Best Practices to Choosing a Domain Name
-
I have the following list of domains to choose from:
Which of these domain structures seem the best, or are all 3 questionable?
-
Sara, I agree with Bryan. If you are targeting USA, I would go for es-xx.com option. I hope this helps.
-
To be honest the URL that you choose will have little influence on the search engines, however will people naturally try to link to .uk or .co.uk? once you establish your brand name you want it to be easy for the user to remember. This is why in the US .com is better.
-
This may also be useful to read http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain
-
yes, thanks.
.co.uk is not available otherwise that would be my first choice
since it is not available is .uk a good alternative or does Google view it as questionable?
-
I would go with .co.uk (see attached image)
You should also submit your site to google.co.uk
-
Thanks. My question was less about the www and more if it is okay to have a URL that ends .uk instead of .co.uk which is the standard structure.
-
These are the better linking structures. If you are asking with or without the "www"? with is better, because everyone is familiar with it already and will most likely link to it naturally with the www. If you are in the uk the .uk is better if you are in the USA the .com is better.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Best Nofollow Practice Facing +500 instances of affiliate links
Hi. I have a set of affiliate links on my website. That's 50 unique links in total. They are placed in a separate folder /go/, and are all nofollowed. My website has 100 pages. When doing a site audit I get a report with 50 affiliate links pr. page x100. That's a huge report. Is this really necessary? I can ofc. choose to ignore the automated reports, but I can't help but to think that there must be an easier way to keep track of it? Like, if Link 1-50 is located in /go/, they should automatically be nofollowed, regardless of where they are located on the root/sub domain. Bonus question: The format of the link is https://exampledomain.com/go/brandname I am wondering if I should add that "/" at the end of it. If yes, why? If no, why?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Louis0 -
Best practices for lazy loading (content)
Hi all, We are working on a new website and we want to know the best practices for lazy loading of google for content.
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer
My best sample is: bloomberg.com , look at their homepage. Thank y'all!0 -
Choosing Focus Keywords
Hello everyone! I am new to the community and I have a question about determining keywords. I have created a blog {LulusLikes.com} to practice my SEO. I have installed the Yoast SEO plugin and I have noticed the plugin always encourages you to choose a different focus keyword. So if my focus keyword is "Dog of the Week" and it's a weekly contest, wouldn't that be my focus keyword each time I had that type of post? How should I choose my focus keyword for that type of post? I hope that makes sense. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Lulus_Likes0 -
Parked Domains
I have a client who has a somewhat odd situation for their domains. They've been really inconsistent with how they've used them over the years, which makes for a slightly sticky situation. The client has two domains: compname.com and fullcompanyname.com. Right now, their website is just HTML (no CMS) and all of the URLs are relative, so both domains work. Since the new website will be in WordPress, they need to commit to one domain as the primary. Right now, it looks like compname.com is the one they've used the most in ads and such, so I'm going to recommend they go with that. However, the client has also used fullcompanyname.com a lot. They don't want to have to setup individual 301 redirects for everything. I think it's ridiculous, but you can lead a horse to water... Our developer has done some research and he may have found a solution that will satisfy the client. I just want to find out if there are any SEO implications. The possible plan is to us compname.com as the primary domain and to park fullcompanyname.com. That way, if someone visits fullcompanyname.com/products/my-favorite-product, it will still work without having to setup 301 redirects. Since the domain is parked, Google won't recognize it as duplicate content, correct? Just to be clear on the whole situation, I'm insisting that all of the website URLs need 301 redirects, regardless of the domain. The primary concern is with a lot of other stuff on the server that isn't related to the site (email campaign landing pages, image files, assets that are pulled in by the client's software, etc.). The client's concern is about redirecting all that other stuff (and there is a lot of it--thousands of files). The parked domain would seem to fix that, but I want to make sure that the client won't get Google slapped.
Technical SEO | | BopDesign0 -
I've consolidated other domains to a single one with 301 redirects, yet the new domain authority in MOZ is much less that the redirected ones. Is that right?
I'm trying to increase the domain authority of my main site, so decided to consolidate other sites. One of the other sites has a much higher domain authority, but I don't know why after a 301 redirect, the new site's domain authority hasn't changed on over a month. Does MOZ take account of thes types of things?
Technical SEO | | bytecgroup2 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
Hyphenated Domain Names - "Spammy" or Not?
Some say hyphenated domain names are "spammy". I have also noticed that Moz's On Page Keyword Tool does NOT recognize keywords in a non-hyphenated domain name. So one would assume neither do the bots. I noticed obviously misleading words like car in carnival or spa in space or spatula, etc embedded in domain names and pondered the effect. I took it a step further with non-hyphenated domain names. I experimented by selecting totally random three or four letter blocks - Example: randomfactgenerator.net - rand omf act gene rator Each one of those clips returns copious results AND the On-Page Report Card does not credit the domain name as containing "random facts" as keywords**,** whereas www.business-sales-sarasota.com does get credit for "business sales sarasota" in the URL. This seems an obvious situation - unhyphenated domains can scramble the keywords and confuse the bots, as they search all possible combinations. YES - I know the content should carry it but - I do not believe domain names are irrelevant, as many say. I don't believe that hyphenated domain names are not more efficient than non hyphenated ones - as long as you don't overdo it. I have also seen where a weak site in an easy market will quickly top the list because the hyphenated domain name matches the search term - I have done it (in my pre Seo Moz days) with ft-myers-auto-air.com. I built the site in a couple of days and in a couple weeks it was on page one. Any thoughts on this?
Technical SEO | | dcmike0 -
Best Way to change domain name
Hi, I have a driving instructor wordpress website called www.drivnglessonsbrightonandhove.co.uk, done a little link building. But before I start this properly, I want to change it to www.drivingbrighton.co.uk (as the first is too long to fit on the car etc!!!!) Whats the best way to do this? Is there a way to help keep its position in google as just got into top10 for different keywords?
Technical SEO | | Ant710