.com or .me for freelance business?
-
Hey there,
Which domain do you think is better and why?
(1) surnamename.com or (2) surname.me?
Since Google treats both the same in terms of the rankings, my biggest concern is about the branding. (1) is longer but is .com (people usually see .com as more trusted one). (2) is shorter, easier to remember, but less tech savvy people might be confused with .me.
Purpose of the site is personal/freelance profile. Other domain versions are already taken.
Shoot the ideas! Cheers, Martin
-
I would really try to get a ".com" even if you have to slightly alter your URL to not just be your brand name. Alot of people will add their city or a service that they are associate with or provide after their brand name ("www.abcwebsitedesign" or "adcnewyork" as examples).
-
I would argue that .me is easier to remember since, .com is basically an embedded second nature to add after a brand name in terms of direct or navigational traffic. However, since you're interested in .me you should consider creating the .com and forward the .me domain back to it in-case you would like to use it on business cards or other material.
I personally think .com is the way to go and it is almost instinctive to type that in as searcher or user.
-
Hi Martin,
I believe I would. What about name-surname.com?
If the namesurname.com is taken, there is a risk that your own namesurname.me will be often confused as .com and you will just send traffic to the .com domain owner.
Obviously, I don't know your intentions but perhaps make the 'surnamename' order your signature/brand - sign your articles in this order, if you have videos, introduce yourself in this order, make your social media named after it. This say it might be a bit unusual, but perfectly memorable and maybe seen a bit 'cool/different'.
Are you considering surname.com?
Thanks
Katarina
-
Hi Katarina,
Thanks for your response.
The thing is that the version _**"**name surname . com" _is already taken. Otherwise, I would definitely go for this option.
That is why I am not 100 % sure about the _"surname name . com"_version.
Would you go for it anyway istead of **"surname . me" **?
Thanks, Martin
-
Hi Martin,
Why do you think .me is easier to remember? I agree, people might remember the surname (instead of name & surname), but at the same time they might assume it's .com. And if this goes to 'page not found', will they figure out it's .me?
I think you cannot beat .com - it has a psychological effect and people expect professional websites to be .com. Is there an option for you to have the format namesurname.com? Or is the domain taken? That's what works well in general.
.com is a global standard for business online and many businesses fight for and pay thousands for .com's. I hope this helps with your decision a bit.
Thanks.
Katarina
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing domain name, witch is better - brand name.com vs keyword + brand name.com?
Hi, I just made one decision and now I'm bit worried, if I did right one. I hope that you can give me feedback and advice regarding it. I'm in hookah market, so I do not have any possibilities to buy adds, so SEO is really-really important to us. I know a lot of things what has to be done to perform better, but currently I have just few really important questions. In international market the main keyword is "hookah" and everything related to that. We are small company and our brand is not that well known and do not have high volume traffic on website. Hookah in front of that we tough will give better understanding to audience about what is the page. Which domain name is better for SEO and also branding purposes? Currently we were using the first one without keyword, no we switched to the second one (just about week ago). https://hekkpipe.com https://hookahhekkpipe.com Regarding it, some really important questions: Would the longer version of domain helps us better rank with important keywords to us or not? When we will write good content, which domain is more likely shared? I'm bit afraid that first one and that we made a mistake changing the domain name. When the 1st one, then how big difference does it potentially make? Thank you
Branding | | Karel_K0 -
Why does our Facebook not show up when searching for our business name?
Our Facebook is titled NJ & PA Personal Injury Attorney Richard P. Console Jr., and the url is Facebook.com/myinjuryattorney, and our website is www.consoleandhollawell.com. Because of the different names, we put social schema on our site which we thought would help Google associate the two. It doesn't seem to be working as we are not showing up in the serp's when searching for "Console & Hollawell Facebook" and even "Richard Console Facebook" Could anyone give any insight as to why? Thank you!
Branding | | marketingdepartment.ch0 -
Should I remove our videos from DotSub.com to try & boost our Wistia videos?
Okay all you video SEO lovers, I had a thought today that I thought would make an interesting question. I have been using the tools at DotSub.com to transcribe our videos. The tools are great, and even better, free. We have about 80 videos on DotSub and all of these videos are also on our YouTube channel. Once I've completed the transcription, I've been exporting the .srt file and uploading them to YouTube to replace the God-awful machine transcriptions (sorry Google, but they are baaaadddd). Anyway, sometimes our DotSub video will outrank the same YouTube video, sometimes not. The 80 videos on DotSub have amassed about 10,000 views and a couple of translations...which is nice, I guess? Recently, we've begun experimenting with Wistia. Here is a search term for which our YouTube and DotSub video results pretty much flood page 1: "studiolive webinar" All of the DotSub videos also exist as Wistia videos on our Website and blog. For obvious reasons, we would rather have our Wistia videos rank in those three positions which right now are dominated by the DotSub versions. Should I remove the content from DotSub in order to try to get the Wistia videos to rank instead? Or should I leave them all there? I should probably add that we do have Wistia videos that are outranking both Dotsub and Youtube versions of the exact same videos...so I know that's possible. I'm just wondering if by leaving all of these videos up at DotSub if we are cannibalizing our potential at ranking for videos that link back to our site? What do you think?
Branding | | danatanseo0 -
Moving Blog from www.topic.domain.com to www.domain.com/blog
Hi Fellow Mozzers, Just started off here on seomoz.org and am super happy to have joined the community! I've recently started a new job as web optimization manager for an education company. There is a lot to do and one of my first tasks is to figure a better strategy for our current blog. I've convinced our management to move our blog from topic.domain.com to domain.com/blog. My research has shown that this is a better strategy so that our blog can receive the DA of our root domain, get more people to click through our site, and even receive more natural searches (PLEASE, someone correct me if I'm wrong on this). Anyway, our blog is currently hosted as a Wordpress blog and we're wondering if it's more worthwhile to build a blog platform ourselves or continue using Wordpress. I am not a technical guy and don't know the backend stuff to make it happen, but my concern is primarily for the optimum search capacity. Also, our bloggers frequently put links to different portions of our website - does this hold any negative SEO value in terms of too much internal linking? I personally wouldn't assume so, but then again I could be wrong. Finally, we also track our main website using Google Analytics- currently, the only tracking we have installed on our blogs is the default provided by Wordpress (yes yes I know, but that's why i'm here -- to fix these weaknesses). I'm assuming we will be able to better track using GA when the switch is made. So, I guess my questions are: (1) Is my research correct in that it's better to have our blog hosted as domain.com/blog over topic.domain.com (2) Are there any best practices in making this switch and/or any negative implications with continuing to use Wordpress or should we build our own platform (we have the internal resources to do so, but would prefer to take the easiest and best route in terms of SEO and community building). (3) Will it still be just as easy to track using GA. Thank you!! Pedram
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
Is Rel=author appropriate for non-article type pages, a.k.a. business websites
I understand I can use Rel=author with Google+ for article's I write, and I understand I can use the same code for regular websites, which I'm still waiting to see show up in the SERPs, but my question is as follows... Is Rel=author appropriate for regular business websites (since we are business owners, not authors of articles), or is there some other Schema.org tag that should be used which will also show our images in the SERPs? I'd like my business logo to show up in the SERPs for my business page and my personal photo to show up for my blog pages.
Branding | | Twinbytes0 -
Social Network or Blog? Which is best to start for business purposes?
I am a Realtor and was wondering which is better to start for Lead generation? A social network for local professionals or a blog?
Branding | | bronxpad0 -
Business Acquisition: Balancing SEO and Customer Awareness
I'm looking for opinions on the following scenario: SuperWidgets buys GreatWidgets. That business acquisition involves the purchase of GreatWidgets.com, a standard but well-established website with some nice backlinks. The business acquisition is communicated to previous customers of GreatWidgets through the normal channels. What should be done with GreatWidgets.com. Re-direct to a splash page informing visitors of the acquisition? 301 page-to-page for directly relevant content? If a splash page, how long would you keep it up? Also, any opinions on how to handle any non-claimed local listings for the now-acquired business? Claimed ones will of course be handled, but what about the non-claimed and unclaimable?
Branding | | MRCSearch0