I'm thinking of starting a new site. I want to know if the other domain names apart from .com, .net, .org and .co.uk are worth bothering with?

 

Has webname.me or webname.info got as good a chance as the other ones or do the search engines ignore them?

 

Also, there's a new domain name - webname.uk.com . Its much more expensive and it seems to be a server within the www.uk.com domain. Do search engines like it?

Looking at reports and data others have compiled the strongest correlation is with (and read this carefully) exact match .com domains - i.e. you want 'chineserestaurantsedinburgh.com' to reach 'chinese restaurants edinburgh' entered into search engines.

 

Other domains don't have such a strong correlation, but if your site has 'chinese' in the domain and the site's content is about chinese food, traditions, service etc then that adds to the effective relevance that site has to things chinese.

 

If local SEO is important then get the place name in if you can, but this is not restrictive. If you have to have:

 

www.chineserestaurants.me.uk/manchester

 

then go with that because you've still got a place name and your keywords in there.

 

(although having said that .me.uk usually infers personal website, so don't do that one... .com.uk I wouldn't argue with)

 

And if local SEO is important - i.e. you need to be marked out as a UK business as this is your primary target, then get a .com.uk or .co.uk or .org.uk as this can (slightly) help.

 

Ultimately, as it currently stands, you can win with any domain if you look at competitors, create a relevant site useful to humans visitors, get strong, quality links from relevant sources, if possible with keywords in the link text, then what you have in your domain doesn't have to matter.

 

Remember if what you pick will have to be used in other contexts - email signatures, business cards, letterheads etc, a long domain can unprofessional.

 

I hope this helps.

I will suggest you to go for .com domain if you are targeting clients from all over the world but if your business focus is to be based on demographic factor, for eg. for canada only then go for .ca extension,Always remember extension matters a lot. Choosing a best domain name will work like a boost. Secondly, keep your domain similar to keyword or phrase you are targeting to.

Your domain name is very important to SEO, but the extension is not so much. Its proberbly counts less than 1% compared to onpage SEO and backlinks!

Well that could be expensive, but you see that it is going to represent your website. Try to buy that domain name only, which is going to benefit you in the long run. If you buy name domain name like .co.uk. It would definitely be a good decision and be easy for the clients too. And whereas other domains are concerned, it is not like that you will not be taken into consideration if you working with other domain. You need to work on both the domain names equally good to make it ranked higher.

thanks guys. I'll need to get entering the leywords into the generators and see what's available

Domain selection is very much important for SEO, the extension never consider.. apart from that .com, .org is best..any one can easy to remember your domain..

Yes, I agree. You can get .biz, .me and .info to the top in the search engine but you'll need to concentrate more on link building for getting them rank in search engine.

Yes, I agree. You can get .biz, .me and .info to the top in the search engine but you'll need to concentrate more on link building for getting them rank in search engine.

It’s good your new site. But what matters actually in SEO is the domain name not the extension name. If you think it should matter then what you can do is to name the extension according to where you want to do the business. By the way the extension .com is considered universal. You can name it to take advantages.