Startup Blog

.co Domains and SEO

Posted by Mike Volpe on 10/6/10 4:22 PM

At the HubSpot user group and Inbound Marketing Summit a lot of people were talking about the new .co domain names available, and asking if they were better or worse than .net or .org and how they compare to .com.  Thanks to Dharmesh Shah for adding his thoughts.

Mike's Email to Dharmesh

What do you think of .co domains vs .com?  I am getting a number of questions from customers.
My thoughts:
1) .com is still best for branding, it is the standard
2) non-.com domains do fine in SEO, but .com is probably still better since it tends to attract more links because of #1
3) .co is probably similar in value to .net and .org
- Mike

Dharmesh's Email Reply

You're right on all counts.

I think they're OK, but .com is still the standard.  Except for quirky things (like domains for URL shorteners), I wouldn't use a ".co" as the primary domain for a business.  I kind of prefer .net/.org since they've been around longer and people recognize them more.

Also, having the ".co" domain when you don't own the .com is not a good idea.  I'd pick a different domain.

- Dharmesh

Mike Volpe

Written by Mike Volpe

Mike Volpe is a startup advisor and angel investor based in Boston.

Topics: SEO

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