Domain name suffix impact on SEO

[roberthseo]

Hello there,

We are about to launch a new website and were wondering what impact a specific suffix would have from an SEO point of view.

We were thinking about going for a domain which ends in .london as oppose to .com

We are based in London and sell world wide via our website.

We are suggesting www.domain.london as oppose to www.domain.com

I would appreciate your views...

Thanks

[MattAntonino]

If you want to sell worldwide, I wouldn't use .london extension. This extension specifically tells Google (and buyers) that you are local to London. Sometimes I understand why Aussies or Americans would order from .co.uk but usually only if it's our last choice, honestly. So why would we order from a .london if there's ANY other choice?

You could run a .com or .net as your main domain and then run .london geotargeted to your UK audience. I think it's a mistake to use it globally.

[TomRayner]

To add to Matt's good earlier response, the TLD extension that you use (.com, .net, .info) will have a minimal impact on your ability to rank well and the site's overall SEO.  For ranking specific websites in specific countries (and regions like London etc), Google looks at a bunch of more important factors, such as server location, schema, hreflang setup, citations, NAPs and so on.

[Alick300]

Hi,

Matt is very rightly said "If you want to sell worldwide, I wouldn't use .london extension" . Apart from that Matt cutts said in 2012

"Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings."

Hope that helps

Thanks