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Ask HN: Domain Name Dilemma

4 points by kloc ↗ HN
I am confused b/w choosing a country specific TLD (ccTLD) or the Dot Com TLD (gTLD) for my domain.My website/blog will only cater to a specific country.What would be better from SEO and "end user perception" perspective. Also, ccTLD for the Domain Name I like is available and gTLD is not.

4 comments

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russell
Easy. Do both. Domain names are cheap and you can have multiple pointing to the same site. Definitely you want your ccTLD because it fits your market, but if you can also find a good .com, take that too, particularly if you are doing international sales.
kloc
Thanks but don't you think that having 2 domain names point to same site would lead to confusing brand? What name will I put on the site?
russell
Best if there is an obvious connection between the the two domain names, like wonderful-name.de and the-wonderful-name.com or the .com has a hyphen. If there is no obvious connection, there is certainly the potential for confusion.
nfriedly
Usually, if I have multiple domain names for a single site, I pick my favorite and just 301 redirect the rest. This avoids confusion and also avoids any potential "duplicate content penalty" from search engines.