Domain Extensions

[geordiboyo]

Hi all,

In your opinions what is best the best domain?

tomdickharry.org.uk

or

tom-dick-harry.co.uk

Thanks very much?

Mark

[Keith]

the first :tup

[Affility]

I agree - the first.

[geordiboyo]

Cheers Guys,

What about just a double barrel

tomdick.org.uk

or

tom-dick.co.uk

Cheers

Mark

[Affility]

Still the first, though I might develop both if available...

[accelerator]

Non dash separated are more valuable than dash separated, both are fine for SEO purposes.

Rgds

[Chuck_Hamrick]

How about tomdickharry.uk? Have never understood by you have to use .co.uk?

[wistop]

How about tomdickharry.uk? Have never understood by you have to use .co.uk?

Purely a perception thing. Generally in the UK we trust .com and .co.uk domains over any others. On that basis I would always go for a .co.uk over that .org.uk!

Im not sure that hypenated or not really matters. The important thing for getting good rankings is who links to you with what anchor text. Once ranked you need people to actually click through and this is where the debate really kicks in.

Subscribe to the Google blogs (there are millions of them!) as they actually give wquite a lot of info out over time. Matt Cutts (a google chap) has said that hypens are better than underscores for technical reasons, but google tries to treat hyphenated and non-hyphenated the same. ie they pick out the keywords from one long phrase, so ultimately Google will treat them the same. It makes sense though doesnt it, why is tomdickharry any more relavent than tom-dick-harry to someone searching for toms, dicks and harrys? The only thing that matters is linking and content when it comes to relevance at a practical level.

Anyway, one thing you'll learn is that you'll get a dozen different answers! Ive got sites ranked well which have no relevancy simply because people link to me with anchor text (eg wistop.com/blog ranks for "nil satis nisi optimum " even though the phrase appears no where).

Another tactic I tried was using subdomains. So if you owned shop.com you could create mobiles.shop.com etc. The trick is having something that isnt offputting. Ive tried this with a site that is now appearing 4th for my targeted keyword. Before being on page 1 it got about 3 clicks a day, when it broke through to page 1 it went up to 200 clicks a day! Obviously my domain wasnt shop.com but I picked something that wouldnt seem offputting and spammy.

Basically, Im not planning to chase hard to come domain names and spend more than standard registration fees.

I'll let you know how I get on. Im not giving up my day job yet so prob best not to listen too carefully to me lol !

Best of luck with the site