5 Reasons Why a .com Domain Extension Is Best For SEO

Three of the most popular domain name extensions include: .com, .net and the .org extension, and for as long as I've been a web developer these have continued to dominate the market, and today, over 52% of the extensions online are .com domains.

There are hundreds of extensions, but it's hard to remember them all, and ultimately, although your extension does affect your website's page ranking, there's still a lot of SEO value to be had over option for a .com domain extension

You might be wondering then, if they're so popular, and are great for SEO, why here at the Domain Monitor we're not using a .com extension?

We wanted something a little more modern, and a .io domain extension looks modern and keeps up with the ever changing online world.

In this article, I'm going to tell you 5 reasons why opting for a .dom domain extension is best for SEO.

Ready? Let's jump straight into this:

5 reasons to choose a .com domain extension

1. Readability - having a short domain name and extension is going to make it easier for your website visitors to type in on a smaller phone
2. Popularity - there are over 144 million .com extensions registered, so they're a great first choice for many businesses and online websites
3. Brandable - a .com extension is reasonably easy to brand
4. Promotional - people are more likely to simply enter your website into the URL and add a .com extension compared to other extensions
5. Memorable - easy to remember amongst other thoughts

Reason #1: Readability

You've got to wonder, if over 52% of domain extensions online are .com extensions, why is this?

Sure, they're incredibly popular, but also, because they are easy to read and easy to physically say to someone regardless of your native language.

Having a .com extension compared to... Let's say a .co.uk extension offers greater readability.

Try saying it out loud, for example:

• google.com -> google.co.uk

You'll notice that there is a difference, typically, you might want to buy both domain name extensions for your website if they're available as this is a great opportunity if your website and business trades online and is accessible across the world.

Reason #2: Popularity

If ever you're searching online, trying to learn how to do something, maybe you're searching for the best domain monitoring tool, or maybe you're simply searching for fun dog facts right?

That's exactly what I did for this example, I searched on Google for a keyword:

• dog facts

And guess what kind of domain name extensions came up?

You guessed it, the majority of the extensions on page one of the search results were all domains containing a .com extension, to be precise, 5 of them.

The others were a mixture of .co.uk and .org.uk, so although only 50$ of the extensions were .com, the rest were not 50% of one particular type, which proves my point.

Still don't believe me?

Get this, by the end of Q3 of 2019, there were over 144 million .com domain extensions registered, that's astounding results right?

Is it better to have a .com domain?

On the topic of popularity here, a question that comes up time and time again is whether a .com domain is the right choice?

From my experience of website development, SEO and years being in this field, a .com extension is great if you're a registered company, and is typically the default choice as far as extensions go, but that's not a bad thing.

Despite what you might've read online, having a .com domain is a perfect choice, and you don't have to be a registered organisation to have one either.

Reason #3: Brandable

Despite the popularity of the .com extension, when you're trying to optimise your website and build up a brand it's important that you drive organic search traffic right?

In order to do this, you're going to need to work on your website's SEO, and that means implementing all of the different types of SEO available to maximise your results.

You're likely going to be so caught up in writing content for your website and creating pages for your visitors that your domain name extension kind of slips away as an afterthought, but it turns out, .com extensions are quite easy to brand.

It's important to build a brand online, and when you initially choose your domain name and extension, .com extensions are a great choice.

Why?

Because people just know them, and we're going to dive deeper into this for the next reason, but first...

Is .com or .co better for branding?

When you're searching for the perfect domain name, naturally, a .com domain might seem like a logical choice, but did you know that you could also opt for having a .co extension?

It's an identical choice to the .com domain and was introduced to satisfy the needs of having a shorter extension to improve your branding and online presence.

Reason #4: Promotional

Most people likely haven't even seen your brand and website yet, so it's important to ensure that any promotional opportunity that you can get now goes a long way in making sure people can promote your website to others.

Here's the great thing about .com extensions when compared to other extensions such as:

• .co.uk
• .xyz
• .media
• .io

People are more likely to simply type in .com after your website name purely because of they're popularity and familiarity.

Up until recently, I hadn't even heard of a .xyz domain extension and couldn't see myself using one, in fact, I might even be put off of a website if that was the extension they had purely because it might seem quite spammy.

And I know, don't just judge a book by its cover, but that's hard to do when there's a lot of malicious websites online today.

Not only this, but when you're working tirelessly to implement SEO into your website to try and move your page ranking, you of course want to utilise as many freebies as possible to try and "fast track" your efforts don't you?

Opting for a .com extension is a great choice all round in this space.

Reason #5: Memorable

What did you do last week?

Do you remember?

Chances are, you've forgotten something recently, it might've been something quite important but you've simply forgotten.

This is the issue with domain names, the more complex they are, the harder it is for people to remember them...

Did that website have a hyphen in the middle, what about any numbers, was it a .net or a .co.uk?

Do you see what I mean?

You want to make sure that your domain name and extension are optimised for SEO but are also easy to remember as well.

There's no point having an extremely long domain name with special characters all over the place such as hyphens and numbers, and then having a long and complicated domain extension...

Sure, extensions aren't that long right, but combine those extra two dots in the case of a .co.uk extension along with the hyphens, numbers and 3 other words in the domain name and now it becomes difficult to remember.

Conclusion

Whether you're thinking about buying a domain name or are migrating over to a new domain, the extension you opt for can have a huge impact on SEO, and it's one of the reasons why .com extensions are still one of the most popular.

However, sometimes it's useful to break the mould and dive deeper into what you really care about for your business and website, and that's your brand, and opting for a domain extension like a .io extension might just be slightly more unique.

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