SEO Friendly Domain Extensions – Does this matter in SEO?

Recently we are coming across many domain extensions that being used in web. Mainly ccTLD extension domains have increased a lot. Domain extensions actually mean something and it’s very important. If you are looking to book domain and confused with its extension then you are in right place to clarify that. There are so many domain extensions to choose from these days.

Do Domain Extensions Matter in SEO?

Of course it is! Every domain extension has its own specific purpose. Search engines taken this advantage and used to categorize the websites in internet. Choosing wrong extension not only changes the domain purpose but also it will lose the search engine credibility for correct extension.

.COM Domain

Com stands for the word “Commercial” and it’s the most widely used domain in the world. Moreover it’s the highly recognized domain for a business presence on the Internet.

Global business & Global information – It’s highly recommended extension for people running global business. By showing your global business addresses in website with little extra on page & off page stuffs, search engine will show you globally.

ccTLDs Domains – Country Code Top Level Domains

Example: .co.uk, .co.in, .co.nz

These are the country based domains. If you are providing business/information only for UK people then you should go for .co.uk domain. This type of ccTLDs will have their unique advantage in the corresponding local search engine. This is one of the important steps in geo SEO.

.ORG Domain

ORG stands for the word Organization. It’s a generic top level domain used by non-profits groups or trade associations.

Charitable organizations & Political Parties – With this extension search engines will understand this as a nonprofit organization and its algorithm will share the allotted weightage (more than .com domain).

.NET Domain

NET stands for the word Network. Currently it is the third most popular top-level domain.

Network Providers & Internet Service Providers – This domain extension is mainly used by the network providers and internet service providers. This extension has no special effects in search engine rankings but it’s just an excellent replacement for .com extension whenever it’s not available.

.EDU Domain

EDU stands for the word Education and it’s a generic top level domain mainly used by educational institutions. Search engine rankings will have special effects to this domain for the educational related terms (keywords). Also I’ve seen many .edu domains with maximum Google’s PR even with worst design.

.INFO Domain

INFO stands for the word Information. It’s a generic top-level domain intended for informative websites. This is also a good alternative for .com domain. Initially this extension was very cheap (less than $2) and many spammers registered to create website with no real business and now it costs about $40. This doesn’t have specific effects in search engine rankings.

.GOV Domain

GOV stands for the word Government. These generic top level domains are owned by the US government and other countries cannot create domain ending with .gov. Other counties can have the second level domain like .gov.in, .gov.uk. Example: http://india.gov.in.

Search engines will have their maximum weightage for this and always Google’s PR will be more than 8 and same cases it’s 10.

.BIZ Domain

BIZ stands for the word Business. It’s a generic top-level domain to be used by businesses. It was created due to the demand for good domain names available in the .com, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name which had already been registered by another user. Search engines should have given the same importance for this extension as they given for .com.