Choice of domain
-
Hi. I want to build a new site that is optimised for a training product that we have. We have an existing domain which I'm considering pointing at this new site. This domain is one of the new .training TLDs. Let's call this domain foo.training where my main keyword to optimise for will be "foo training". I've also looked and can see that foo-training.com is available. I read up on best practices for domains here : https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain
My question is will the .training domain be seen as "spammy" in any way? Am I better to just go ahead and register the .com?
-
In terms of SEO, there are no penalties for using a gTLD. Technically you have an equal chance of ranking well for a keyword than those with .com domains. It comes down to preference, marketing and the SEO work you put in.
I can see the .training domain working well for marketing to a younger audience, it may be appealing and seem more modern. An older audience may be more accustomed and feel that .com domains are more professional.
Exact match keyword domains gained notoriety because they would often get great anchor text when people linked to their website. I don't see why you would have an issue with that because I would naturally link to the site as "Foo Training."
To answer your question plainly, no it won't be seen as spammy but the .com may seem more professional and credible to some users. I hope this helped make your decision easier.
-
Thanks for reply it's much appreciated. This is pretty much as I thought too and I understand that I don't need to have the keywords in the domain it's just for this particular use case, based on what i've seen from how competitors are ranking, i think it will generally help here.
I'm really interested to hear from others who may have used or had success with newer TLDs
-
Generally, the .com URLs are more common and therefore seen as more "normal" to users and more likely to be trusted.
It does not mean that the .training will not work, just that it is different and that may cause other issues outside of ranking. You may remember that when .info came onto the scene, it was used by spammers so much that now it has kind of a black cloud over it.
Of course the trick with the foo-training.com domain is that you have to make sure people put in the dash. Consider issues around what if they leave the dash out, should we overtly mention the dash to remind people (think radio and TV and other ads) etc etc etc.
Overall, remember that you do not have to have "foo training" in the URL to rank well. Yes, it can help, but it really does not give you the power it used to have in the old days due to people using it as a way to spam the search engines to get keyword rich anchor text.
I would lean towards the URL with the dash (if you think it will not confuse folks to have the dash) or see about getting another .com URL and getting your keyword in the slug or in other places. I would defer to other Moz folks to see if they have had much success with the newer TLDs.
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
-
Entire website is duplicated on 2 domains - what to do?
My client's website has 1000+ pages and a Domain Authority of 23. I have just discovered that the entire site is duplicated on a second domain (main URL = companyname.com - duplicate site URL = company-name.com). The home page of the duplicate domain has a 301 redirect going to the main domain. However, none of the 1000+ other pages have any redirect set up, so Google is indexing the entire duplicate site. I'm assuming this is a bad thing for SEO. Duplicate site has a domain Authority of 4, so I'd like to transfer whatever link juice it has, towards the main site. What's the best thing to do? Ultimately I think it would be best to delete the duplicate site. So would it be a case of adding a redirect to the htaccess file along the lines of: redirect company-name.com/?slug? to https://companyname.com/?slug? (I realise this isn't the correct syntax - but is the concept correct?) Has anyone ever dealt with this successfully?
Technical SEO | | BottleGreenWebsites0 -
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
Merging Domains
Hi, Everyone, My company is currently working with a client that has multiple websites and is interested in merging them into one. One is a primary corporate site, the other is a site for a single line of products. They obviously want to merge the product site into the corporate site. The interesting thing is that the product site outperforms the corporate site. It has the highest traffic, and it has far more links/linking domains, a higher domain authority (although only by two points), and much more social activity. However, their reasons for wanting to merge the two are completely valid - less management, URL would match print collateral, etc. They're asking our opinion on whether or not to move forward with the merger. I'm leaning toward no simply because of the fact that the site they want to merge is outperforming the other. I'm curious, though, to get some other opinions on this. Would a merger be worth the work in this case? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | PapercutInteractive0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
More than one web domain
Hi What is best when considering using more than one domain on a website, what the best policy ? it's a question I get asked a lot, usually because prior to any seo efforts the main domain name purchased is not keyword rich or an abbreviated company name etc. what impact do new domains have on SEO compared to older existing domains- is it worth changing a generic company named domain for a keyword rich domain? if having multiple domains pointing to the site is beneficial how best is it to configure? How do i inform Google? How do both domains get index when there is only one physical site? How should i monitor it, Analytic s, SEO moz? Will the domain compete against each other and effect SEO rank? Are they best used for marketing purposes on external sites, adverts driving traffic to the main site. I'm aware there are lots of questions above, any answers/ opinions , links to further info would be greatly appreciated. cheers
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Domain authority and keyword difficulty
I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment. When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
My domain does not come in the search results, what do I do?
Hi, I have a website called www.bollykings.com It had a pretty solid rank on google for a number of keywords but 4-5 months back, it was badly affected by the Panda update. Now it comes nowhere. I have started updating and posting new articles on it since the last two months. When I search for "bollykings" on Google.com, website does not come only in the first 40 results. What could this mean?
Technical SEO | | modifyed0 -
Impact of moving all the domain from .net to .com
Hi, We are thinking of moving a domain from a .net extension to a .com because of internal political reason. It's a french website with 3 000 pages.The organic trafic is 65 % from France and 35 % from Canada. We have decent rankings and we have around 150 000 organic visits/month. For sure,if we move the site, we will do all the rigth 301 redirect. We will also use Google Webmaster Tools to tell the new location of the site. But even if we do all the best practices. What would be the impact of changing the extension. Is anyone had some experience with this ? I will really like to have your opinion on this. Thanks Rick
Technical SEO | | Adviso0