.us domain extension for US locales
-
I have a large US travel site and am looking to make targeted pages for specific locations, attractions etc around the United States. With many of the TLD's already purchased for these niches, I thought about using the .us extension as it seemed relevant to the topics. Does this hurt seo possibilities or does the .us extension come across as spammy?
-
You make a good point. That depending on the project requirements and timeline, the extensions may not matter too much. Great job on the quick rankings!
-
Yeah I wouldn't sacrifice branding but we made the decision that at the moment keyword rich domains are doing very well. I have no doubt that this success will be short lived and the project I worked on did still have a branded domain, our plan was to create a landing page with a keyword rich domain on .co because of the easy at which it could be ranked and within weeks we were ranking 3rd on yahoo for the keywords in the domain. When it is re-evaluated I'm sure that the site will be dropped well beyond the first page however currently the project itself has actually made a sizable revenue steam since the page was created. My strategy is that opportunities come and go every day and that this was just another opportunity to gain business.
-
Here's a good place to get started: http://www.dotsauce.com/2011/03/17/google-may-adjust-keyword-domain-rankings-how-to-avoid-getting-dropped/
-
This is great to hear that you have done well. I have always believed that, all things being equal, the domain extension should have minor effects on SERPs. With the spamming of the .info and other cheaper extensions I would imagine that Google would have to put some check in place to eliminate the abuse of the cheaper domain. I wonder if it is possible that the .co (being a newer domain extension) didn't have the checks against it that a .info would
Danial made a very valid point about branding vs keyword rich domains... we shall see as we move forward.
-
I really like the thought of moving towards brandable domains. It seems that we all get lost in the immediate value of the domain keywords and treat the site itself as an afterthought. I am looking forward to seeing Google's statement indicating their future plans in how they value the domain name.
-
From an SEO perspective, all TLD's are supposedly treated equal, but I have my doubts. So the text book answer is your TLD has no affect on SEO. Now if you got a .co.uk for a US travel site, that could be problematic. But a .us is supposedly the same as a .info or a .com or .net or whatever else. Again, I have my doubts.
The problem with a .us domain is in your branding. Let's say you were YountTravel.us. You cannot brand yourself as Yount Travel because by default everyone thinks .com. So you have to brand the .us with your brand name so people will actually remember your website.
My best advice is to not pay any attention to keyword rich domains. Google said they won't for long. I would build any website around a brand, so I think a brandable .com is infinitely better than a keyword rich .us.
-
I have always been of the impression that a website other than .com/.co.uk is a bit spammy however recently there has been an increasing number of very authoritative websites on other TLD's. I have personally been working on a .co and have found it very useful as I have managed to get a very competitive URL ranked.
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
-
Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand. We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority. Some background on our site/business: Current site has 15,000+ pages. 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software. While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic. 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo. We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site. It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords. Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo. A few questions: Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that. Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
Branding | | dsbud0 -
Domain authority vs indexed pages
Hello, There are many articles and from our personal experience we can say that you can rank a page without backlinks with high DA but we cant figure out if DA of domain help to rank as the link juice ( so the link juice going from home page thru all pages to specific page) or it will rank a page even if its not linked in any way from homepage or any other pages and even if it not linked in any way from other pages and still ranks just because of high DA, does that DA value will spread even above all indexed pages if you have lets say 100,000 pages, i mean if domain has 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 and another domain has 100,000 and DA of 100, if both pages are the same on those domains and have no backlinks to it from my understanding page on domain with 100 indexed pages and DA of 50 suppose to rank higher ? Please share what you think
Branding | | maxdelop0 -
Google Local deleted my Google+ Accounts
I had a Google places/local account with several different businesses listed at the same address--they are separate businesses. I recently received an email from Google saying this violated their terms of use. I am not allowed to have several businesses listed in Google local with the same address. Google decided which of the businesses to keep and which to neglect, despite my request. So essentially they are putting us out of business by not including our money-maker in local results. Recently my company moved and now we have different suite numbers for each business. A customer can come into any of those and purchase in person, or they can purchase online. In trying to clean up my Google local account, I deleted the least important businesses, trying to get the "money maker" on local results. But now I cannot have a local account because I do not have 10 businesses listed, but I cannot have 10 businesses because they all have the same address (now different suite #'s). My Google+ pages have been deleted due to the Local business deletion. When I search for our main keyword, companies come up from all over the US but none in Arizona where we are located. Is there any way to get my Google plus pages back? Is there any way to get my main site back on Google local? Can I assign a Google + page with a company?
Branding | | RoxBrock0 -
Wikipedia and Domain Authority?
Hi there, my company is an online publisher of Theater news and reviews. We also sell theater tickets. We presently don't have a Wikipedia page. Would creating one generally help our search rankings?
Branding | | TheaterMania0 -
Should we use one domain with product-specific sub-domains or separate domains per product?
We are resellers of 4 separate products. Currently we have numerous different websites promoting each product, not all of them use a URL which has any real link to our business - it's only when you land on the page that it contains brand images, etc. We are in the process of redesigning and rebranding, and want to know what would be the best course of action to take in terms of domain registration. This is what we have currently, for example: - www.accounts-solutions.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a branded accounts package. www.software-accounts-systems.co.uk - This site deals with the resale and support of a second branded accounts product. In terms of moving forward with new domains, which are going to contain our business name, our options are as follows: - OPTION 1 - www.our-business-name.co.uk/product1/etc, www.our-business-name.co.uk/product2/etc, www.our-business-name/product3/etc where all products are given separate sub-domains within our main business page. OPTION 2 - www.our-business-name-product1.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product2.co.uk/etc, www.our-business-name-product3.co.uk/etc where each product we resell is given it's own separate domain entirely. Does anyone think one direction over another would give any benefits in terms of SEO, or would it not matter as long as each site was well optimised with a solid content and social strategy? My initial preference is for the first option, if only because of the continuity in terms of having one main company website with each product listed in sub-domains. Each landing page would obviously be optimised for each specific product/keyword, etc. so, from a user point of view, there shouldn't be any confusion between separate products. Also, would it be recommended to install 301 redirects from our existing www.accounts-solutions.co.uk, etc pages to the relevant new sites? Thanks, John
Branding | | HBPGroup0 -
Legacy Locations and Google Local - How to Handle
Hello - I'm working with a client who has some transitioning brands - and they're hesitant to change the legacy branding in Google Local and on their website because they're afraid of losing traffic from the old brand. Is there a standard practice for keeping traffic on the old brand terms, while still adjusting to the new branding on Google/Yahoo/Bing? Thanks,
Branding | | WebTalent0 -
Do .CO domains rank up just as easy as a .com domain?
I have ran across a very good .CO domain and am thinking about making it into one of our main websites. I have no experience with them. I have used/bought just about every other domain type out there, but I have never used a .CO yet. The domain I was able to purchase was seobusiness.co for $5.00 - regardless if I am able to use it for our main brand if they don't rank up the same, I will use it for something else. The site isn't up yet btw, so no need visiting it... The keyword gets 1600 exact hits a month give or take a few of course - thats just the Google tool estimate. Matt Cutts says that they can rank up the same, but I am looking for more than this. Does anyone have some proof that .co's can rank up? I hate to put 2-3 months of solid work into this to rank it up for SEO business and it doesn't want to rank due to the .co. Thanks in advance for your time.
Branding | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
How much would or have you pay for a domain name?
I wasn't asking the question from a complete lack of experience but I put this question on the forum here last week…How much would you pay for a key rich domain name with the correct extension? I'm setting up a new website to sell Whitby Jet and one of the members of this forum suggested I should buy the domain name www.whitbyjet.com it was for sale for $300 or £200 in UK money and they thought it was a bargain. I thought it was worth the cost even though I've never paid anywhere near that amount for a domain name.
Branding | | whitbycottages
.
There is a company offering www.whitby-jet.co.uk or £1500 ?!!!! I have bought key rich domain names before, which were very descriptive also but only paid the registration fee with no additional costs
.
I just wondered how much members of this forum have paid for domain names. And why they thought it was worth the cost... SEO Branding etc.? By the way the company that was acting as the intermediate for my new doaminis is an absolute pain. They didn't perform the transfer process quickly until I bombarded them with emails My new domain is still not working one week down the line. In the past I bought a domain cheap and it has been working within 24 hours directly.0