I have been put in charge of creating a webpage and the domain that would suit our project best is for sale at about $1500. I think it would be a great investment. However, my boss doesn't want to pay that much. He wants to purchase the $5 dot biz alternative which I'm against. I believe that dot biz looks tacky and isn't as respected as either dot net or dot com. From a regular marketing standpoint and an SEO standpoint does it really matter? What would you do in this situation?
My thought is the .com is going to get most of your hits that aren't search engine related. People emailing you. If you tell someone your domain, or they hear it, they instinctively go to the .com. Giving the other company your business or not getting emails.
I agree with H-Man. Dot Com is the way to go. You can register the others (.net, .org, .biz, etc...) but at the end of the day, your .com address is the one people will remember.
I worked for a Co-Op a few years back that for some reason, felt it was more important to have the name nisc no matter what the TLD was. So they went with nisc.cc. At the time, .cc was doing a lot of promotions to get people to buy in. It was a stupid decision. There were several other .com domain names that could have been used. I was embarrassed to tell anyone the site I designed was nisc.cc. It was if I was working on the bastard child that was kept in the closet. Get a .com domain. You'll end up kicking yourself later if you don't.
I think it depends on what your marketing?!? If it is a product name, identifiable term, or company name then you need the .com. However, I've seen some people (and I am currently attempting!) that have success with the .biz if they are hawking some type of commodity or just redirecting traffic. For instance, I am currently setting up www.laser-cutting.biz to redirect to my business site which is a .com. Best of luck - - you might only have one chance at the .com name!
I think the laser-cutting.biz works OK right now because there is nothing under the .com. If you build up brand recognition for laser-cutting.whatever I think it makes it even more important to have the dot com down the road. And by then it could be at possibly a higher price.
Perhaps? I'm hoping no one ever remembers 'laser-cutting.anything' but instead clicks through to one of our advertisers.... and remembers their name. It's just a pit stop on the internet advertising highway.
While I do think a .com is important - it really depends on how you plan to drive traffic. If you plan on driving traffic via word of mouth then a 2 word .com domain is a must. If you're going to use PPC, SEO and other methods than who cares if it's a .com or .net or .biz. To the best of my knowledge I don't think Google/Yahoo penalize for not having a .com domain. If someone tells you they know for sure, they are lying unless they wrote the algorithm used by those sites. A .biz doesn't look as good on a business card but if it means getting a 2 word domain instead of a "longsentence.com" then go with the .biz.
I have some .net's. I wish I had .com's for those! But... what is the realistic ROI? How many sales will you need to make to pay back that $1,500 investment? How do you intend to advertise the site? If it's by SEO, TLD is irrelevant. If it is by word-of-mouth, TLD is extremely relevant. And, is there an alternative .com domain name which you could come up with? keyword-keyword.com domains names work great for SEO and are not too bad for humans.
A .biz isn't good for word of mouth marketing. It's good for an adsense site. Probably nobody is going to return to an adsense site. They will just go there and make a click (and you will make money). But if your making a supersite like GoDaddy.com or something then a .biz isn't good. However, you could put good content (besides just adsense ads) on a .biz But you will lose many people to the .com because they might mistaken your site for a .com But so what? If the loss isn't that much then who cares? I have a question. Does the .biz turn people off when they see it in the top 5 selections? I don't think it does as long as the title and meta description is good. Some people don't even think the .biz itself is weak.
I believe the average consumer is conditioned to think .com only - unless its an academic or government site. I wouldn't even consider any other extension for the primary domain. If you don't want to spend the money to buy it, I think you'd be better off getting a different .com domain that is unregistered.
It seems that everybody and their cousin is brainwashed with the idea that one HAS to have a COM extension. I don't know how long you have been on the Internet, but when the NET extension first came out, many were saying it wasn't good either. And look at it today. The same with the ORG extension. As each year goes by, more and more COM extensions are being bought up, which means the rest are going to have to settle for the NET's, BIZ's, FM's, US's.... I like the US extension. (I have the FM extension because all the other extensions were bought up. It does not matter one bit in my line of work.) It does not matter which extension you have, period. What matters is HOW you advertise, the name of your business (Is it a catchy name?), and what your site looks like (Is it user friendly?). As for Google's spiders playing favorites. ... It's a computer, for God sakes. It goes by backlinks and keywords only. I'm with your boss on this one. As a business owner, I also would use common sense, while watching the budget. In part, that's how businesses become even more successful.
As i know a .com domain worths more and you only need to spend $10 more to have it. Users love .com domains more than .biz ones.
as mentioned before, it depends on how you are marketing the sites. i have .infos that are bringing me money and ranked very well on page 1 of google.