• Search Engine Journal , Thursday, June 5, 2008 2 PM

When it comes time to choose a domain, legibility, keyword usage and relevance should all be considered--but as Ann Smarty notes, so should the top-level domain, or the term that comes after the "dot."

Top-level domains offer searchers and crawlers some insight into the kinds of content they may find on a site. An .edu for example, tends to be university or educational-based, while a .mil leads to military information.

Smarty says that there are some key points to consider when choosing your top-level domain. First, is that in many searches, Google seems to perceive a top-level domain as a separate word. "For example, searching for [fishing net] we get more .net domains on the first page than when searching for [fishing netting]," she says.

Meanwhile, .com is the default that most Web users have been conditioned to look for. "How many times did you attempt to type in 'problogger.com' instead of 'problogger.net'?" Smarty says. If possible, register the .com version of your site (if you've chosen another top level domain) and redirect traffic to the right one yourself.

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