Url with hypen or.co?
-
Given a choice, for your #1 keyword, would you pick a .com with one or two hypens? (chicago-real-estate.com) or a .co with the full name as the url (chicagorealestate.co)?
Is there an accepted best practice regarding hypenated urls and/or decent results regarding the effectiveness of the.co?
Thank you in advance!
-
Hi Joe, this is for sure an awesome question, so many different point of views, the problem I see with .co is this one:
"Sites with country-coded top-level domains (such as .ie) are already associated with a geographic region, in this case Ireland. In this case, you won't be able to specify a geographic location."
Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=62399
So if I understand this correctly, and you want to target real estate clients in the Chicago area (which I love and will be there for the U2 concert on July 4th) and over US/worldwide, a .co domain is probably not the way to go here.
There has been a lot of talk about .co (TLD for Colombia), same as .ws, supposedly "WebSite", actually West Samoa, so I would advice to make the obvious, look at your competitors, does anyone has a .co domain and are ranking in Chicago? are any of the top 100 results anything but .com? try different keywords just to check if there are any .co sites ranking in the real estate market.
Hope that helps!
-
Thanks for the feedback. Thats the beauty of SEO. The only way to figure out what is the most effective is to try multiple ways and measure. Then, as soon as you get it and have a conclusion, the rules change...
-
At the risk of getting a bunch of thumbs down, between the choices you have specifically asked, I am going to throw in with the .co.
I think the issue is going to be how you promote the site, where you host it and where you get your links from.
If you host it in the USA and build a solid local link building campaign no one is going to have any trouble figuring out where you should be relevant. least of all the major search engines.
The other concern would be when someone tries to type in your url directly. However, There will be a tendency to automatically add an "m" to the end. But will that be any more of a problem then trying to get people to put a hyphen in the right place?
If people really find your site helpful, they'll just bookmark it in my experience.
-
Trust me when I say that I didn't think of the .co because of the Super Bowl ad.
I have heard mixed results on the .co but really haven't seen it in search results but I dont see to many hyphenated urls either. Maybe I will just add a word to the .com?
-
They had an ad in the superbowl, I've heard from 5 different clients about if they should buy the .co after that.
-
This link might help as well...
-
Completely disagree with you Korgo the average user doesn't even know there is a .co TLD that exists.
They have been available for a while, I spend a lot of time online through work and play and have never seen a site using one so not sure why you think they will take off if they haven't already despite virtually ever domain seller pushing them heavily last year.
-
I agree with James and would aim for one hyphen on the .com TLD. I did some unscientific user testing in this area and one hyphen was fine, 2 or more was a turn off for the user.
The same users expected a site to be .co.uk (I'm in the UK) or .com and some were confused by the existence of different TLD's wondering where the .co.uk or .com was and thinking the URL might not work without them.
-
I would pick hypenated over anything but .com. I would nt even use .net - .org is the only one I would consider for a true non-profit organisation.
I have some hyphenated domains for ecommerce websites, and have found no big problem with them personally. Of course go with non-hyphenated .com's if you can!
-
I don't like hyphens, but I don't like foreign domain extensions even more (Columbia!) despite what they say about it meaning "company", no, no. They pulled the same stunt with .me it's not on.
It depends how competitive the niche is and how much you want it. I have a feeling EMD won't be as strong in the coming months for long tail searches like this, but for now I guess it will give you the edge, what I'm trying to say is if you don't like the domain don't go with it, follow what you feel is most logical, as that is probably best for long term SEO success.The EMD benefit is nowhere near the same (in my exp) with hyphenated or foreign domains, don't get me wrong they are a benefit, but a .com, .org or net will always outrank (for now).
So in response to your question, If I was you I would buy them both (so comp. can't steal em' later), make them both blogs and get a nice brand-able domain for your business, use the two blogs as feeders for your business.
-
Thanks for your reply.
-
Thanks! I figured two hyphens wouldn't be a good idea but it's sure tempting.
-
According to the book The Art of SEO, my personal SEO bible, if you're not concerned with type-in-traffic, branding or name recognition, you don't need to worry about this. However to build a successful website long term you need to own the .com address and if you then want to use .co then the .com should redirect to it. According to the book, with the exception of the geeky, most people who use the web still assume that .com is all that's available or these are the domains that are most trustworthy. So don't lose traffic by having another address!
-
Hi Joe,
I wont go after 2 hyphens, usually if the .com is not available i go after a .net.
But in your case, i would go with a .co
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
-
Which URL should I choose when combining content?
I am combining content from two similar articles into one. URL 1 has a featured snippet and better URL structure, but only 5,000 page views in the last 6 month, and has 39 keywords ranking in the top 10. URL 2 has worse structure, but over 100k page views in the last 6 months, and 236 keywords in the top 10. Basically, I'm wondering if I keep the one with the better URL structure or the one with more traffic. The deleted URL will be redirected to whichever I keep.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curtis-yakketyyak0 -
Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?
Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this?
Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend.
Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
Chris Gorski0 -
Old URLs that have 301s to 404s not being de-indexed.
We have a scenario on a domain that recently moved to enforcing SSL. If a page is requested over non-ssl (http) requests, the server automatically redirects to the SSL (https) URL using a good old fashioned 301. This is great except for any page that no longer exists, in which case you get a 301 going to a 404. Here's what I mean. Case 1 - Good page: http://domain.com/goodpage -> 301 -> https://domain.com/goodpage -> 200 Case 2 - Bad page that no longer exists: http://domain.com/badpage -> 301 -> https://domain.com/badpage -> 404 Google is correctly re-indexing all the "good" pages and just displaying search results going directly to the https version. Google is stubbornly hanging on to all the "bad" pages and serving up the original URL (http://domain.com/badpage) unless we submit a removal request. But there are hundreds of these pages and this is starting to suck. Note: the load balancer does the SSL enforcement, not the CMS. So we can't detect a 404 and serve it up first. The CMS does the 404'ing. Any ideas on the best way to approach this problem? Or any idea why Google is holding on to all the old "bad" pages that no longer exist, given that we've clearly indicated with 301s that no one is home at the old address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxclever0 -
Domain.com/old-url to domain.com/new-url
HI, I have to change old url`s to new one, for the same domain and all landing pages will be the same: domain.com/old-url I have to change to: domain.com/new-url All together more than 70.000 url. What is best way to do that? should I use 301st redirect? is it possible to do in code or how? what could you please suggest? Thank you, Edgars
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edzjus3330 -
Short Url vs Medium Urls ?
Hello Moooooooooooz ! I got a SEO fight today and though the best would be to involve more people into the fight ! 😛 Do you think it's better to get A- company.com/services/service1.html or B- company/service1.html I was for A as services is also googled to find the service1. I also think that it's better to help google to understand where the service is on the website My friend was for B as URL has to stay as short as possible What do you think ? ps: I can create the URL I want using Joomla and Sh404. The websites has 4 different categoies: /about, /services/ products, /projects Tks ! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AymanH0 -
If I own a .com url and also have the same url with .net, .info, .org, will I want to point them to the .com IP address?
I have a domain, for example, mydomain.com and I purchased mydomain.net, mydomain.info, and mydomain.org. Should I point the host @ to the IP where the .com is hosted in wpengine? I am not doing anything with the .org, .info, .net domains. I simply purchased them to prevent competitors from buying the domains.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlittman0 -
Local language for folders in URLs?
Hi, We're working on a e-commerce project that will be launched in several countries. My question is this: Are there any advantages to name the URL-folders in the local language? Ie. International site: www.domain.com/product/adidas-model-x www.domain.com/category/adidas Norwegian site: www.domain.no/produkt/adidas-model-x www.domain.no/kategori/adidas As i like things tidy, I guess that would also mean we would have to rename the cart URLs and so on. ie. International site: www.domain.com/checkout Norwegian site: www.domain.no/kasse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rtora0 -
Help me choose a new URL structure
Good morning SEOMoz. I have a huge website, with hundreds of thousands of pages. The websites theme is mobile phone downloads. I want to create a better URL structure. Currently an example url is /wallpaper/htc-wildfire-wallpapers.html My issue with this, first and foremost is it's a little spammy, for example the fact it's in a wallpaper folder, means I shouldn't really need to be explicit with the filename, as it's implied. Another issue arises with the download page. For example /wallpaper/1234/file-name-mobile-wallpaper.html Again it's spammy but also the file ID, is at folder level, rather than within the filename. Making the file deeper and loses structure. I am considering creating sub domains, based on model, to ensure a really tight silo. i.e htc.domain.com/wallpaper/wildfire/ and the download page would be htc.domain.com/wallpaper/file-name-id/ But due to restrictions with the CMS, this would involve a lot of work and so I am considering just cleaning up the url structure without sub domains. /wallpaper/htc/wildfire/ and the download page would be /wallpaper/file-name-id/ What are your thoughts? Somebody suggested having the downloads in no folder at all, but surely it makes sense for a wallpaper, to be in a wallpaper folder and an app to be in an app folder? If they were not in a folder, I'd need to be more explicit in the naming of the files. Any advice would be awesome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0