@rshahbaz The answer to this keeps changing. A year ago, it was difficult, and having keywords in the domain was very important. Now, keywords in the domain are not as important as they used to be, and exact keyword domains is not very effective.

Whether a .co TLD (top level domain) will rank or not is still up in the air. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’ve been hearing from other people who are getting it to rank with some success.

How it compares to getting a .com ranked — with all other things being equal — still seems to favor the .com, but that’s only based on anecdotal evidence, not anything I have seen studied. Have you checked SEOMoz.org? They’ll be your best bet.

In my experince it’s the code, the page content and the links pointing to the page that affect the ranking, not the TLD.

There are hundreds of TLDs, with the potential for thousands more now that companies (and well-heeled individuals) can pony up $185,000 and get their own custom “generic TLD.” It’s true that country-specific TLDs may get some sort of boost in the search results from that country (which only makes sense), but .com is a “global” TLD that isn’t associated with any specific country.

I’ve heard a lot of unsubstantiated claims, a lot of FUD, but I have seen no credible evidence that a .com extension gets any preference in the global search results over sites created on other TLDs, simply as a result of the TLD.

The main reason to avoid .co if you can get a .com instead is that many people, when typing in the address, will “overshoot the mark” and automatically add the “m” to the end… and potentially end up on someone else’s site. This is one of the problems that lead Overstock.com to pull back from their rebranding as “o.co”, for instance.

If you design intuitive information architecture, write good content and seek out strong links, you’ll do fine no matter what your TLD.

Thank you so much for your help @kristi-hines

You have clarified all my concerns

Have a great day…

@rshahbaz  I have a .biz and I have found it quite easy to rank for my keywords. I don’t think Google cares if it .biz, .info, .org, or .co  The only issue I see for you is the confusion with .co and .com – you could be giving traffic away.

Personally, I believe the extension is important geographically. Example, I am Canadian and a lot of my sites are .ca because the content is relevant to living in Canada. I have had better success with ranking .ca domain names because of this.

At one time, where the site was physically located meant something. So a .com domain typically indicated a USA location. Or if you were someone looking to get a good reputation by association, you got a .com domain. So in my opinion, the .com was a “fad” that has pretty much run it’s course. 

The new fads are.co and .xxx lol

Regardless of your domain extension, your site content and social media reach are what matters most to Google lately.

I also liked how Amy pointed out how getting a .co vs a .com domain may give away traffic. If you can’t have both, I wouldn’t do use the .co at all.