Domain keyword optimisation

[Xatsker]

Hi everyone,

I've had a good look through the forums, but being a noob at SEO, i may have missed the answer somewhere else, so please forgive me if this is old ground...

I just wanted to know if there is any value to the actual domain identifier used when getting a keyword domain name?

What i mean is...

"mykeyworddomain.com" - most .com's (and being in the UK - the .co.uk's too) are gone for the best key words, so is "mykeyworddomain.net" or .org or .biz, or .uk.biz or etc etc any good for SEO purposes or are they less likely to be ranked against the .co.uk/.com's even with a spot on keyword domain name?

Also, if i had "bobswidgets.com" as my main domain, but we sold (for arguments sake) handbags as well, does having a relevant domain ("handbags.com"/.biz/net etc) pointed to the main domain dillute your SEO efforts??

[Nicpoint45]

From my experience Google does not treat the the TLDs any differently from one another.

I don't have an answer for your second question, but I would be careful not to get to spammy there. That would be the easiest way to harm your site for sure.

[sibiren]

I always use domain names like this:
my-key-phrase.com

I think it is very useful.

[mangoface]

This is all about experience you gotta play around with domains and this is what I've found

1.) domainname.com is better than domain-name.com
2.) domainname.net/.org is better than domain-name.com
3.) domain-name.com is better than adomainname.com or domainname1.com

The above is a general principle I follow.

Also you'll find that the top tld's are .com/.org/.net/.co.uk These should always be your first choice and un-hyphenated. So if an unhyphenated, perfect keyword domain is a match in the above tld's gab it, it's better than the hyphenated one!

[bigzee]

I would stay away from .info domains and all the other more obscure ones. .com/.net/.org and sometimes .co.uk are the more established players so stick to them.

I've personally done well with hyphen domains. But not if they're more than 2 words so science-lessons works great but not something like uk-science-lessons!

[truffleshuffle]

.info, .biz, .us all useless domains in my eyes. I remember buying into some strong keyword .us domains and they were rubbish.

.info was much the same although a few of them after some considerable time did start to rank. So it's a little better than the .biz, .us.

As above stick to .org and .net if you can't grab the .com and always grab the unhyphenated version over the hyphen version.

[Alex]

If .info domain costs less than $1, no one takes it seriously (including SEs)

[WendyK]

.com only is fine there isn't much a point to have another except maybe a free short .tk for simplicity.  If you have a .biz or .info you should try getting a .info for simplicity man