website .com or not? gurus feel free to advise!

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 Sam Mayfield 07 Jul 2016
I want a new website and am thinking to also get a new .whatever its called

at the moment we have .co.uk
.com is gone already and has been for years
just seen that .holiday is free and quite like that idea I can redirect .co.uk traffice cant I?

How much difference will it make when people search for us? should I just stay with what we have after all these years?

Ta The Orange House

Sam
 Ridge 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Not an expert by any means, but where does the bulk of the business come from? If it's the UK then .co.uk is probably the best, as implies a UK based business. A lot of European internet selling firms have .co.uk sites to target the UK, as people assume the goods will be sent from the UK.
OP Sam Mayfield 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Ridge:

bulk from UK yes but does that really matter, or do you mean when people in the UK search it will look at .co.uk first! Ahh hadnt thought of that one?
 TMM 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

.holiday is taken now.

I know the owner if you want to buy
1
KevinD 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

> How much difference will it make when people search for us? should I just stay with what we have after all these years?

The usefulness of the new domain names is debatable. Some suggest it does make a difference whilst others claim it makes bugger all.
Personally I wouldnt touch them with a bargepole and would just go for UK (for I assume most of your customers) and a spain address.
 steveriley 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

You're always going to be chasing your tail adding domains and parking multiple variants just seems a faff to me these days. Be good at what you do and people will find you. You seem to be doing alright on search. That said, redirecting traffic from any new domains is pretty straightforward and you could do it yourself. I'd keep .co.uk and keep the goodwill attached to it and do a redirect from .holiday if you really fancy it.
 AndyC 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

> I want a new website and am thinking to also get a new .whatever its called

> at the moment we have .co.uk

If you have .co.uk you are entitled to .uk which is three less characters to type!

Given your location, maybe .eu is more appropriate, just three quid a year. Maybe also .es?

Being old fashioned, I tend to avoid the new TLDs - so far they seem to be the work of the devil and largely inhabited by dodgy folk!



OP Sam Mayfield 07 Jul 2016
In reply to steveriley:

Was thinking I can rebuild the website from scratch with the .holiday and direct all .co.uk to it unless I can build a ghost site, I need to explore wordpress a bit more and then decide. Wish I could get .com.

Anyone out there bought it to blackmail me! lol

Sam Orange
 beh 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Not sure what you'd gain from another suffix. If the UK is your primary market then .co.uk is trusted/recognised by most people for this purpose.

Sounds like you're mainly interested in SEO, how do people find your site now?
 Sutok 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Arguably the importance of suffixes has diminished greatly in recent years with the prevalence of social media and reliance on Google searches.

A 'clean' domain still has some use in terms of direct linking (for us old school folk who know what an address bar is) and an arguably more trustworthy perception but Google doesn't care and you probably shouldn't worry about it too much.

All that said I'm determined to only register domains in the cook islands these days.

 timjones 07 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

IMO novelty suffixes add nothing to a business website. I'd stick with .co.uk for the present and grab .com if you get the chance.
OP Sam Mayfield 08 Jul 2016
In reply to beh:

am guessing most people just type theorangehouse and then stop before the ending, so makes no difference.

I am sure the facebook page is picked up first now and not the website, not sure how many people still head to that or facebook first!

Sam
OP Sam Mayfield 08 Jul 2016
In reply to timjones:

when you type theorangehouse.com it takes you to a offer page and it says offers under 500 dollars not accepted! lol
 gethin_allen 08 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

From a total non technical point of view if I were looking for the orange house I'd type just that into the address bar and see what google gives me.
As it is your site is top of the list so you're not at all hard to find and I wouldn't bother changing anything.
 beh 08 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

With tracking code, Google analytics for example, you should be able to find out both the referring website, and if it was a search engine, the keywords that were used. There's a lot more you'll be able to find too.
 timjones 08 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

> when you type theorangehouse.com it takes you to a offer page and it says offers under 500 dollars not accepted! lol

In that case you need to make up your mind whether it is worth $500 to you.

Even if it isn't I'd still make them an offer. What have you got to lose by letting them know that you disagree with their valuation? You may even get lucky and they will accept your offer.
 AndyC 08 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

> when you type theorangehouse.com it takes you to a offer page and it says offers under 500 dollars not accepted! lol

You are the victim of a domain squatter - one's been sitting on my .com for years and wants a lot more than 500 US for it!

Unless you have trademarked 'theorangehouse', your options are limited. You can put a watch on the domain name in the (remote) hope that the squatter forgets to renew the registration - for example you can register your email address against the domain here:

https://www.domainnameshop.com/domainwatch

Otherwise, 'tangerinehouse' is free, unfortunately 'tangotowers' seems to have got a squatter!



 LeeWood 08 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

I would go for .com - just add _ or - into your URL as seperators - AND/OR take out 'the' which is redundant
 digby 09 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:

Who on earth types in URLs? Or even looks at them (except to confirm it's the site itself)? Surely everyone googles or bings or whatever and gets to your site that way. It's search engine optimisation you need to look at.
 LeeWood 09 Jul 2016
In reply to digby:

YES. Google respects a meaningful <title> content which currently appears to be simply URL for the orange house. To be meaninful this should be ex. 'The Orange House - for Climbers: Rock Climbing in the sun on the Costa Blanca, based in Finestrat near Calpe, Sella & Penon d'Ifach'
 Timmd 11 Jul 2016
In reply to Sam Mayfield:
> when you type theorangehouse.com it takes you to a offer page and it says offers under 500 dollars not accepted! lol

I don't know how much money you make (and I'm not asking really), but in the grand scheme of things 500 dollars isn't such a big sum I don't suppose?

Depends how much a .com is worth to you I guess.
Post edited at 00:18
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