Does a GTLD extension 'count' as part of the target keyword?
-
Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me. Reading about GTLDs, I came across this quote from TSO Host:
'What we don’t know is whether an extension can double up as a keyword, which is picked up by Google and treated identically to the rest of a domain name. I.e. - would ‘bristolguitars.music’ have more ranking potential than ‘bristolguitars.com’ as ‘music’ is a relevant search word?' Source: https://www.tsohost.com/blog/how-do-new-gtlds-affect-seo
Does anyone know if a GTLD extension does double up as a keyword? For example, if Nike buys 'Nike.shoes', does this double as the keyword 'Nike shoes', or is Google and other search engines just looking at the domain name _before _the GTLD extension? I'm looking at .photography for examples (not my niche) and seeing folks are having mixed results ranking for 'Keyword + Photography', so would be keen to hear your thoughts.
-
That's super helpful, thank you. My GTLD would be a brand term, perhaps the closest description would be 'B.bc' (if that existed) or The.times (again, if that existed). In these examples, would the URL be interpreted as BBC and thetimes or just 'B' and 'the'?
-
Any keyword that's in the URL will be highlighted in Google's search. And Google seems to consider a given URL as one logical unit.
Does it help? Yes. Is it something I would go out of my way to obtain? Probably not (especially since these vanity TLDs are often more expensive). I would say you'd be just as fine with a .com as you would .shoes. Remember, exact match domains (i.e. www.tennisshoes.com) were a huge SEO thing for a while and have not been so in quite some time. I would say your URL structure after the domain name is more important than the TLD itself.
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
-
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Sitemap issue? 404's & 500's are regenerating?
I am using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to generate a sitemap on http://www.atozqualityfencing.com. Last month, I had an associate create redirects for over 200 404 errors. She did this via the .htaccess file. Today, there are the same amount of 404s along with a number of 503 errors. This new Wordpress website was constructed on a subdirectory and made live by simply entering some code into the .htaccess file in order to direct browsers to the content we wanted live. In other words, the content actually resides in a subdirectory titled "newsite" but is shown live on the main url. Can you tell me why we are having these 404 & 503 errors? I have no idea where to begin looking.
Technical SEO | | JanetJ0 -
Http to https - is a '302 object moved' redirect losing me link juice?
Hi guys, I'm looking at a new site that's completely under https - when I look at the http variant it redirects to the https site with "302 object moved" within the code. I got this by loading the http and https variants into webmaster tools as separate sites, and then doing a 'fetch as google' across both. There is some traffic coming through the http option, and as people start linking to the new site I'm worried they'll link to the http variant, and the 302 redirect to the https site losing me ranking juice from that link. Is this a correct scenario, and if so, should I prioritise moving the 302 to a 301? Cheers, Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
What's the rules on overly dynamic URLs ?
Developer says "Overly-Dynamic URL. Developer says that this is the hardest and complex part. It will be possible to change all of the search criterias to use ( / )
Technical SEO | | stewbuch1872
But in this case each of the pages will be indexed and every time listing gets added, content will get changed. Which for example Google will start blocking what is the best way to address this and will google block as suggested ? thanks0 -
Competitive vs. non-competitive keywords
Posting this on behalf of a friends at a breast and ovarian cancer support organization... We're trying to improve our web site's results in search engines. I've been reading up on SEO and learning that it's wise to optimize for more specialized keywords rather than for highly competitive keywords (e.g., "triple negative breast cancer," instead of "breast cancer"). Practically speaking, how does this work when you're optimizing content? Does "triple negative breast cancer" need to appear multiple times in the page's content and is there an optimal place on the page where it should appear? Do keyword tags actually work, or should we not even bother spending time on adding them? How about title tags and description metatags? Will they help with search results? I know that increasing the number of outside links makes a difference, but will it help if I provide links from one page on our web site to another? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Event360300 -
Error msg 'Duplicate Page Content', how to fix?
Hey guys, I'm new to SEO and have the following error msg 'Duplicate Page Content'. Of course I know what it means, but my question is how do you delete the old pages that has duplicate content? I use to run my website through Joomla! but have since moved to Shopify. I see that the duplicated site content is still from the old Joomla! site and I would like to learn how to delete this content (or best practice in this situation). Any advice would be very helpful! Cheers, Peter
Technical SEO | | pjuszczynski0 -
Hyphens in keywords
Anyone know if hyphens affect the SEO value of keywords? So is: Sandwich-making course Worse than: Sandwich making course I'm talking about in titles and body text. I already know that too many hyphens is a bad idea in URLs and domain names.
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
Keyword domains
Hi everyone. Two questions regarding keyword domains (e.g. "widgets.com") If we have to choose a domain with an extra word, does it make a difference to have the added word before or after? E.g. "my-widgets.com" vs "widgets-now.com" Does it make a difference if the extra word is a generic vs a 'real' word? E.g. "my-widgets.com" vs "japanese-widgets.com" Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Technical SEO | | hectorpn0