Long term risks of using .org for commercial websites
-
Hi everybody,
I'm having a 'heated' discussion with a collegae about .org domains. Originally .org domains were created for non-profit organizations and it was fairly difficult to get a .org domain ( like .gov and .edu still are). Nowadays it's easy to register a .org domain and i see plenty of commercial .org emd's ranking well.
We are planning on launching a new white label in the Netherlands (.nl) and have several domains in our portfolio that we can us for this.
-
I recommend using an exact match .org domain (.nl and .com are already taken) for the new white label www.exactkeyword.org.
-
**My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info. **
Who right and who's wrong and why? Can i garantuee no risk with .org for a commercial organization?
-
-
To be honest, I would be more likely to click a branded domain over the EMD. From what you have said there is numerous EMD domains on the first page meaning it is likely that users will ignore and think of them as spammy. I'm not basing this on any facts so don't quote me on it or anything but I am speaking from my own experience and how I know my friends and family think.
Thanks.
-
If you see a good domain that is not being used by a viable company don't hesitate to write to the registrant to see if you can buy it.
This frequently works and you might get a perfect domain for $500 to a few thousand.
-
Nope. I can't seem to find it but he basically talked about how SEOmoz was originally setup as nonprofit and when they changed they kept the .org and 301d the .com. I've tried searching a variety of keywords related to what I can remember but just can't seem to find it.
Hopefully if Rand sees this he can weigh in on what I'm quoting. He did 100% say it though and why I can't find it is beyond me.
-
when searching for '.org' within SeoMoz i found the following 2 articles that mention .org domains.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bing-vs-google-prominence-of-ranking-elements
Any chance you meant one of these?
-
I don't know why, but im often making dubbel posts. I've editted this dubbel post and removed the dubplicate content hehe
-
Hi Stuart,
Nice outfit you are wearing in your avatar pic haha ;).
And thanks for your input, i definitely get where you are comming from with brand.com and good content, but we already have a site where we are working on a brand (prizewize.com .nl), but we also want to expand using white labels. This way we increase our visibility in the Serps and have different ways of targetting our audience (have one site more formal than the other etc.).
Also in the Netherlands it seems a lot o EMD's are still doing well. I guess Google updates come arrive here 6 to 18 months later than in the US (which can be a good thing). But to be clear the EMD.org i'm talking about will have sollid unqiue content together with our own webservice (price compare tool).
Other emd's we have rank well and they get a lot of 'natural links' with exactkeyword.nl (.com/.net/.info/.org). So it's way easier creating theme relaterd links with exact match anchor text's for an EMD than a non emd. One of the major reasons for starting another emd and not a brand.
-
If you Google around or search the SEOmoz site you will find the quote I'm talking about that Rand mentioned about using .org on SEOmoz. The main justification for SEOmoz would be the links that they built up I would imagine.
-
I havent tried ranking myself with a .org domain before, but i have seen a bunch of them rank well for very competitive queries and with horrible content :(.
At www.google.nl search for autoverzekeringen (car insurances) and in the top 2/3 should rank www.autoverzekeringen.org (awefull site)
Another example is (on Google nl) the querie zorgverzekering (health insurance) and in the top 2/3 should be www.zorgverzekering.org
-
Hi Luke,
I normally visit SeoMoz by typing in 'se' in my browser, after which it fills in the rest of the url (www.seomoz.org) and i press enter.
I had totally forgotten that its SeoMoz.org haha, what a great example.
-
Thanks for your thoughts, I hadn't thought about how spammy .info might actually come across. Unfortunately the .com's and .nl's are gone for these keywords.
It's quite a competitive market with a lot of EMD.org .net .com and .info's already taken. I will follow up on your advice and take another close look at still available .com/.nl domains with hyphens in them.
-
Agreed. .info does look fairly spammy. Exact match .info looks even more spammy.
-
"My collegae says don't use www.exactkeyword.org, because we aren't a non-profit organizaton and we can't garantuee we won't lose our rankings over the next 3 to 4 years. He would recommend going with the available www.exact-keyword.info."
IMO exact-keyword.info is the spammiest type of domain. I would not even click into one from the SERPs.
If you use a .org the more famous you become the more traffic you will lose to the .com (because so many people simply assume that any important site is on a .org. (maybe where you are - if you are playing for local traffic the .nl would be fine).
You obviously have a few people working on this project and have spent a lot of company time working on this. I would simply find who owns exactkeyword.com and be willing to pay good money for the domain. Or, I would find a great dot com without a hyphen.
If you have a great staff working on a great site go get a great domain.
-
Hi Lawrence,
Firstly you are asking this on seomoz.org - who are ranking just fine Although I think that's more because moz started out more for SEO discussions and evolved - still I think it shows that concentrating on quality content and generating quality in-bound links are probably more important than the type of domain you are on.
That said personally given the choice of .org or .info i'd probably go for .org just for the fact I would say that users are generally more 'aware' of .org than .info which could potentially impact your click-through rate in the SERPS.
Bear in mind also that exact match domains aren't what they used to be and you may well be better off creating a brand for your site on a .nl / .com then building the site up from there - with no risk of any kind of exact match domain penalty or anything else in fact in the future!
Best
Stuart
-
Hi Lawrence,
I'm far from expert on the subject of .org but my understanding was that you can now use .org for anything and the none profit aspect no longer applies as such.
I don't know if it helps but I recall reading a blog post by Rand a few weeks back and he mentioned the .org of SEOmoz. He stated that .org was originally used due to the fact that SEOmoz was none profit but once they went commercial they kept the .org.
SEOmoz is obviously commercial as products are sold yet .org is used. Based on this fact and the other mass of .org domains being used commercially, it indicates to me that using .org commercially is perfectly fine.
I would personally feel safe using a .org and would recommend it should the .net or .com be taken. In some cases I would actually opt for .org over .net.
I hope that I helped,
Luke Hutchinson.
-
I thought a .org domain could only be used for non-profit? Or you had to go through extra loops to use it for commercial use? I don't use them so I could well be wrong, just remember something along those lines, sure someone else can clear that up.
Have you ever tired ranking a emd.org domain before?
I have found nothing else works well apart from ccTLD and .com domains.
I myself would go for a branded name or add a word onto the beginning or end of a .nl
Interesting thread though, I will keep watch of what others say.
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 there any benefits to using Google+ for business if it has no followers and no user engagement?
My G+ for business currently has 55 followers and no engagement - apart from me liking the posts from my personal G+ Apart from the benefits of having content indexed faster, is there any other benefits for me in this situation, from an SEO perspective? I would like to grow the followers and engagement but not sure how as my social marketing skills are not as strong as my technical seo.
Branding | | AjazMozPro2 -
Re-Branding Website
Hi everyone! I'm currently in the process of re-branding a website, and am really worried about the SEO consequences of doing so... The site I'm working on has recently been seeing a large increase of organic search traffic (almost 25% each month for the past 3 months) and I want to do my best to avoid screwing that up in the process of changing the aesthetic of the site. A couple specific questions I have are: Does changing the stylesheet, but none of the on-page content affect SEO? Would condensing menu items (i.e. putting all services under 1 item named "services") have a positive or negative effect? Neither? Any advice, tips, or previous experiences on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Branding | | Derrald0 -
Are you ever handicapping yourself in search by using a subfolder over a new domain/website?
Hello Moz Community! We are building a separate hospital related to a single service line that is currently part of our main website. Traditionally all our hospitals are folded into one website with the same brand. Problem: Our organization's leaders want to market the new hospital as "Brand Name X" nationally, and not use our locally strong brand name at all. Therefore is the smarter long-term decision to begin building content on a new website with the new "Brand name X" even though it will take longer and be harder, than building it on our big, established website with a 60+ DA site? What I fear is our current website's DA won't matter much if people nationally are using Brand X, which isn't part of our traditional brand name? And they won't be using the traditional brand name at all. Example Scenario: We create a new hospital just focused on heart-related issues. Do we move the bulk of information for this new hospital from http://www.nebraskamed.com/heart, to a new website that will better rank with the new brand X and for just heart-related keywords? Or is it still better to try and stick with the same domain in a subfolder?
Branding | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
1 Website, 2 Business Names, 2 Locations
I took on a dentist office as an SEO client. They have 1 website, 2 business names and 2 locations. Each location has it's own business name. They are both within the same city as well. I'm not exactly sure where to start with them since they have 2 different business names. If it were 1 name with multiple locations I would just create a Contact Us page for each one, but is that the best thing to do when the location names are different? Should I create a different website for each location or is that smart because then they are competing against each other? Any help from the community on the direction I should take would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | SilhouetteBS0 -
Re-code website and start from scratch?
Hi Community, one of my sites was affected by panda penguin and then EMD updates last year. All our google 1st page rankings were lost and we have spent the last few months trying to recover the situation. Changed content, meta tags, meta titles, disavowed links, changed navigation structure among other things. We are now at a point where we are thinking of scrapping the whole thing and re-coding the site. Before we make the decision I wanted to ask what the main risks and points are that we need to consider. Are there any useful guides to help us make an informed judgment? Also, if we were to re-do the site and also change the domain name what are the implications of this and what needs to be considered. I'd really appreciate some advice as this is a major step for us. Thanks
Branding | | BipSum0 -
Buying a used domain - redirecting, pluses etc?
Hi, I have a 6 year old domain which has been the basis for my main business website operation. http://www.kent-website-designer.co.uk/ Im in the process of cleaning up some messy sitewide footer kinks that come to the notice of Penguin update. I think I can clear up a lot of links but obviously need to add some better links for the future to improve. Ive gone from #1 to #60. I was thinking of a rebrand as the EMD isnt doing much good anymore in benefits plus the drop in rankings and also Google definately favouring brand links over concentrated anchor texts. So maybe the time is ideal. The design needs a refresh anyway.... I have found a 1999 .co.uk domain which has some non keyword related 1999 links to it...nice. Its a very reasonable price. Its not going to have inbounds from my related markets, not ideal but it has no negative stuff either. Also its a very simple but rememberable name like Google or Yahoo. Great for branding. Its parked but Waybackmachine shows indexing back to `99 and google cache has some content on it. However OSE shows low domain / page authority. Im thinking of redirecting my current domain to the new one, passing some of the positives of age and titles...and replicating the site through 301`s. Is this worth doing in anyones opinion? Only thing with my domain isany branding words are anchor text words too. I cant win.
Branding | | xtopher660 -
Using Multiple Locations for Google Business/Maps
Hey MOZers, I currently work for a company with several other offices in other countries. Is it possible to set-up Google 'Business' and Google 'Maps' pages so when a user in a given country queries 'our business' on either Google 'Search' or Google 'Maps' they will receive the relevant business information for that country. For example, if an internet user in Canada enters a query for 'our business' in Canada (and we have an office in Canada) is there anyway to set up our Google Business page and Google Maps page so that user receives the contact information for the Canada office, rather than the US office? Conversely, if someone in the United States enters a search query for 'our business' is there a way to set it up so that the user receives our address in the states?
Branding | | NiallSmith0 -
Any reason not to use rel=author?
Hi Like everyone I've read a lot about rel=author but is there a reason not to use it? For instance, if you're running the content, as I am, for a travel company, we have individual writers writing the content and guides to cities/hotels/tours etc, but none of our competitors are using rel=auithor, so we certainly do stand out. But does the "personal" touch of rel=author dilute trust in some cases? For instance, if you're booking a specific hotel in London and you type in the hotel name looking for the best rate, do you really want to see a face you don't know beside a "corporate result"? Is anyone in an industry where rel=author is being used in conjunction with products/product reviews. It will work for Gary V and wine, but will it work everywhere? Rel=author is touted everywhere as a sure fire bet... but are there times to back off from using it?
Branding | | xoffie1