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
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
-
International Country URL Structure
Hey Guys, We have a www.site.com (gTLD) site, the primary market in Australia. We want to expand to US and UK. For the homepage, we are looking to create 3 new subfolders which are: site.com/au/ site.com/uk/ site.com/us/ Then if someone visits the site.com redirect based on their ip address to to the correct location. We are also looking to setup hreflang tags between the 3 sub-folders and set geo-location targeting in google search console at sub-folder level. Just wondering if this setup sounds ok for international SEO? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pladcarl90 -
Similar product descriptions but with different urls
I had this question before and was not fully satisfied with the answer.. We are selling adhesives and some of the products have the same name and description, the only thing that separates them are the width on the roll.. Are old/online setup are as following, each product has its own product page with more or less the same description. For example here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-100/ and here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-150/ The above product pages are for a product called Fentrim 2. its availiable in widhts from 75 to 300mm.. so, its six diffent products pages with more or less the same description. The other variations of the products besides the width. are Fentrim 20, Fentrim IS 2 and Fentrim IS 20. So this gives us 6 x Fentrim 20 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes. 6 x Fentrim 2 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes. 6 x Fentrim IS 20 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes. 6 x Fentrim IS 2 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes. I get that this can cause us problems in the terms of duplicate content. The plan that we have now is to have 4 different product pages with variations instead. For each of those for product pages we have well written and unique content. And have the old ones 301 redirected to them. Like this http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2 http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-20 http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-IS-2 http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-IS-20 Today we gain traffic from one product page per variation and it seems that google has picked those ones out randomly, see the attached screenshot.. Will we loose rank? will this increase our position, whats your ideas? // Jonas PG4aAcM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knubbz0 -
My client wants to rebrand their company including URL...
Hi all! An easy one for probably most of you. I have a client who wants to re-brand their business name and also match their URL to the new name. Their current domain name URL has been out there for over 5 years, and the site is performing quite well in search. Switching to a new URL will obviously be a very bad thing, but what are the options? newname.com redirect to the aged oldname.com, but when they are on the site, or when they find them in search, the oldname.com has nothing to do with the new brand. Or should we 301 every page of the oldname.com site to the newname.com be good enough? What is recommended? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
URL errors in Google Webmaster Tool
Hi Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found. By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them. One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix? There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help. Many thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5551 -
International URL Puzzle
Hello, I have 4 different URL's going to 4 different countries that all contain the same content and Google is seeing them as duplicate pages. For ecommerce reasons I have to have these 4 pages separated. Here is a example of the pages below so you can see the URL structure: www.example/com/canada www.example.com/australia www.example.com/usa www.example.com/UK How do I fix this duplicate content problem? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalops0 -
How to Resolve Duplication of HTTPS & HTPP URLs?
Right now, I am working on eCommerce website. [Lamps Lighting and More] I can find out both URLs in website as follow. HTTP Version: http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ HTTPS Version: https://www.lampslightingandmore.com/ I have check one of my competitor who has implemented following canonical on both pages. Please, view source code for both URLs. http://www.wayfair.com ** https://www.wayfair.com** Then, I checked similar thing in SEOmoz website. 🙂 Why should I not check in SEOmoz because, They are providing best SEO information so may be using best practice to deal with HTTPS & HTTP. LOL I tried to load following URL so it redirect to home page. https://www.seomoz.org is redirecting to http://www.seomoz.org But, following URL is not redirecting any where as well as not set canonical over there. https://www.seomoz.org/users/settings I can find out following code on http://www.seomoz.org/robots.txt **User-agent: *** ** Disallow: /api/user?*** So, I am quite confuse to solve issue. Which one is best 301 redirect or canonical tag? If any live example to see so that's good for me and make me more confident.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
SEO Strategy for URL Change
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together. Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_KS0 -
Should I shorten my urls?
For my informational site I have a lot of urls that are way too long. When I first created the site, I wrote a script that takes out the common words of a post and fashions a url. So, for example, if the first few words of a question were: Hi there, I have a question about back pain. I'm wondering what drugs would be good for relief and how I can get some help? then my url may be: www.mydomain.com/question?id=123-question-back-pain-wondering-drugs-good-relief-how-get-some-help Once I got learning about seo I realized that these urls were too long but I never did anything about them. Should I be shortening these, or is my time best spent doing something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes2