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
-
.com and .co.uk tld question
My client has a site at mysite.com. They serve both US and UK customers. They have the..co.uk tld correctly redirecting to it. The client is asking if they should have two websites - .com for US customers and .- co.uk for UK customers. Any recommendations?
Local Website Optimization | | digitalmarketingneoscape0 -
Raise in ranking but drop in visibility, also question about wordpress themed SEO
Hello,
Local Website Optimization | | SharonEKG
my first question is, i started working in August on a website for furniture repair and services that is a local business and who ever setup the website and did the SEO before me implanted the front page content and many other pages in the theme itself, we got Yoast premium and i mostly get bad rank of the page both from Yoast and Moz im guessing because it is simply cant find the links and content that is on the page since it is in the theme code. should i recommend the company to do a makeover and move everything to the actual wordpress page?
Also many changes has been made to the website, too many to track and i have seen in the past month an continues drop lower and lower of our visibility, but yet in the past week and half huge jump in some rankings. some of them are for hard to rank keywords, a jump of sometime 20/30+ up the ranks.
since i dont have a track of all the changes has been made, is there a way to know what cause it? Also one last question,
i have implemented google tag manager and been configuring it for the past month and now i have finally getting close to track all metrics we would like to track, i have removed all google analytics codes that i knew of and managed to find through search through the theme and plugins but yet when i fire up tag assistant it shows two codes the tag manager and analytics, i know it could interfear each other or give false/double readings. is there a way to track it and remove it? i have went through all theme files.. and cant find it.. Thanks!0 -
Best SEO practice for project galley (image gallery) ? I need SEO Professionals advice.
Hi, i Have a website that is powerful and i dont want to hurt it. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/ right now i need a projects gallery page that people goes there to find out the models and products and services images. i have created the page and it would be 6 slider in the page and each slider has at least 10 images inside. first question is having this much images would or wouldnt hurt my webiste. second what ALT should i use for this many pictures in 1 page. for example i think having ALT like below in one page would be bad SEO wise. Sliding-gate-1, Sliding-gate-2, Sliding-gate-3, Sliding-gate-4,... please take a look at the gallery page and let me have your pro ideas. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/galleries/ thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Mishel2980 -
I have a Wordpress site that ranks well and a blog (uses blogger) with slightly different URL/domain that also ranks decently. Should I combine the 2 under the website domain or keep both?
I realize that I am building essentially 2 different sites even though they are connected, but on some local town pages i have 2-3 results on Page #1. Nice problem to have eh? But i am worried as for a lot of my surrounding towns my competitor has the top listing or definitely ahead of me, so i am wondering if i combine or convert my blog into the same domain as my site, then all of that content + links should hopefully propel my site to #1. Anyone have an experience like this? thanks, Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Local food delivery SEO strategy
Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Anti-Alex0 -
Ideas on creating location based service pages for SEO value while not worrying about local SEO?
Hello and thanks for reading! We have a bit of a rare issue, where we are a nationwide distributor but have a local side that handles all tristate area requests, the sales that happen via local basically don't impact the online side, so we're trying to not focus on local SEO but in a sense worry about abroad local SEO. We want to try the location based service pages, but not for every state, at most 5 states and inside those pages target 2 to 3 big cities. Is this a waste of time to even think about or is this something that can be done with a careful touch?
Local Website Optimization | | Deacyde0 -
Listing bundle info on site and on local SEO page.
We just finished a new telecom site, and like all telecom sites (think AT&T, Verizon, Suddenlink, etc.), we allow people to put their location in and find internet and phone service packages (what we call bundles) unique to their area. This page also has contact information for the local sales team and some unique content. However, we're about to start putting up smaller, satellite pages for our local SEO initiative. Of course, these pages will have unique content as well, but it will have some of the same content as what's on the individual bundle page, such as package offerings, NAP, etc. Currently this is the URL structure for the bundles: domain.com/bundles/town-name/ This is what I'm planning for the local SEO pages: domain.com/location/town-name-state/ All local FB pages, Google listings, etc. will like to these location pages, rather than the bundle pages. Is this okay or should I consolidate them into one?
Local Website Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
General SEO Help
Hi Everyone, **Website: **www.helppestcontrol.com I've been working on a wordpress based website for the past few months now. This is a new website that we designed for an existing company that decided to rebrand. The previous website had little to no traffic.. so we've basically started for scratch. I've followed SEO guides and have completed many of the basics. We started using MOZ just under a month ago and have made a ton of changes based upon those suggestions. With all of this being said, we have seen some slight improvements in traffic, but nothing truly noticeable. In fact, 90% of our traffic is coming from a Facebook PPC campaign. I think the main struggle is that the company has such a wide operating based (a ton of very small towns and cities). We created an optimize page for each one (same content, just switched out the keywords).. in hopes of driving traffic. Is this the correct approach? Or should be optimize for general terms such as "Bed Bug Removal" versus "Bed Bug Removal Barrie"? I was hoping that the community could take a look at the website (maybe run it through a few tests) and give me some more suggestions. I would really appreciate any feedback. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Timrhendry0