Which formation is best for SEO?

[MAllie]

Can anyone tell me, where XX are two keywords, which formation is better for parking from a SEO point of view:

bestXX.com

or

XX.info

[Tom K.]

If you have same content and same SEO on either name, there is no difference. You will have to consider user perception for which name to go with.

[MAllie]

Thanks for the quick and helpful response, ecafe.

Another related question, which you or someone else might have an opinion on: which looks more hopeful in keyword terms, a phrase for which Google turns up 651,000 pages but only a couple of ads on the first, or a phrase for which Google turns up just a few hundred pages but with all the first ones having ads?

[savegas]

google likes .com name better then .info should help with SEO for X X search
Should help a lot for best X X search

[MAllie]

Thanks, savegas.

[Eraser]

google likes .com name better then .info should help with SEO for X X search
Should help a lot for best X X search

It's a false statement. What DomainerScript said is true.

[MAllie]

Thanks, Eraser. I guess you mean it's a mistaken statement?

Thanks to you also, DomainerScript - I seem to have addressed you by the wrong ID earlier.

[Eraser]

Yep

[draggar]

Has anyone ever tested this theory?

A few domains, say

keyword.info (or some off TLD)
(adjective)keyword.com
unrelated/jibberish.com (just for fun)

Identical sites up to see which ranked best with Google and if it was consistent? Too bad Google dings for duplicate content.

As for the domains, any non-.com domain will help out the .com since many people tend to type in .com so you may be better of with bestkeywords.com but if it is a really good keyword set, I'd also get the .info and point it to the .com

[Tom K.]

Thanks to you also, DomainerScript - I seem to have addressed you by the wrong ID earlier.

You're very welcome, MAllie. No you didn't address me by the wrong username. My username has been changed in the last few days, formerly ecafe, to reflect our complete support of our flagship product and service to the domainer community: Domainer Script. For the curious, more info here.

All the best in your SEO efforts.

Regards,
Tom

[MAllie]

Ah, that's good, Tom. I thought for a while it was another senior moment.

That would be an interesting experiment, Ed. I might try it when I have the necessary skills.

[Wire]

If you can get a real great quality X .info that perfectly matches your product, then that's great. However if you can also get a very nice X X .com that perfectly matches your product, I might prefer the latter. Reason being as draggar stated, users will auto-key-in and expect a dot com. It will take more time for them to remember that you are a .info and you will lose some return traffic with confused users who automatically type in .com. So at the very least, make sure the X .com which matches your X .info isn't a competing product or you'll be in double trouble.

[spietreser]

Why not get both the .com and the .info? Then redirect one to the other. Do NOT put the same website on both domains though!

Like said, the search engines do not have a real preference for extension, so to my current knowledge it makes no difference which domain you use as the main domain.

Hope this helps.

[clasione]

I second the .com preference with Google...... I feel pretty confident that Google will rank a .com higher than a .info ---- I have many .coms, and several good .info's.... The .info's all do terrible in comparison. Remember than 99 cent .info's are often registered for spam and were once given away for free... What would you rather give visibility to if you were a search engine algorithm technician?

[Keyword Factory]

How does anyone here know whether google considers the extension or not as part of their calculation of rank?

[clasione]

To think that Google would not consider something like this...... ahh forget it.....

[loredan]

Domain's extension won't affect your SERPS at all. Try getting the most relevant keywords for what you are planning to develop.

The story with the .com better than other extension it's just...a story. Try building a clean and useful site and people will come back.

Years ago there were loads of .com's comparing with other extensions, that's why people used to say they won't remember if you're on a .net or .info. Nowadays with so many extensions available, visitors became a bit more "educated" in terms of domain extensions plus there are so many bookmarking tools around they won't need to remember the URL...just bookmark the page and come back.

As I said...try building a useful resource and work to rank your website a high as possible...people will come regardless of your domain extension.

Hope this helps

Thanks

[DropWizard.com]

Search engines are indifferent to the extension unless it is a country code and the query comes from that country. The cctld gets some precedence then.

I would normally go with the direct keywords .info myself

EXCEPT

.info prices were so cheap that a lot of spammers moved into the territory and google had quite a time with them. Even killed all the info domains for a short period once. I understand there is a "penalty" applied for a .info until the site proves otherwise. ( I can't remember where I read this)

So buy both, put great content on both because you can never be #1 all the time in the SE's and that gives you two sites to shoot with. Call it "doubling down"

[gwkg]

Search Engines have diminished the value of keywords in the domain as a ranking factor.

It still helps with CTR, which does help your ranking, so whichever "formation" you think will get people to click would be the best.

From my real world experience Google does look differently at .info domains. It takes a lot more work/time to establish trust for your site.

I doubt you will find any .info domains ranking on the first page of Google that do not have at least a year of reg time and significant backlinks. The same cannot be said of .com domains.

About 6 months back I set up a BANS site on 3 separate domains: .info, .us and .com. No extra content added, only a privacy policy. Its been said that BANS sites with no added content are considered spam by Google, so deindexing was very likely.

The .info was deindexed within a month.
The .us was deindexed around 4 months.
The .com has 240 pages indexed.

Variables that I should have kept the same was that I didn't install Google Analytics on the .com and I put Adsense on the .us. (My original intention wasn't to test Google indexing)

I may run this test again, keeping everything equal. No Adsense, No Google Analytics.

[seoguider1]

The first one with bestXX.com is the best according to SEO point of view as it not only contains your keyword but also has something which is searched wth the keyword

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