Originally posted in r/SEO on reddit. Personal note: avoid r/SEO for your own sake. Go to r/bigSEO or r/seogrowth instead.
Question
Let’s say I am running a website not in the USA (typically .com).
Would having a country specific TLD be crucial my SEO efforts for that country or is it relatively minor?
For example:
- New Zealand: commonly .nz or .co.nz
- United Kingdom: commonly .co.uk
- Singapore: commonly .sg or .com.sg
Would running a normal .com website hurt my chances of success in that country (given all other things are equal such as local ranking signals, etc.)?
Answer
Probably not with .com at the very least.
Google’s official answer is if you have a ccTLD, it’ll associate the ccTLD to the target country, but .com is a dominant TLD and doesn’t suffer from any bias from the average user.
Some exceptions exist with .tv, .it or .ai for example, which have been “upgraded” to gTLD.
Run a quick Google search in your own location with the terms associated to the website you want to run, check the TLDs in the first 2 pages.
- If you see a majority of .com, it’s not necessarily because .com ranks better, it’s simply because .com is more widespread (but at least, you’ll see there’s no negative bias towards .com).
- If you see a majority of ccTLD, it’s potentially because they rank better.
Long story short:
- If your business is only ever going to target a single country, you could keep it to the ccTLD.
- If you plan to expand your business one day (or do international sales, for example), better get a .com.
And good luck! Remember to prioritise a good, easy to remember and to type domain name as much as you can.
There’s no point in following any of the advice above if your domain ends up being something silly like zjaziokljklzsjaaazd.com, and it can also be damaging to choose a good domain name if the TLD is generally associated to something spammy (.biz / .tk / .xyz / .buzz / .top…).