Are you thinking of creating your business website? The first step towards creating a valuable digital asset in the form of a website is to buy a domain name. And if you think buying a domain name is as simple as picking any random domain extension and hoping for it to work in favour of your business, you are highly mistaken.
There are a whole lot of factors that play behind the scene and makes one domain better than the other with respect to serving specific purposes. .com and .co are among most popular domains and if you are wondering -.com vs .co: Which is a better Domain? This blog is for you!
To understand it in depth, let’s study them in detail and see how and in what terms domain names differentiate from one another.
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What is Top-Level Domain?
To answer your top query- .com vs .co: Which is a better Domain? Here’s to start with what top-level domains are.
The Top-Level Domain, also known as a domain extension, is said to be the last part of the domain. It generally precedes the dot symbol and represents the purpose, owner or geographical area. For instance: In makemywebsite.com.au, .com represents the commercial purpose, while – .au represents the country code, which is Australia.
Understanding its relevance is of utmost importance, as we might think it doesn’t hold much importance, but it lays a significant impact on your brand. To understand it in depth, let’s move step by step and see how we can choose among the top domain extensions, i.e., .com and .co and find which works best for your business based on specific conditions and requirements.
Factors to Consider while Choosing Top-Level Domain
While deciding upon .com vs .co: Which is a better Domain? You must go through several factors to take the final plunge.
Here are the factors that may impact your decision to side with one domain over the other.
1. Availability
Before choosing a domain name, the first and foremost factor is checking the availability per your business requirements. Choosing a domain extension would greatly depend upon the brand name availability in either of the TLDs. Whether your desired brand name is available in .com or .co domain extension would have a great influence on your decision. Since .com is the older extension, it might have exhausted the chances of finding a desired name in its league, and you may be forced to go and scroll in the .co domain extensions to get one.
2. SEO
Domain extensions in themselves might not impact the SEO, but getting the availability of a more relevant and niche-related brand name in either of the domain extensions would certainly make the difference in securing a better SEO ranking than the other. This way, if you are trying to find a better option, see which domain extension can provide the exact brand name that you are looking for, and you are good to go.
3. Price
Again, cost or, say, price is among the most important factors that’ll help you choose the best among both. If the same brand name is available in both .com and .co domain extensions, then the TLD offering it for the lowest price has to be chosen against the other, and this is how cost becomes an important factor in choosing the best among them both.
Influence of Top-Level Domain on SEO
While finding an answer to the query – .com vs .co: Which is a better Domain? It is essential to analyse what impact they have on SEO!
Selecting a particular domain extension doesn’t directly impact on your SEO game, it is important to note that the extension you choose to club with your brand name must be simple and easy to remember to avoid any diversion of traffic.
Other than that, which domain extension (.com or .co) is able to provide you with the brand name that best goes with your business needs and requirements would add up to your SEO ranking after it starts working in tandem with the other factors, contributing to its overall success. Although the fact that Google prioritises .com over .co has been doing the rounds, there’s little to no evidence for this fact, making it a myth in itself.
So, assuming that domain extensions don’t have much impact on SEO makes other factors relevant and important in considering which domain extension you should go for!
Pros & Cons of .com
Pros of .com
1. Popularity
Before buying a .com domain, you might think – Is .com reliable? Well, .com domain is the most popular among all domain extensions. Why? It is the oldest and most well-established top-level domain that users recognise all around the world. Whenever a business or an organisation chooses to include it as a domain extension, it automatically adds to the website’s credibility with the potential audiences.
2. Availability
Despite the fact that.com is the oldest domain prevailing in the digital space, it still offers a wide availability for businesses and other commercial organisations to include it as their domain extension. Although it might get difficult to secure it as a domain extension, there are still a great number of options that are available for the end users.
3. Global Recognition
.com has a world-over recognition which is why it has become the most popular and preferred domain extension among users. For businesses who intend to expand their presence worldwide at some point in time, utilising the .com domain extension is the best way to go.
4. SEO
Although choosing a domain extension of your choice has the least impact on the SEO, still siding with the .com top-level domain will provide you with all kinds of SEO benefits that it should. In fact, few studies have shown that choosing the .com domain would offer you a slight edge over choosing the other domains.
5. Resale Value
Due to the fact that .com always remains in demand because of its wide acceptability and demand, it offers a great resale value even if you decide to surrender your domain name in the future sometime.
Cons of .com
1. Availability
Again, the availability of a .com is a bit of a challenge as being one of the oldest domain extensions. Most of the domains have either been purchased or reserved for use, which makes it difficult to arrange for their availability in most cases.
2. Competition
Since it’s the most widely used and accepted top-level domain, its competition remains the highest compared to the other domain extensions. No matter how unique your requirement is with respect to the domain you are trying to register, there are high chances that you’ll find high competition in securing the domain name you want.
3. Regional Limitations
If you plan to operate in a specific country, the best resort would be to go to the country code top-level domain. .com is still a universally accepted and recognised alternative when it comes to choosing the top-level domain. But in the instance of catering your services to the audience of a specific country, it runs into a limitation that cannot be ignored.
Pros & Cons of .co
Pros of .co
1. Availability
Before investing into a domain, It is only natural for you to wonder- Is .co reliable and readily available to the end users? Well, unlike .com TLD, .co is likely to have better availability for the end users. Since it is relatively new, it offers the public a wide variety of domain options for its ultimate utilisation. Users are more likely to find the relevant brand name in the .co domain extension list than in .com.
2. Globally Recognised TLD
Just like .com, .co is a globally recognised TLD. No matter which country you hail from and in which country you want your website to run, .co is a domain extension that would equally work for your business goals and specifications as .com as a domain extension would do.
3. SEO Benefits
As stated earlier, SEO is a segment that doesn’t receive much of an impact with the choice of the domain extensions that you make. However, with .co offering much wider options for brand names, you certainly can aim for better SEO ranking that might get hampered if you didn’t get the brand name of your choice in the .com domain extension.
4. Short Domain
.co offers a short domain name which makes it easy for the users to remember and find the name of your website. It might appear to be a trivial advantage, but it adds a great benefit when it comes to popularising your website among potential users and audiences.
Cons of .co
1. Less Popular
When it comes to popularity, .com is leading from every domain extension, let alone .co TDL. So in case if a particular brand name is readily available in the .com domain extension, users would any day prefer it over .co TLD.
2. Costly
It might appear strange, but despite being less popular and a relatively new entrant in this field, it is still possible that you may find its domain extensions a bit pricier than .com domain extensions. It is made this way to avoid bulk purchases and reduce the chances of domain speculations.
3. Regional Limitation
Again, if you are likely to float your business website in a particular country, then a country code domain extension would get you more benefits than a .co domain extension. This way, despite having significant substance in the availability and popularity section, it lacks in serving the interests and purpose of users when it comes to launching a country-specific website.
4. Risk of Confusion
Since .com is the oldest and most well-established domain extension across the world, it isn’t unlikely that .co TLD can sometimes get confused for .com and lose the competition when we do a fair comparison between them both.
Types of Top-Level Domains (TLD)
Now that we have analysed several components of .com vs .co: Which is a better Domain? Let’s hop on to the prime category of how many types of Top-level domains exist in the system?
1. Generic Top-Level Domain
Generic Top-level domains are not specified for any particular country and are marked for various purposes. For instance, .com is generally used for commercial purposes, .org signifies its use for non-profit organisations, .biz is used for businesses and so on.
2. Sponsored Top-Level Domain
Sponsored Top-Level domains are reserved by specific organisations. For instance, .edu is used for educational purposes, .gov is reserved for government entities, .travel is used for travel businesses and so on.
3. Country Code Top-Level Domain
Country Code Top-Level Domain is marked for specific countries. If you wish to run a particular domain accentuating a particular country domain and want to signal the search engine that your website is catering to the public of a specific country, you can go for it. For instance: .au in makemywebsite.com.au signifies its core presence and existence in Australia.
4. Infrastructure Top-Level Domains
Infrastructure Top-Level Domains are domains used for Internet infrastructure or technical purposes. Unlike other domain extensions that are utilised by the end users, infrastructure top-level domains are used by technical operators or administrators. For instance, .arpa is used for addressing and routing parameter areas.
5. Test Top-Level Domains
As the name suggests, test top-level domains are used for testing and experimentation purposes. It is specifically marked for the software engineers, quality assurances and web developers to test software applications. It allows them to test website features, new technologies, and various configurations without launching the actual website. For instance, .test is used for test and experimentation purposes, and .invalid is used for invalid domain names.
Final Thoughts
Now that we’ve gone through every possible advantage and limitation of both domain extensions and found a reasonable answer to the query – .com vs .co: Which is a better Domain?, we hope you’ll get a better idea of which one to choose, considering the specific conditions and requirements of the business.
Both domain extension offers a set advantages and have limitations when it comes to picking them as your website’s domain extension. .com might come across as more reliable and authoritative in terms of targeting your audience, laying a robust impact on the audience, while .co comes with offering a relatively easy availability (if a similar domain is not available in the line the of .com series) and a low price (in most cases) compared to .com.
Signing up for either of them won’t lay much impact on the SEO benefits, so you can side with whichever domain you like, depending upon their availability and price. Also, after choosing a befitted top-level domain for your business website, you can contact makemywebsite.com.au for superior hosting solutions. They are known for providing fast and efficient services coupled with constant customer support for any grievances that their clients face. Also, they have served hundreds of clients with the website security to run a fully-functional and well-optimised website for their business.
So reach out to us for such services, and we’ll be happy to serve you with the best of the industry standards.
