| UH-Matt has a very good point and I’m in the same boat as you. Non-IT peeps are slow to catch up on the various TLD suffixes available around the World and I bet your bottom-dollar if you told an English-speaking person the name of your URL, they, remembering your name of course, may not remember the suffix and type in yourname.net or .com or .org or whatever. However, those other sites may have everything to do with being a butcher, baker or candlestick-maker and not the masterings of your own enterprise.
As far as content goes, it’s the title, description and content being unique on EVERY page which will win over everything, regardless of what your URL suffix may be.
In my experience, it’s important to have the page language set correctly. Yours might all be (en-gb) so Google will pick up on that. Also, Google will consider in what country your domain server is located. And lastly, your URL suffix. And, but then, you can ask Google (through their webmaster tools) to associate your site content with a particular country and just because you have a .ac (for example) it won’t matter too much. If you need to pick your geographical target audience, just let G know.
In four words (or five, if being pedantic), don’t worry about it. It’s great to have a kicking domain name, but these days, they are all gone or trademarked. At the time of writing, and in my opinion, Google will pick-out a location, trade or calling in a url first BUT ONLY if there is sufficient and relevant website content to back-up and support the named ingredients of the URL. That matters not too much because…
Most people searching for the goods and services you provide will not typing in your url but be searching for; “website designer milton keynes” or “website designer dallas” and it’s the title, description, plentiful keyword/phrase-rich and relevant content on each and every page that will keep you at the top of SERPS regardless of your domain suffix.
And importantly, if you’re out there and doing great stuff, forget about the search-engines. Customer referral is always best business.
If you are in doubt about driving customers to other sites, just choose a .com or .uk domain name which is your surname plus your first name. Just be careful that that name isn’t already trademarked in the country(s) you wish to trade in, otherwise you may get depressing correspondence about, “You can’t use that name because it’s my trademark and therefore……”
Last edited by Nicky : 9th October 2009 at 07:06 PM.
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