Top Level Domains (TLD), there are just to many of those. I was asked a question through the email which TLD is the best for SEO, and which one I should register for my new website? I looked at the question, and i said this will make a perfect post for my SEO Category, so here are what i think about TLDs and SEO based on my experience.

Before i go on and tell you which one is the best first i need to get the basis so we can start. While there are many extensions as there are so many countries in the world each are having their own two letter or three letter tlds such as .in or .pk etc. The main ones that i consider are .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, and sometimes .biz …. While i am a big fan of .in (India) because the extension just sounds cool it is not in my list of the Main Top Level Domains.

Now we all know which is the most popular. So people make the most popular ones and start ranking them for SEO uses as well. So .com will get you a higher pagerank and a higher SERPs, and then after that it is .net and so on so forth. That is not true. In reality these extensions at the end of the domain does not matter at all in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It will not get you a higher Search Engine Position Rank(s). Also known as SERPs. You might see sometimes a .net website outperform a .com website in search engines. It is really a matter of branding. If i get tons of backlinks for a .net website, I am very sure that i will get it to pass a .com website in SERPs, and this go for all the extensions. Now why do people think one is better than other?

From the past domain sales, and current ones as well more and more buyers prefer .com because that is the most popular one. When a normal person types a website they will unconsciously put a .com in front of the website if they don’t remember the url. Once that doesn’t work, they will try .net, so your website can be on a .tk for all what matters they won’t find you. It is really hard to get that into peoples mind. You will loose alot of traffic that way, and buyers of websites and domains doesn’t want that. They want all the traffic thats why they prefer .com websites.

Often times you might see a .com domain ranks higher than .net and that is because someone wanted to link to a website and accidently typed in .com rather than .net so .com website just gained an additional backlink which was suppose to be for .net which gives .com an extra edge and makes a .com website popular.

In my personal opinion, I would go for a .com domain if i am starting a new business, but if .com is not available this is the ranking that i follow.

.com
.net
.org
.us
.info

That is just the way i think the first two are set for almost everyone, and the rest after will vary but you will see .org, .us, and .info in there fluctuating.

If you find a .com and you see the other main ones open as well. You should seriously consider registering them. If you are serious about your new company or something then you don’t want to loose any traffic, or someone else make a website about your site on .net just to gain some revenue. It has happened in past before. I registered Balkhis.com / .net / .org / .us / .info

All 5, and i am very sure that is giving me a slight edge in traffic wise but it will be big when Balkhis grows to be a more popular blog.

What to do if you find a .net which is available, and .com is registered but there is not a website on it?

You can try contact the owner and try to negotiate some deals see if it works. I am sure you all heard of problogger. When you type problogger.com in the url bar it forwards it to problogger.net because i believe he started with a .net and ended up buying .com once his site got popular.

So the bottom line of this post was that there is no SEO advantage or disadvantage of a specific TLD, but there are some later on with the sale and others. I hope i clearly explained the point.

If you have any questions feel free to ask me through the contact form and i will try my best to answer promptly.