SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain
-
Hi there,
I am new to MOZ Q&A and first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better.
My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO.
Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best.
discoveratlanta.org
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.comLooking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain.
I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well.
Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)?
I really appreciate your response to my question!
Best,
kinimod -
I noticed this as well but then some registrars do ask for special requirements. Check out the requirements on www.travel.travel:
http://www.travel.travel/index.php/authenticate-register/industry-segments/
-
Hi
I was speaking in more general about the new TLDs and used for spammy purposes.
Are you sure, you have to be 'B) you must be a travel agent, travel associated business, airline etc. to use such a domain.' I just tried purchasing one, right upto the point of giving my credit card details and it never said anything about needing to be a travel business etc.
-
Thanks all! I also thing a .com is the safe way to go. But I must say I am a bit astonished how well .travel domains perform. Searching for "Colombia" .travel ranks above .com, same for San Francisco.
@Ahalliday: I don't think that .travel domains will be used by a lot of spammy websites since A) they are relatively expensive (starting at $99/year) and B) you must be a travel agent, travel associated business, airline etc. to use such a domain.
@Rishi: So basically you think a domain such as atlantamag.com would just perform as good as atlanta.travel? I do tend to go with a .com domain to be honest but just want to give it a bit more thought.
Any more thoughts?
-
I would agree with the above 2 opinions, but assuming the price is cheap I would also buy atlanta.travel and put up a small website there with minimal SEO work so you have it in case the domain starts gaining respectability and/or becomes valuable while testing if it can bring you anything.
-
Have to agree go with .com, the .travel are too new and there is no real evidence yet to how these rank / how google will rank these in the future. I might be wrong, but I think alot of spammy websites will pop up with .travel .etc and I think these might get penalised as a whole by Google.
-
Personally I prefer the .com versions as they van be future proofed. It's hard to rank a dot travel domain. Dot org rank ok, but I think loose their branding value. If you are building a long term pure white hat strategy, I would focus on a decent dot com. And register the front org and dot net versions too.
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
-
I have a USA Shopify store and want to create a UK store. Should I use a domain or a sub-domain for the new store?
I'm currently running 2x Shopify Stores (names changed from actual): "coolpants.com" is our UK store "us.coolpants.com" is our USA store However, Google Analytics has shown that most of the traffic to "coolpants.com" comes from the USA, and this market has our biggest growth potential. So we want to switch our domain setup to the below: Make "coolpants.com" our USA store Stop using "us.coolpants.com" and redirect it to "coolpants.com" Set up our UK store as a new domain ("coolpants.co.uk) or subdomain ("uk.coolpants.com") My question is – should I set up the UK store as a domain or a sub-domain? What are the pros and cons of each? Thank you in advance for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | benkapow0 -
Local SEO + Searcher Intent Targeting for Home Builder
Good Morning, All! I work for a home builder - www.HibbsHomes.com. Their site has hundreds of pages and blogs and I'm looking at consolidating many of them as they're older and use an older SEO strategy. Can you take a look at their portfolio? http://hibbshomes.com/custom-home-builders-st-louis/st-louis-custom-homes-portfolio/ I'm wondering if I should consolidate the various projects into their own pages by house type and city - rather than having all on one page? Both for SEO and for easier searchability. How would you organize this for these? The benefit to setting up city pages is the local SEO rank (St Louis has so many suburbs). The benefit to setting up pages by home style or size would be for user experience. How do I improve this for both? And... how do I optimize for conversions better?
Local Website Optimization | | stldanni1 -
Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL
Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.
Local Website Optimization | | Noriel0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Local SEO question
Hi I was wondering is there any specific rules for Local SEO for a service company which provides a service in a variety of cities but only has one physical location. For example is it ok to target the other cities in Title Tags or would this be frowned upon? Regards
Local Website Optimization | | TheZenAgency0 -
Nominet have made the geographic new TLD available for UK. How will this affect SEO?
Nominet have made a new TLD available, the .uk TLD. Some might argue that this is a cynical move by Nominet to get more money out of British businesses, but either way, we need to decide how we handle this. As I see it we have 4 options. 1. Do nothing - At the moment, only websites can register their .uk domain. That won't last for ever though, and eventually, if we don't register it, someone else will.
Local Website Optimization | | Stewart_SEO
2. Register a domain but do nothing with it.
3. Register a domain and simply redirect it to the existing .co.uk domain. I suspect this is the best option.
4. Register the .uk domain and redirect the .co.uk domain to the new domain. From a technical point of view, what is the best option? For businesses that have multi-lingual sites the 4th appears the best option but why do we need to act when we do not even know the SEO value of any of this, and where Google sit regarding the new British TLD?1 -
Multiple Domains for Real Estate
Hi, We have 10 different website for our apartments. I am thinking about consolidating them all into 1 website. Is this a good or bad idea? I think it would be good as we would get all the authority for the 1 domain so it would be easier to get new apartments ranked but I am not too sure. I am trying to optimize for local SEO. I am pretty sure that consolidating them is the best option but I would like to be certain about it before we make the investment.
Local Website Optimization | | Jon_B0