Which TLD's are the Best for SEO?

If you’re developing you domains then you’ll most likely find that some of your domains rank much better than others – and oftentimes the TLD can play a major role. Two major factors in SEO are the keywords in your domain and the content on your website, however most SEO-experts gloss-over TLD. Over the past two years I have experimented with over twenty different TLD’s and found that TLD has a lot more to do with SEO than I had initially thought.

So what TLD’s have I found to rank the best?

.com, .net, .org, .info, and .us are by far my top-performers with .us being the strongest TLD for me. I’ve heard a lot of people say that .com will always outrank everything but this just isn’t the case – even with the exact same keywords. Just search on Yahoo for “Stimulus Check” and you’ll see that my site – StimulusCheck.us outranks StimulusCheck.com. I’d be interested to know if this is the same outside of the US as well.

This is not to say that .com doesn’t rank well – it ranks very well, I’ve just found that .us is a great TLD for SEO. I’ve also had great luck with .info but find that the resale value of these domains is very low so prefer to use these to generate passive income rather than structure for a sale. .net and .org have always been great TLD’s and I’ve had good success getting solid rankings with these domains even though their resale value is far less than their corresponding .com domain.

On the flip side I’ve found a few TLD’s that just don’t rank well. Some TLD’s that have definitely given me SEO trouble are .tv, .cc, .mobi (no big surprise here), .me, and .ws. Now it should come as no big surprise that search engines do take TLD’s into account when ranking a site – however how much emphasis they put on TLD has always been a mystery, especially when it comes down to our favorite 10,000-pound gorilla – Google. One thing I have noticed is that since I moved my blog from a .com to a .tv domain my search engine traffic has fallen considerably. Now it has still been less than 6-months since I switched domains so I may have to just give it more time but this was a big loss for me when moving to .tv.

So why am I using .tv for my blog? I’m a firm believer that there is a fundamental change going on in society. More and more focus is being put on watching rather than reading content. In twenty years I think our kids will looks at us like we’re crazy when we tell them we used to go on the Internet to read articles. This does not mean the death of reading but instead the growth of watching. I don’t think this means that we’ll all be mindless drones with no intellectual skills – television or broadcast media will continue to evolve as well. So while I do miss-out on the search traffic right now – I’m drawing a line in the sand and making a point to show everyone where I stand. Hey – I love writing just like the rest of us, but let’s face it, video is the future and .tv is the TLD for video.

I would really like to hear from YOU! What TLD’s have you found to rank the best? Worst? Do you love or hate .tv? Share your opinion and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton