Comments on: Is it Worth Getting Local Domain Names for a Blog?

By: Reginald

Reginald — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:38:05 +0000

Thanks, Guy in Midlife crisis!

By: Guy On Midlife Crisis

Guy On Midlife Crisis — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:30:39 +0000

Hi Reginald, yes, my comment dated April 26th, 2008 3:21 am said exactly the same. I have a few misc sites (company name as opposed to trading name for example) that I intend to keep, and have a small page rank. So they are useful for contextual keyword linking.

Other than that, the penny dropped for me when I was creating a site for free products when I realised I could just add this to my site for paid products and grow traffic and profile and maybe even convert a small number of visitors who were looking for free to a paid version instead (sometimes I’m a little slow on the up-take.)

All that, plus the added content in the appropriate keyword. So within reason if it is the same customer and market there seems to me to be no reason why you would want to spread your efforts across multiple domains. Taking the choice of one site at PR5 over 5 sites of PR 1 I know what we would all aspire too :O) (if not already there!!!) I wish!!

By: Reginald

Reginald — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:47:46 +0000

Actually, Guy On Midlife Crisis, it appears to lack logic to run two identical sites. It’s such an obvious waste of valuable time and repetitious content.

By: sami

sami — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:11:09 +0000

if i knew that before, i would purchase a local domain even though they are more expensive.like double

By: Guy On Midlife Crisis

Guy On Midlife Crisis — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:29:29 +0000

I guess one way to use the local and other domains is to create small websites that link to your main site. The risk here is that you will look like a link farm and be penalised I would imagine, but Im not sure. I have a number of sites that link to my main site. For instance, kesseny.com is my company name and although the content is out of date, it gives a link to my main business site: http://www.ambientmusicgarden.com for which I also have a static site at the .net version. However I do then risk a duplicate content penalty so I need to change that anyway….

By: Shawn

Shawn — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:21:33 +0000

Localization is only really relevant for people targeting a local market. I find that for sites I want international exposure for I host off shore, as well as use .com

For local stuff I host local and use a local domain.

By: Guy On Midlife Crisis

Guy On Midlife Crisis — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:21:09 +0000

Tejvan Pettinger, I think I am right in saying that Google will penalise you for duplicated content. IMO, there is no point in running the same site on two domains, its a red herring. Just choose one domain and maximise your content on that one for the benefit of your targeted market wherever they are in the world.

If anyone disagrees I would be pleased to hear other’s opinions.

By: Reginald

Reginald — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:05:29 +0000

Thanks for the update. The virtual industry standards are adjusted at an amazing speed. It’s becoming quite a task to stay abreast of everything.

By: David

David — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:48:06 +0000

I have a variety of local domains and others which are not. With local domains and for certain countries, rankings come quite quickly (for the specific google from the same country as your local tld) but the potential is more limited also. So if you are targeting a specific country, a country tld should give you a much more targeted traffic and much quicker.

I am doing a couple of experiments to understand this better.

By: redwall_hp

redwall_hp — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:29:28 +0000

Note that Google de-emphasizes local domains for people in other countries. A .us domain will not rank anywhere near as high if a searcher is from Canada. Have you noticed that if you are visiting another country and type Google.com, you are taken to Google.xx, where “xx” is a country-level TLD for the country you are currently in.

By: Jummy

Jummy — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:22:35 +0000

My personal site is a local domain, but that’s because the .com was taken and I wanted something that reflected my pride in my country.

If I was creating a monetized blog though I’d go for the .com version where possible.

By: Guy On Midlife Crisis

Guy On Midlife Crisis — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:07:07 +0000

I think the principles of SEO tell us there is no value because you need to focus and maximise your market-targeted, keyword optimised content at one place alone. Duplicating across other domains will loose SEO points. Registrars will always say get all the other local and other variants of your domain to protect yourself but it doesn’t make any difference. If someone is going to steal your brand and content, then the processes for closing them down that exist today will work as well for someone with a like domain as it would in other situations. Thats my 2 cents

By: Tejvan Pettinger

Tejvan Pettinger — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:45:04 +0000

It’s an interesting question for me. I have a domain name economicshelp.org which gets 75% of traffic from the UK. However, I had to switch from a UK host to a US host (because the UK host wasn’t giving good wordpress support) and I was concerned that this could lose the UK traffic. I did buy the .co.uk domain and mirrored that to the .org. I am going to also try the readers suggestion of setting country spefiic tag in google webmasters.

The site has a global appeal but is more suited to the UK.

By: The Masked Millionaire

The Masked Millionaire — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:02:57 +0000

I use local for my Adwords campaign on my business site.

By: partha

partha — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:01:08 +0000

If content of your site or blog is based on local environment and your idea is to communicate with local community, then this process, I think, will be helpful.

By: NZ Reality TV

NZ Reality TV — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:52:08 +0000

Our domain is a .com even though the majority of the information is related to New Zealand. I let google know it was a New Zealand based website and it now includes it in both the NZ targeted searching and the global searching, so it’s not necessary to have a local domain to achieve geotargeting goals with google.

I’m not sure what the situation is with yahoo. I filled out a form to advise them that it is an NZ domain and also filled out local forms for all the NZ search engines, so I think that covered it off.

By: Scott Fillmer

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:14:23 +0000

Interesting that you would bring this particular topic up. A good bit of my traffic recently has been local. It is really kind of strange since we are not connected in with our local anything but we are seeing a rise in local traffic.

By: Steve McGrath

Steve McGrath — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:49:45 +0000

Funny, I did a post last week about my .ca: It’s Nice Not To Be American

By: dinsan

dinsan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:56:45 +0000

I dint think about this possibility while registering my new domain name. However, I do not want to be localized … I would prefer reaching an international community ..

By: Ed Healy

Ed Healy — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:27:11 +0000

I am currently working in Bulgaria. While developing the website, we had to decide whether we’d go with a .com, .eu, or .bg domain. The .com was a no-brainer, but we needed to decide if that was going to be the address we advertised and promoted. We decided to go with .eu, since most of the company’s customers are European real estate developers. We decided against .bg, partly because it is difficult to register .bg domains, but mostly because we didn’t want investors to think of the company as Bulgaria-centric.