Domain name extension impact on results?
Hey!
So I have decided to jump into the WordPress maintenance world earlier this spring. 🌿 I’m based in Finland 🇫🇮 and therefore my domain extension I decided to choose back then was .fi
I have now started to wonder to expand internationally maybe to the USA 🇺🇸 or UK 🇬🇧 a bit.
I wonder if someone here got some knowledge on if my .fi domain extension will be a hindering factor? By hindering I’m more so talking regarding SEO and showing up in searches since the page itself I can obviously translate to English.
When I bought the domain the .com extension was already taken and therefore not available.
Would really appreciate some help on this 🙏
Hello,
Sorry, I'm late to this party.
Is the .co option still available? Perhaps go for the .co version?
.fi would not impact search results, IF the domain has been optimized for the regions you are targeting, but as someone in the comment mention, it can be confusing for users if they'll think that the domain is for Finland-only business.
Imagine I started my business with a .be, targeting only Belgium, then expanded with .nl, now I'm on a .co domain, because the .com was already registered...
Makes sense. I probably don't think it's all too weird since I'm used to seeing majority .fi in search results as well as .se which is the Swedish extension.
I can see through that if I were to show up in the search results for someone located in the states, for example, it could be confusing since they may never have seen a .fi
I'll look into a .com or .co domain.
And you are not late at all :) Thank you for your answer, always helps!
According to my SEO knowledge, the .com domain is most appropriate for growing the website internationally because it is kind of global domain. Regional domain extensions won't give the same results like .com at the international level.
Thank you as well!
Regarding the answers I’ve been getting it sounds more like it won’t hurt me to have the .fi extension I’m currently using, but that it wouldn’t either hurt to have the .com which comes with higher trust.
I suggest you provide multi-language support on a single non-regional domain using sub-folders (not sub-domains). Given your current site is successful I would continue running that in parallel - possibly never migrating it to the common site.
Good luck!
Alright!
Sounds great. Well, I'm currently in the very very early stages so the name I have has yet to gain any brand awareness at all.
If I let's say hunted up a domain name that I would get a non-regional extension for, would the smart thing regarding rebranding be to have the "old domain" currently in use just make a redirect when clicked in search results to the new domain name with a .com extension, therefore, minimizing the negative SEO impact or loss of rankings?
I guess the negative side that comes with that is having to pay for 2 domains for one site 🤔
With respect if current domain has no traffic then there is nothing to transfer or be concerned about. If has traffic then as I suggested you could run two sites, viewing the new site as an experiment.
If no traffic, is it worth keeping the .fi extension? Maybe. If the name works well in Finland or users have a local loyalty to .fi extension.
Running two sites is ok (domains are not expensive). Duplicate content is not good but the "canonical" setting can indicate which site gets the credit.
Are you overthinking this at this stage? Is there a big enough market in Finland for you to nail before branching out? It would give you a firm foundation to expand later.
That's exactly what I'm thinking about right now. There is a market in Finland for sure but getting to the higher rankings takes time here as well even though the country and language as a whole are fairly small.
Regarding the branching part, I'm more so thinking for the future. Gaining good rankings in the international space takes even longer so the earlier I start the better right?
Shouldn't be a problem regarding SEO. Only concern would be from a branding perspective and potentially direct visitors accidentally going to the .com instead of your .fi address.
That's true. I have checked up the .com domain and it’s not in use at all at the moment. I bet I could make an offer for it but I’m sure the price would be astronomically high.
Will start translating the page from Finnish to English. You know if directly translating is a good idea with a language picker in the corner or creating a separate site on a sub domain is better?
No SEO expert but as long as your page is in English it should not matter in terms of SEO.
That’s what I’ve also been thronging since I see a bunch of .com websites in the Finnish search results.
Yet one explanation for that could be that the .com is seen like a pretty much standard everywhere.
Your point with the language makes a lot of sense though 🤔