SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain

[kinimod]

Hi there,

I am new to MOZ Q&A and  first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better.

My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO.

Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best.

discoveratlanta.org
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.com

Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain.

I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well.

Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)?

I really appreciate your response to my question!

Best, 
kinimod

[rishil]

Personally I prefer the .com versions as they van be future proofed. It's hard to rank a dot travel domain.  Dot org rank ok, but I think loose their branding value. If you are building a long term pure white hat strategy, I would focus on a decent dot com. And register the front org and dot net versions too.

[Andy-Halliday]

Have to agree go with .com, the .travel are too new and there is no real evidence yet to how these rank / how google will rank these in the future. I might be wrong, but I think alot of spammy websites will pop up with .travel .etc and I think these might get penalised as a whole by Google.

[theLotter]

I would agree with the above 2 opinions, but assuming the price is cheap I would also buy atlanta.travel and put up a small website there with minimal SEO work so you have it in case the domain starts gaining respectability and/or becomes valuable while testing if it can bring you anything.

[kinimod]

Thanks all! I also thing a .com is the safe way to go. But I must say I am a bit astonished how well .travel domains perform. Searching for "Colombia" .travel ranks above .com, same for San Francisco.

@Ahalliday: I don't think that .travel domains will be used by a lot of spammy websites since A) they are relatively expensive (starting at $99/year) and B) you must be a travel agent, travel associated business, airline etc. to use such a domain.

@Rishi: So basically you think a domain such as atlantamag.com would just perform as good as atlanta.travel? I do tend to go with a .com domain to be honest but just want to give it a bit more thought.

Any more thoughts?

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

I was speaking in more general about the new TLDs and used for spammy purposes.

Are you sure, you have to be 'B) you must be a travel agent, travel associated business, airline etc. to use such a domain.' I just tried purchasing one, right upto the point of giving my credit card details and it never said anything about needing to be a travel business etc.

[kinimod]

I noticed this as well but then some registrars do ask for special requirements. Check out the requirements on www.travel.travel:

http://www.travel.travel/index.php/authenticate-register/industry-segments/