattle at MozCon.
All the best,
Thomas
-
Unfortunately, no - still pretty limited on travel - if I take a trip, it's usually to the Moz office. Speaking at MozCon in July and then in the Czech Republic in November.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thank you for the list of universal TLDs they are getting more popular every day.
Will you be at search love San Diego?
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Google has been non-committal on this, other than to say the new TLDs won't get any special preference (which is a bit vague). We don't really know yet if those domain keywords will provide SEO benefit. I think most of these will be treated generically, and the keyword in the domain may carry limited benefits.
Personally, if you have a choice between a lousy domain on a traditional extension and a really memorable domain on a new extension, I might lean toward the new extension. I'm talking about homebuilder.construction vs. great-homebuilder-construction-company.org or something like that.
There's the usability aspect, too - I think it's going to take people a while to adjust. If you owned chicago.attorney, people might pick up on that, but they're still used to thinking in terms of .com, etc. There's going to be an adjustment period.
If the price is right and there's a good one out there, it may be worth buying, but I don't think there's going to be much of a gold rush on these new domains.
-
Thomas is generally correct here, although Google has since begun treating .co as a "generic" TLD, which is to say they no longer geo-locate it to Colombia. See this reference:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en
So, the Colombia association won't hurt, but it won't be geographically connected to Colorado, either. There is some chance that you could pick up the "Co" on a keyword match, if someone searched "Denver, Co" and you owned "denver.co", for example. That's speculation on my part, though. I certainly wouldn't count on any benefit.
-
HI Berner,
thank you for the kind words.
I agree with Jimmy on what he said about .net & .org
remember there are many powerful .net's .org's out there for instance SEOmoz.org was the old URL for Moz.com sum of the best marketing companies in the world like distilled.net uses .net
it really comes down to the website itself being better but why would think about is how many phones have .com built-in to the handset. If you are giving someone your URL and you tell them the name they are going to assume most likely that it is .com and less you had to constantly correct them which would not help in the long run because one day you and be there to remind them.
however if you cannot get the .com for your brand I would strongly recommend either looking for a new name depending on how attached or powerful name is or using a.net/.org
Remember if you are going to go up against a existing website with a .com you have the possibility of serious competition in order to rank for your own name. You should always audit the company containing the domain with .com you wish you use the exact same domain name except for the TLD watch out for trademarks as well.
My best advice is taken a look at all the places where you can purchase a domain if you cannot find the one that you want. You can most likely find it on places like https://flippa.com/ , http://www.namejet.com/ & https://www.sedo.com/us/home/getting-started/ to name a very few.
Definitely do a back link check and run them through http://www.removeem.com/ just to be certain that they have not been hit by a penalty. Which unfortunately if the domain is not new would be passed on to you. Some more information.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hi Jimmy,
just so you are aware.co originally was Columbia and still is the country code for Columbia Neustar the second largest domain registrar to VeriSign purchased .co to use as an abbreviation for company it was simply a collaboration between the Columbia and Neustar
Here is Matt Cutts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k0sCnzzVtNs
SEO & .co
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.co
"Neustar has always been a partner with .CO Internet, providing registry services and infrastructure support for .co extensions, the top-level domain assigned to Colombia."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/21/4009212/miami-tech-company-co-internet.html
Just wanted to make sure that you knew and actually was a country based TLD and they went for the money.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
.com is the best by far, followed by .net and .org... I would get the .com if possible and if not, get the .net or .org... I wouldn't write them off.
-
You are correct in regards to the .co not helping rank for Colorado. However .co is not for the country Columbia and made to work for everyone. The .co extension is for company names and branding your name. It is a global extension. .co = company
-
So last question I promise
As a rule of thumb, although .com is king, would you shy away from a .org? or .net?
Or basically its .com or nothing type of thing?
-
Great read, thank you for the suggestion
-
No .co will not help you rank in the state of CO
its Columba but was made to work for everyone.
Hope that helps,
tom
-
Read this as well
-
ok thank you.
On a weird note if I may ask.
I live in Colorado. many times people use the words CO to represent a city, like Colorado Springs, CO
Would a domain like example.co be worth it if the search engine look at CO possibly as a abbreviation for Colorado?
Or is this just stupid to think that way?
Thank you
-
The TLD you use can be worth money as far as SEO I would take .com homebuilder.com over a homebuilder.construction every day.
the power to point a .com .net .org at the country of your choice is a big SEO plus
if you can get the .com it is still #1 in the US at least.
Tom
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
-
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Move to new domain using Canonical Tag
At the moment, I am moving from olddomain.com (niche site) to the newdomain.com (multi-niche site). Due to some reasons, I do not want to use 301 right now and planning to use the canonical pointing to the new domain instead. Would Google rank the new site instead of the old site? From what I have learnt, the canonical tag lets Google know that which is the main source of the contents. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | india-morocco0 -
Does having multiple Domain aliases hurt SEO rank ?
Our company having multiple domain aliases (DIfferent TLD) like example.com, .net, .org, .club, .win to one site (Same Content). We do this because our country ISP is blocking a few of the domain aliases. Question: Does this hurt the SEO rank? What approach is the best for us to gain SEO Rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | missionunpossible0 -
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
Hi there I have a new client who has two websites: http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | turnbullholdingsltd
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content. What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain. Thanks in advance. Laurie0 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0 -
Does domain WhoIs Privacy affect SEO efforts?
Hi guys, I got a hopefully quick question. I am designing a site currently that is made up of many different domain names as part of a network. I've heard that Google will penalize however is linking is passed back and forth between these domains if the registrant information was the same. I have WhoIS privacy information on all the domains to stop telemarketers and spam as well as (hopefully stop Google from getting suspicious). I'm not doing anything bad or against Google rules but I can see how they might think that if I have a huge network and links are being passed between these. It's a friend of mine who owns like 2000 domains and he wants to put legitimate information on each one and rank them higher, it's an interesting concept but I won't go into to much detail. So my question is basically, does having WhoIS privacy on all these domains, will it affect me in anyway in the SEO process? Will google count the links passing back and forth as legitimate? Or might it get suspicious and think I am spam? Are there ways to see what server it's coming from? Should all these sites be on different servers? Any help is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itechware0