.com or other TLD?

[carlsutherland]

Hi,

We are in the process of considering our domain url options for a new site. The plan is to migrate other site (bringing their link juice) to an main brand level domain.

At the moment our desired .com url is unattainable however from a band perspective another extension e.g (.group) would probably be a better brand fit - however I wanted to know what the implications might be from an SEO perspective. At the moment some of our sub domains are ranking extremely well for desired keywords. Assuming we implement the correct redirect rules to maintain these rankings, would there be any other implication for our rankings (particularly in the UK and US) for not using a .com domain and using an alternatve TLD extension.

Thanks

[unirmk]

Hi Carl,

There is no SEO advatage to using one of the (not-so) new TLDs. Theoretically there is no SEO dis-advantage either.

John Mueller made Google's position on this quite clear back in the day-
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html

Essentially, John states that new TLDs are like old TLDs- they are simply TLDs. Having keywords in the TLD presents no advantage. Having place names in the TLD give nos geographic emphasis.

Personally, I feel there is a bit of a UX issue with these new TLDs in the sense that users are not accustomed to them, and as a result don't feel to comfortable using them. From that point of view I think they represent a significant disadvantage. If I were to see a www.example.clothing printed on a business card, I think I would have to do a double-take before understanding it is a website, and I work in the industry. Maybe thats just me...

Hope that helps!

[julie-getonthemap]

Dot Com!

When I started my business 7.5 years ago, the dot com was unavailable so I went with dot us.  Since then I have had to repeat the phrase "that's dot us, not dot com" several thousand times.  When I don't receive a promised email, and I call to follow up, they frequently have sent it to dot com.

In the SERPS it doesn't matter. I dominate, but I think I would have picked a different url if I'd realized how hard it was for the average consumer to remember. And my clients are biz people!