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I run a personal finance blog. I happen to have a .in domain.
Though the blog is targeted at Indian readers or NRIs settled abroad, I have been told that a .com domain is still better than .in domain from SEO perspective.
Is that the case?
Checked availability of the domain with .com name, but the auction prices runs into a few lacs rupees.
Appreciate your views.
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Unless your content is country specific that would benefit from country-specific exposure, don't bother. local business, india-wide specific businesses, regional or national news/opinion-driven/clickbait type websites are probably a few that benefits out of .in domain, keeping apart certain niche of blogging aside. There was a website called illgaming (illgaming.in). The website did well but was getting indian specific crowd. they were confident they can get more as the content that they provide is also applicable internationally since its about gaming. They bought .com, but a lot 404 errors. the traffic went down significantly. One of the main guys that does reviews and news in the website left it. I think the site owner and one guy are maintaining it.
Moral of the story: stick to a .com or a .net/.org from the start. There are unique TLDs too.
Thanks!!!
Can't change what I have already done. I have a .in domain.
.com domain is quite expensive now.
What do you suggest?
Well, your content is India specific. With an exception to NRIs, the personal plan advises that you give applies to India. What you will need to do now is try to pull more india-specific traffic. I would recommend giving investment advises regards to property investment. I see a lot of those channels giving bad advises about purchasing. For example advising people investing a lot of money in panvel whose some projects are stalled and where prices are overexaggerated using a proposed airport viz. delayed for 1/2 a decade and still not started. People who dig for information get to know easily but most dont. Resale seems to be tough in Mumbai since 60s-70s are being redeveloped or new expansion towards thane/navi mumbai. So people really need that source of good investment advice.
.com is indexed by the search engine first i.e., when people search something on google, .com sites comes first but if your content is unique you don't need to bother about.
Thanks Amitesh!!!
There shouldn't be any problem as long as your primary audience are Indians (whether in India or abroad). All posts will anyway be indexed and be accessible for anyone around the world. I feel, even SEO-wise, it maybe better to take a .in domain name when you are targeting Indians more than others. I have a .buzz domain name and not worried - so cool down! :)
Thanks!!!
Dot com, other domain names are trash in my opinion.
Thanks Shalu and The Sorecror!!!
I feel it is not relevant. The quality of content matters and frequency you post matters than domain name or domain extension. I have couple of sites which have .com and .in extensions too and I realized this with my personal experience. Only thing you gotta do is in google webmasters there is an option to set your target country. If you have .in domain you cannot change it and if you have .com domain you can change target country to the list like USA, India, Canada or any you wish.
When I was buyiny my domain, .com was wayyyyyy more expensive than .in
I could either change the name of the website or just get .in , and so I did.
It did take some time for the website to start ranking (3-4 months), but since then I have never seen any SEO related issue. I produce search engine friendly content, and I also have an SEO guy working on the website
I have a .info and I'm not unhappy with the number of readers that come by. I guess what matters is that the right content keeps attracting readers and some of them create an online buzz that may escalate into a virtual blizzard. So what really matters is 'what' is uploaded and 'how often'.
It absolutely doesnt matter..Some of the top sites i usually browse have .ws , .tk, .in, .la
so trust me if u have good content and "if u build it , they will come"
(quote shamelessly copied from my fav movie Field of Dreams :))
If you have India centric audience then it might help to have .in domain it doesn't matter otherwise. Just keep the readers interested and Google will take care of the rest (SEO)