Impact of .us vs .com on SEO rankings?
-
Our website is hosted on www.discovered.us. I have 2 questions:
1: we have had regular feedback a .us domain is negative in SEO and in conversion (customers don't like it). We are thinking of changing domain to: www.dscvrd.com.
Any insights on the impact on our rankings (if any) if we do this?2: we are focusing our SEO global / USA first but conversions in UK are better. We currently do not have multi-language SEO setup. What would the impact be of implementing www.discovered.co.uk on SEO in UK?
Thanks!
Gijsbert
-
If you change your domain then expect your rankings and traffic to drop significantly for at least a short period of time (a few months is likely). You'll need to set up 301 redirects from the old domain to the new, pointing to relevant replacement URLs on the new domain; .us/how-to-redirect => .com/how-to-redirect
The .us domain will help focus on a US market, though a .com will also do the same. The differences is a .com is also international, so users from the UK, France, etc may still feel comfortable dealing with a .com domain, but may not with a .us one.
The most important thing in terms of SEO is the users' experience in finding the answer to their query; too many people focus on using '-' in their URL in order to get the perfect, keyword rich domain, but Google actually looks for the speed and efficiency in which you can answer a query for "easier routes from IL to KY".
.com, .net, .org. They're all pretty much the same in terms of value; they're all TLDs. The key difference in them is how your users react to them; a charity/public service website may see better results by using a .org for example, but a multinational corporation would likely only settle for .com or .net.
-
Thanks James.
Is there any research or data to support this?
For us, it would mean implementing dscvrd.com for the USA market. Quite a change and want to make sure this is the best way to go.
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
-
Multiple service area pages that rank well. However the primary keyword page tends to bounce around between the pages. How can I stabalise the ranking to the primary page
We have multiple service area pages attached to the primary keyword for the site which arent in the navigation and we have the primary page which is in the navigation. Currently Google is choosing different service area pages to rank for the primary keyword so the rankings bounce around a lot for the keyword when it doesn't have a service area target in it. Eg work shirts vs work shirts brisbane.
Local Website Optimization | | jonathan.k0 -
Getting the Proper CCTLDs & Subdomains to Rank in the Proper Countries
We seem to be having a really difficult time getting Google to do what we want in regards to getting proper domains indexed in the proper countries. In regards to English language, we tend to see a tremendous amount of crossover between .com, .in, and .co.uk. And yes international targeting is put in place. For example, both our .com and co.uk websites are in english and when someone enters a search query for one of our particular products, the .com website shows up to users in the UK. The countries with the hardest time are as follows and typically find them competing primarily with .com, but others can interlope as well. **All primarily in English: ** Canada UK India Australia Any ideas on how we can get this aligned correctly to where we can get the proper CCTLD to show up in the correct country instead of the .com?
Local Website Optimization | | GregLB0 -
Roller Coaster Rankings
Hi All! I'm an experienced SEO freelancer trying to help a company achieve great SEO results 🙂 I optimized a lot of pages which helped the site start ranking, but now some keywords are flying up and down seemingly at random. For example, one keyword went from #11 to under #50! Is it a bad sign when there is instability in the keywords? Should I be seeing some "settling down'' on my dear keywords? If there is no settling, any suggestions?
Local Website Optimization | | Rachel_J0 -
Theory: Local Keywords are Hurting National Rankings?
I've read a good amount here and in other blog posts about strategies for national brands to rank locally as well with local landing pages, citations, etc. I have noticed something strange that I'd like to hear if anyone else is running into, or if anyone has a definitive answer for. I'm looking at a custom business printing company where the products can and are often shipped out of state, so it's a national brand. On each product page, the client is throwing in a few local keywords near where the office is to help rank for local variations. When looking at competitors that have a lower domain authority, lower volume of linking root domains, less content on the page, and other standard signals, they are ranking nationally better than the client. The only thing they're doing that could be better is bolding and throwing in the page keyword 5-10 times (which looks unnatural). But when you search for keyword + home city, the client ranks better. My hypothesis is that since the client is optimizing product pages for local keywords as well as national, it is actually hurting on national searches because it's seen as local-leaning business. Has anyone run into this before, or have a definitive answer?
Local Website Optimization | | Joe.Robison2 -
Call Tracking numbers effect on Local SEO
Hello Mozzers! With the importance of homogeneous NAP information on Local SEO, could using Call Tracking numbers have a negative effect? Is it better to use Javascript to place the number, or to hard code it? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
Subdomain versus Subfolder for Local SEO
Hello Moz World, I'm wanting to know the best practices for utilizing a subdomain versus a subfolder for multi location businesses, i.e. miami.example.com vs. example.com/miami; I would think that that utilizing the subdomain would make more sense for a national organization with many differing locations, while a subfolder would make more sense for a smaller more nearby locations. I wanted to know if anyone has any a/b examples or when it should go one way or another? Thank you, Kristin Miller
Local Website Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0 -
SEO for a homepage... What do you put? Focus on the brand or products?
Hi to all. Ok so I am curious how to format and seo a website homepage? This question is more in the way of dedicated towards how to rank locally if you have multiple services? See I have a construction website and we have many services. So do you try and format the homepage to promote the brand, or do you go after the services? Like would you say hey we are this company we serve here and here, and basically make it an about us page? or do you say hey this is who we are, but say we do this, that, and the other? I am afraid that although I have a webpage for each service, if the main url gets the link juice right now, how should a homepage be? Thank you for any tips or suggestions. Chris
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0