I’ve been asked the same question in almost every job I’ve been in.
“Mark, I can only buy .info (or some other TLD) because .com, .co.uk, .net and .org have already been taken. Are these any good?”
My answer is always
“Yes, why wouldn’t it be?”
The next questions is,
“but I’ve never seen a .info (or whatever) ranking. Surely they can’t be as good?”
To clarify, these newer domain types have been created to give you more choice when buying domain names for your project as most of the good .com’s etc. has already been snapped up and often squatted on by other people. The reason you’ve probably not seen any of these domains ranking is more than likely due to the type of people buying them.
Businesses still want a .com, .co.uk or other regional TLD whereas the SEO community will buy pretty much any domain name that’s an exact match for a keyword due to this type of domain being rankable with only 10%of the effort you would put into a branded domain. The sad thing is that many of these exact match domains are under used, not even achieving the hundred or so unique links needed to get them ranking for their keywords. As a result they don’t appear to compete on page one of Google for any significantly competitive term.
It’s more a matter of effort than effectiveness.
Some of the newer TLD’s have certain bias i.e. .me, .me.uk and .name are all supposed to be for personal projects just like .org and .org.uk were supposed to be for not for profit organisations. However you can mostly forget that.
How can you make best use of one of these domains?
My advice is always to snap up as many exact match domains for your top performing keywords as possible and build a non-branded resource (your exact match domain should be your brand)|. Be careful to create content that doesn’t compete with the hone page’s target keyword and get your website to around 100 pages of content. Then cherry pick some links by using Open Site Explorers competitor backlink data and you should start seeing your new domain ranking pretty quickly. Think of them like lead gen sites. They should answer questions and offer solutions to problems and NOT be sales tools. You can of course add in a contact form or “if you need help call…” call to action in your header however I would encourage you to remove commercial intent from your content.
By reading this post i understand what kind of domain i get and i know many new things like how can I make best use of one of domains. Thank you for this.
Only 10%of the effort when I would put into a branded domain. This is really true. you can want to say we can get much effect by non branded domain??. …!!!
Thank you for reminding the masses to not be afraid of the various TLDs. THey were initially created not only to fill in for the claimed .com domains, but also to inform about the type of website, be it .org for organizations or .info for schools and other institutions. The .me is also rising, and is becoming more widely accepted. Did you hear about the possibility for people to personalize their TLDs? They are talking about things like ‘mycompany.seo’.
Hi Marie,
Thanks for the comment. I think SEO’s need to be careful. Just a few weeks ago Google removed all .co.cc domains from their listings as this was being predominently used by spammers!
I think you’re getting mixed up with the ‘personalised’ TLD’s. Whats going to happen is businesses like Nike will be able to register the TLD .nike and have all their properties as extensions of that. Theres talk of the cost of getting your own brand TLD of being in the tens of thousands of pounds which puts it out of the grasp of smaller businesses and individuals. Theyve decided to do this to protect brand properties and curve spam.
I think the .seo domain wont be around for a long time to come… but you never know.
I generally prefer domain containing main keywords or atleast highlighting my business.
But well established SEO strategy is the key to success in high ranking. Your continuous efforts for make your website visible will boost your ranking and profit.
Good explanation regarding the newer TLD’s, I was actually also afraid of picking those because you almost never notice any of these when checking competition on a given keyword.
But it makes sense after reading your post.
Best regards
Mark
For search engine optimization perspective, i don’t think there is big change in .info, .name etc.. domains compared to .com, .net domains. People usually prefer to register .com and such TLDs compared to .info etc as per stats of domain registration. I think, that’s reason why we see lots of .com, .net or .org in SERPs. People are obsessed with them and even visitors who visit website trust such domains more over .info and .tel.
It’s been great to know about the us of newer TLD’s. Liked the post shared. Appreciated!