.info domains

[Cinda]

Hi,

Are .info domains useful for SEO? I have noticed that a niche keyphrase is available as an info

If for example I was looking to optimize for christmas cakes.

would buying a domain named : christmas-cakes.info help me.

I have also seen a .com premium domain. Again - would

christmas-cakes.com be worth having (assuming it was within budget )

How would I drive traffice to my site - would it be a redirect or a DNS thing?

Thank you

[be strong]

dot com is worth more for resale value and ranking higher for the search engines

I don't see to many dot info's rank first page on google

i see more hyphen dot com's in both paid traffic and seo

from my experience blahblah-blah.com is worth more than blahblah-blah.info

you can drive traffic to your site by article marketing and seo by targeting long phrase keywords that is related to your main keyword

make sure you have enough volume for the keyword and check for the strength of competition(SOC) on page one if your keywords are not to competitive

[bannor32]

dot-com is superior for branding, for resale value, and is much easier for the casual internet user to remember.

Whether or not it is superior for ranking in search engines is the matter of much debate, and I haven't seen definitive proof one way or the other. .info domains are commonly associated with spam sites because they are so cheap, but that doesn't mean that they are penalized by Google when it comes to ranking.

Either way, I highly recommend paying the extra money and get the dot-com domain, even if you have to include hyphens to have your domain name match your targeted keyword phrase.

[Cinda]

Thanks for this.

Regarding hyphens. Is that bad?

Which is better. Dogs and Cats

dogsandcats.com or dog-and-cats.com -> purpley for seo use.

Also when using google via FF - sometimes your search phrase is suggested/auto completed as you type.

Should you stick to what is suggested or stick to what you actually wanted to type.

Hope that last part makes sense.

[Craig McPherson]

Originally Posted by be strong

I don't see to many dot info's rank first page on google

True, but some do with a fair amount of success

[bgmacaw]

Theoretically, the domain extension doesn't have a noticible impact on SEO except in the case of some, but not all, country specific extensions (co.uk) for local search traffic. In general, the site with the mo' better links wins.

Often keyword targeted names .coms have been scooped up by domainers who don't develop the site nor do they develop links to it. This makes it easy to rank for low to medium competition terms with a .info domain. In cases where there's an established .com with links galore, it will be a lot more difficult.

In practice, a new .info faces a serious SEO hurdle. Google has been outsourcing anti-spam efforts to various companies. They give almost all newly registered .info's a cursory (about 10-30 seconds) quality scan on the index page. If your site looks like an affiliate site when this review is done, you're deindexed. This means if you're doing eBay ads/feeds, Amazon ads/feeds or 'reviewing' Clickbank products on your index page you will be deindexed.

[be strong]

Originally Posted by Craig McPherson

True, but some do with a fair amount of success

i typed your name on google Craig and only see a dot net on page one for searching BROAD keyword term Craig McPherson..

where is the dot info in page 1

[be strong]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Theoretically, the domain extension doesn't have a noticible impact on SEO except in the case of some, but not all, country specific extensions (co.uk) for local search traffic. In general, the site with the mo' better links wins.

Often keyword targeted names .coms have been scooped up by domainers who don't develop the site nor do they develop links to it. This makes it easy to rank for low to medium competition terms with a .info domain. In cases where there's an established .com with links galore, it will be a lot more difficult.

In practice, a new .info faces a serious SEO hurdle. Google has been outsourcing anti-spam efforts to various companies. They give almost all newly registered .info's a cursory (about 10-30 seconds) quality scan on the index page. If your site looks like an affiliate site when this review is done, you're deindexed. This means if you're doing eBay ads/feeds, Amazon ads/feeds or 'reviewing' Clickbank products on your index page you will be deindexed.

how about affiliate links located in the inner pages...will google de-indexed that too?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by be strong

how about affiliate links located in the inner pages...will google de-indexed that too?

Not that I've seen. They only check the index page. The people doing this have a lot of sites to check and aren't given much time to review a site. If you use an ad delivery system to screen visitors this helps.

I do know that having PHPBay style eBay 'boxes' on your index page or the typical 3 product review site for Clickbank products is the "kiss of death"

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by sequencehosting

Although I don't agree that all tld's are the same SEO wise. Only Google knows the answer to that.

They've publicly stated said that they view them the same in their ranking algorithms, but, yes, they could be less than transparent about this.

[zcx]

In practice, a new .info faces a serious SEO hurdle......This means if you're doing eBay ads/feeds, Amazon ads/feeds or 'reviewing' Clickbank products on your index page you will be deindexed.

I have a few .infos, all of which have Amazon on the front page, showing up on the first page of the SERPS for their keywords. Some of them are domains-with-hyphens.info, some are domainswithouthyphens.info. Index page in some cases, inside pages in other cases. My .infos really haven't performed any differently from my .nets or .coms, and the ones without hyphens have done no better than the ones with hyphens. I've read a million posts about how that's totally wrong and .infos and domains with hyphens are a bad idea, but it hasn't worked that way for me at all.

[jayveen]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Not that I've seen. They only check the index page. The people doing this have a lot of sites to check and aren't given much time to review a site. If you use an ad delivery system to screen visitors this helps.

I do know that having PHPBay style eBay 'boxes' on your index page or the typical 3 product review site for Clickbank products is the "kiss of death"

Do you have sources for this information? I haven't read anywhere else about Google using human readers to "Yay/Nay" a site.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by jayveen

Do you have sources for this information? I haven't read anywhere else about Google using human readers to "Yay/Nay" a site.

Personal experience and the experiences of other people I trust. PM me if you want details.

As for the outsourced webspam inspections, there was a leaked PDF floating around a while ago ago describing the job and what constituted a web spam site: [PDF] Leaked Google Quality Rater Guidelines

[Craig McPherson]

Originally Posted by be strong

i typed your name on google Craig and only see a dot net on page one for searching BROAD keyword term Craig McPherson..

where is the dot info in page 1

Type in

free money making website

As I said, I have toggled in the top 5 for yonks now.
It is a PR2 site with pr3 and 4's below me and they also have a boatload more backlinks than me.

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by zcx

In practice, a new .info faces a serious SEO hurdle......This means if you're doing eBay ads/feeds, Amazon ads/feeds or 'reviewing' Clickbank products on your index page you will be deindexed.

I have a few .infos, all of which have Amazon on the front page, showing up on the first page of the SERPS for their keywords. Some of them are domains-with-hyphens.info, some are domainswithouthyphens.info. Index page in some cases, inside pages in other cases. My .infos really haven't performed any differently from my .nets or .coms, and the ones without hyphens have done no better than the ones with hyphens. I've read a million posts about how that's totally wrong and .infos and domains with hyphens are a bad idea, but it hasn't worked that way for me at all.

Agreed, no difference among my .com, .info, .org, or .nets. All depends on the niche, and backlinks. I've outranked .nets and .coms with my .infos, both exact match. It does seem the .info has a slightly longer index time, but that's it. Works fine, and I love pissing off people that buy up all the .coms and .nets thinking we'll all cave in and pay $300 each. I don't think so, I'd rather add three dashes and the word store at the end or something.

[kimperino1985]

Originally Posted by Cinda

Hi,

Are .info domains useful for SEO? I have noticed that a niche keyphrase is available as an info

If for example I was looking to optimize for christmas cakes.

would buying a domain named : christmas-cakes.info help me.

I have also seen a .com premium domain. Again - would

christmas-cakes.com be worth having (assuming it was within budget )

How would I drive traffice to my site - would it be a redirect or a DNS thing?

Thank you

Go for .com as people normally search for .com

[tjcocker]

Really, it depends on what you want to do.

If you're making a niche site, and plan on being in the top 3 results, then it doesn't matter. Nobody is going to pass over your site because of the TLD.

If it's for an existing business, or if you want something that's memorable because you want to start a brand name website that will go viral, then get .com.

[verbose]

If I can I like grabbing both com and info. I use as a main site info gets some re written PLR. If the info does well I add it as a feeder in my back link strategy

[paulgl]

Craig McPherson . info

Craig McPherson, that's pretty damn good to be on
the first page of google. Puts yet another nail in the
coffin to the myth about keyword domains.

I'll say it for the 1,000th time. Websites are ranked,
not domains. You can take xyz.com and rank it for
ANY keyword you wish.

If Craig McPherson can take CraigMcPherson.info to
the top of the charts for free money making site,
I guess that really blows that myth out of the water.

When I do it it gets in at #4. So, where does that leave
the believers in domain name is something to worry over?
Outranked, once again, I'd say.

Paul

[TimTyus]

dot com will always rank better in search engines not sure why but i never see a info site on top

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

This means if you're doing eBay ads/feeds, Amazon ads/feeds or 'reviewing' Clickbank products on your index page you will be deindexed.

So do mfa's get a pass then since it's pushing something google sells, or are they doing no evil across the board?

I agree the sites you mention are low quality, but so are many of the sites with adsense on them. Hell if we're honest probably 95% of our sites are low quality crap, but then that's what IM is really about.

[WareTime]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Craig McPherson . info

Craig McPherson, that's pretty damn good to be on
the first page of google. Puts yet another nail in the
coffin to the myth about keyword domains.

I'll say it for the 1,000th time. Websites are ranked,
not domains. You can take xyz.com and rank it for
ANY keyword you wish.

If Craig McPherson can take CraigMcPherson.info to
the top of the charts for free money making site,
I guess that really blows that myth out of the water.

When I do it it gets in at #4. So, where does that leave
the believers in domain name is something to worry over?
Outranked, once again, I'd say.

Paul

Look at his backlink profile. Pretty easy to tell where the link are coming from. May have to use that service myself as it obviously works.

Yes you can rank any site for any word. If you wanna rank a five page mini site for a keyword while doing virtually no work, you buy a keyword domain. If you are willing to work you can rank any site for anything.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by TimTyus

dot com will always rank better in search engines not sure why but i never see a info site on top

Do a search for 'regular expression' and related keyword terms.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by WareTime

So do mfa's get a pass then since it's pushing something google sells, or are they doing no evil across the board?

It would be nice to have concrete proof that Adsense sites get a pass on this. I'm sure the US Justice Department could find a use for that information.

But, they seem to get a pass from what I have heard. I haven't launched any new Adsense sites on a .info domain for a while so I don't know from personal experience in this case.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by TimTyus

dot com will always rank better in search engines not sure why but i never see a info site on top

Why do some people never read the replies before posting?

Want more proof?
How much traffic do you think a search for pr checker gets?
Guess what site is numero uno? prchcecker.info
Hmmmmmmmmm. Once again, I guess those people did not get
the memo on needing a dot com.

In fact, I'll bet prchecker may out rank just about anything for
pagerank checker, etc. That dot info seems to be the mother
of all do infos

Can I repeat, dot info?

Take any domain, and rank it. Period.

Paul

[geekology]

Theoratically there shouldn't be any difference between any TLD's if we just go by what Google guys say. An alarm bell rang when we found that one Google has accidently removed all info from their index for sometime. I'm sure they must be upto something with .info.

I have invested in a couple of infos earlier but nowadays I ALWAYS prefer to go with .com

[seo_submission]

(dot)com is more good instead of (dot)info for SEO Well for sale it would be more costlier and you can get more price for it. Though (dot)com is costly to purchase but in future price is more.

[AlexKei]

I have a couple of Adsense sites in the fist 10 results on Google and they are both .info

I have the same domain but in .com, with different content and about the same amount of SEO work and it is on page 5.

The extenstion is not important for the Ranking. It has been proved.

Regards,

Alex.