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Country specific domain vs. dot com?

by HighContrast
9 replies
Hi all,

First of, please excuse my not-so-perfect English.

I've been wondering about domain names, and whether it's better to go with country specific domains or .com domains in regards to SEO.

A) Say you had a website about hotel listings in Spain, and the audience was foreigners that were planning to visit the country, would you rather pick spainhotels.es or spainhotels.com?

B) I'm guessing that the .com is better, but how about hotels.es vs spainhotels.com? Is shorter better, or would it be better to include the country name in the domain, in terms of SEO?

C) Most of the time, good .com domains are not available for registration, so what if you had to choose between spainhotels.es and something like welcometospain.com?


Similarly, norwayjobs.no vs norwayjobs.com (if it was intended for foreigners seeking a job in Norway)? jobs.no vs norwayjobs.com? norwayjobs.no vs norwayjoblistings.com?


On to another question, now only focusing on .com domains: Is using numbers instead of letters in domain names a very bad idea, even if it means that you can pick a much shorter domain? Would you rather choose something like b00kclub.com or bookloversclub.com? c00king.com vs blissfulcooking.com?


I appreciate your input.

Thanks.
#country #domain #dot #specific
  • Profile picture of the author ChrisBa
    I personally prefer .com whenever I can. With that being said, I have used country domains before.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex The Lion
    I personally prefer .com also and regarding numbers, especially in the way your examples demonstrate, I would highly recommend avoiding them. It is plain confusing and will make your marketing efforts overly complex.
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  • Profile picture of the author floydarthur
    I only want .com unless the domain on country specific is a rare keyword with high searches and few competition.

    Floyd Arthur
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I always like ".com". This is what people are used to.

    Even though specific domain extensions are new now, people still find ".com" to be more trustworthy. It's like trying to sell the benefits of IPv6 addresses vs IPv4 addresses. IPv6 will be the standard soon, but no average consumer can recognize an IPv6 address when they see it, and darn sure can't comprehend it.
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    ==>> Free book reveals make money with affiliate marketing
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    • Profile picture of the author HighContrast
      Thank you for the replies.

      Yeah, I suspected .com was the way to go whenever possible. I guess for majority of people, .com holds the most trust.

      Personally, I would always choose .com over generic domains such as .club or .social etc. I would also avoid country specific domains when the content has nothing to do with the country, which is usually the case with .co (Colombia) and .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) for example.

      However, living in a small country in Europe, and thus being used to visiting country specific domains on daily bases, I would not necessarily click .com in the examples I gave in the first post. For me, if I was seeking a job in Norway (I'm not from Norway), I think I would be inclined to click '.no' rather than '.com'. Reason being that '.no' was more likely to be run by local people familiar with the local job market, while '.com' was more likely to be run by some internet marketer who had never been to Norway, and was just scraping other job sites.

      Same goes for 'hotels.es' vs 'spainhotels.com'. I would feel like '.es' was more likely to include small establishments that were not listed on the worldwide booking sites while '.com' was more likely to be an affiliate site for some big site such as expedia.com.

      But I guess I'm an "exception to the rule", and most people would indeed click '.com' in a blink. I'm just wondering how Google weights these things. Maybe it doesn't really matter.

      I assume country specific domains are better suited when targeting local people, typically in the local language.

      Cheers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marked09
    Like what others prefer, I also liked .com domains. based on my experience .com or country specific domains is not one of the main reason why your website will rank.

    Some country specific domain will still rank on other countries if google thinks that it is relevant to the topic. (or other SEO factors)
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  • Profile picture of the author wordpressmania
    It is 2015 and still people think a website means a dot com site.

    So I would go with dot com domain.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alex II
      I'm from europe too and I see your point.

      What language will the site be in?
      If it's spanish go with .es
      My mother tongue is german and I would not visit any german website that has a .com domain, that'd be just silly.

      To your two examples I'd go with a .com domain for the hotel site in spain, but for the jobs in norway you might want to get the .no domain.

      However, at the end of the day you need to know who your target audience is.
      If you are looking for american tourists travelling to spain get the .com, but if you are looking to target european travellers you might get away with the .es domain.(but the you should have a spanish version of the site...)
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  • Profile picture of the author luciesmazanska
    fisrt what you should to do is read there 3 articles!
    I learned there a lot:
    How do you value an online business?
    How much is my website worth?
    Domain Name Appraisal Guide

    Regarding to your issue: if your visitors are from all around the world then I would focus on .com domains, if you have a small business in spain, for locals and people living in spain country then I would focus on .es domain.
    Remember that .com domain looks more professional and are really good for international business,
    Its ever better to make your domain as short as possible regarding to memorizing and simple to write. For SEO and "type traffic" is good choose domains including hotel, hotels, holiday and so on to brings more targeted traffic and make it more self marketable.

    CONCLUSION:
    In your case I would choose .com domain, which will be short and easy o memorable. Whether it will include some target keyword inside or not....generally it doesnt matter so much.

    In your second question..as I said IT NEEDS TO BE EASY TO MEMORABLE and EASY TO TYPE into searching, so domains like b00king, are really bad idea and finally LOOKS UNPROFESSIONAL if you wouldike to build your brand.
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    ★★★★★
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