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Most customers and web site visitors are only aware of the existence of a handful of TLD's such as .com, .org, .net and country specific ones such as .co.uk if you are in the UK.

Therefore moving from a .com site to a .travel site may mean that visitors are confused. They may enter .travel.com and they may not think that www.yourcompany.travel is even a proper URL and assume a part of it is missing.

Research into the postive and negative effects of different TLD's would suggest that .com or the country specific TLD are the best option. So everything else being equal there may be an negative SEO impact of the proposed move.

You say that "i expect google to give more weight to .travel domains" but what is the basis for that expectation? You also say "I also think it is easier to remember than www.brandname.com" which is unlikely to be true.

I strongly believe the downsides are greater than the perceived benefits (a couple of which I have questioned).

Hope this helps!

If a reseller of products from ABC Ltd is saying that they are selling products from ABC Ltd then then would be telling the truth.

If they try to make it look like they are ABC Ltd or make it look like their site is ABC Ltd's site then they may be crossing boundaries.

Don't think that Google are likely to pick up on this sort of thing at this level and the local trading standards or equivalent would probably be the best course of action if ABC Ltd feel agrieved.

Saying No Data Available for this URL when I tried to look at it on Open Site Explorer. Perhaps someone at SEOMOZ has spotted that there is an issue here?

I would look to see where it says the most valuable of the links are actually coming from.

These are the tips I have picked up from various blogs and books...

• Use keywords in the filename and URL
• Use keywords in the link text for the file.
• Write an interesting description of the video including keywords
• Enter metadata for the file e.g title, keywords, and a description.
• Include the word 'video' in the metadata as people searching for videos will use that word
• Provide a transcript
• If hosting on a 3rd party site (e.g Youtube) provide links back to your site
• If hosting on a 3rd party site be aware of any limits on display lenghth of the title
• Allow users to rate your video
• Use a video sitemap to help search engines find your videos.
• Submit the video sitemap to Google using the Webmaster Tools

For info on video sitemaps you can go to http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

Hope this helps...

Completely disagree with you Korgo the average user doesn't even know there is a .co TLD that exists.

They have been available for a while, I spend a lot of time online through work and play and have never seen a site using one so not sure why you think they will take off if they haven't already despite virtually ever domain seller pushing them heavily last year.

Google doesn't use them and they are a great indicator to your competitors about exactly which keywords you believe are important to your business if they look at your source code.

I agree with James and would aim for one hyphen on the .com TLD. I did some unscientific user testing in this area and one hyphen was fine, 2 or more was a turn off for the user.

The same users expected a site to be .co.uk (I'm in the UK) or .com and some were confused by the existence of different TLD's wondering where the .co.uk or .com was and thinking the URL might not work without them.

Hi James, I don't want the redirect, the content is where it is due to the way the site has been set up in the past, long before anyone thought about SEO for the site.

I just wanted to make sure that if it has to be a redirect then it is the correct type of redirect after my advice that it should be a 301 redirect was questioned and it was suggested to me that a 302 should be used in this circumstance.

Thanks for your response.

Hi guys

The widely followed SEO best practice is that 301 redirects should be used instead of 302 redirects when it is a permanent redirect that is required.

Matt Cutts said last year that 302 redirects should "only" be used for temporary redirects.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more

For a site that I am looking at the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool lists as an issue that the URL /  redirects to www.abc.com/Pages/default.aspx with a 302 redirect.

On further searching I found that on a Google Support forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en) that a Google Employee had said "For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect."

Can anyone confirm if it is the case that "a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page"? And if so why as I haven't found an explanation.

If it is the correct best practice then should redirects of this nature be removed from displaying as issues in the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool

Thanks for your help

Hi Madsurfer

I would use the exact phrases in the name of the page, the page titles, alt text, anchor text etc, etc but wouldn't use them in the navigation and would go for equipment, news, sails, boats etc as the navigation labels as this will be more scannable by a user then having windsurfing before everything.

Presumably as you will have a page for each of these categories then it is that page that you will be optimising for that keyword and hoping ranks at number one when someone searches.

One thing I would do before naming all the pages is write a list of my products and the related phrases and enter them into the Google keyword tool and see whether there are similar suggestions that would still match the content of my page but with considerably higher estimated search volume. I would then optimise for that term.

Hope this helps..

Back in August 2010 Rand listed his top 10 which can be found at:-

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/best-seo-blogs-top-10-sources-to-stay-uptodate

As well as listing them he also explained why he reads them.

I bookmarked his post (which I refer regularly to) so I didn't need to bookmark all of his recommendations.