Best Domain Extensions for SEO

Many webmasters get hung up right before they get started online. They're ready start their site and get the ball rolling, and then along comes SEO and the confusion it brings. A very common question is what domain extension is best for SEO. This is a reasonable and natural concern, but it's overly complicated by the vast amounts of false information on the web. Let's set things straight and go over the affect that domain extension have on SEO and if there even is a best extension. Do Domain Extensions Affect SEO? In short, no. In fact, there will not be any difference in your search engine performance whether you use a .com, .net, or a .org. Many people assume that a .com will perform better, but that opinion has no grounds in reality. It's simply not true. Furthermore, a .biz or .info domain also performs equally as well. A lot of people think that these domains for sure don't perform as well because they don't often see them in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Webmasters don't buy .info sites to rank because they don't think they will rank as well, so no one uses them, and the cycle continues. The only domain extensions that do affect SEO are country-specific domains. For example, a .us site will rank just fine in the US, but it's rankings will suffer in other countries. The same goes for other country codes. What is the Best Domain Extension for SEO This leads us back to the original question. Which domain extension then is best, and is one best at all? There is no best domain for search engine optimization. However, the best one to choose, for other reasons, is a .com. The .com extension is by far the most popular and is more memorable for this reason. It will be easier to make sure any direct traffic ends up at your site and not someone else's by using the most popular extension. This leads to another tactic that can be effective for domain selection. If the .com is available, buy it and use it as your primary domain. If the other extensions are available, you should also buy them. You can redirect all of them to your .com extension without any trouble. By doing this, you will ensure that everyone trying to find your site will end up at it, and you will also keep competitors from taking the similar domains and parking them. This is an article by Ben, who writes about the best domain extensions for SEO and similar topics at his blog SEO Discovery.