What is the Advantage of a .org Domain Name?

I have a site that I've been tempted to turn into a non-profit at some point. The branding sucks, so I chased around some good keyword domains, and am about to spend a few thousand on a single keyword .org (the .com is being offered for im though it's a crap vertical to monetise) because the branding opportunity is so good. Even though it's a non-profit, I'd rather have a well branded one, and avoid the problems I've had in that regard on the .com I've used previously.

So...a dot org can make sense I guess if you can make it work with your branding. 2c.

First comment. yay me.

I was thinking about parked domains today and how the owners just leave them languishing with PPC ads on them. With my very limited knowledge of domaining, isn't it more profitable to put some content on a few pages of the domain so that it builds some links and page rank which may help it increase in value?

My 2 cents. Someone correct me.

Development is hard across hundreds of thousands of domains. Those guys need to learn to live with type-in or they should look at the break up value of their portfolio to people who can develop unique domains.

Yeh I know what you mean. All the parked domains rely on type in traffic which has been said to result in almost 10% of the actual keyword phrases traffic. I think if they did shoot a couple of links and write some content on them they would probably make a little more money...but then you have to take into account the labor intensive effort over thousands of domains...I myself would rather have domains with fresh content and some links..

It's so easy to set up a one page site with half ass content with adsense then leverage web 2.0 to generate traffic.

But you know some people can't break them old habits.

.orgs only matter if they are aged rather well with old links. I can see how this could work for a financial services firm or a firm giving trustworthy services, but for the normal webmaster, .orgs I don't believe would be a good idea, regardless of the marketing. The only truth is that age matters as well as theme.

If the financial service firm wanted to build up their SEO/SEM, their only way towards that goal would be much and much content as well as some juicy .edu and .gov links. In that case, the profitability would increase tremendously.

Actually, there are many smart domainers like Frank Schilling and Sahar Sahid who're developing their domains. The issue is that once you have content, your clicks go down. And that's how domainers make money: clicks.

So, the magic is in finding the right balance between content and ads to increase clicks.

The question is not just clicks but age and authority. If the .org ended up getting ihgh PR and topical sensitive links, the site would rank up highly. Clicks are valuable but conversion is definitely key as well. Offermatica would be the best solution for conversion issues and a .org would definitely increase conversions due to its trustworthy nature.

I truely love the .org domain's. they are a better fit in so many cases. take the medical field, would you rather have doctor.org or .com? I think that holds true for so many other fields as well. Getting someone to your page is only half the battle, converting them is the harder part and who is likely to convert better......

I've said it time and time again, it's easy to say 'develop' your domains but a lot harder to do in practice. Are you going to employ quality writers at $25-$50 an hour or Indian school kids at $0.02 a word? You really do get what you pay for with content.

As I see it 'developing' for many of these domains just means a little bit more smoke & mirrors, ie the sites look like they're stocked full of good content when you visit but if you dig around you soon find they're pretty much full of useless key-word heavy articles with adverts all over the place.

Sure, you'll make more money than just the standard debts.com domain if you dress it them up just a touch but please domainers don't make me laugh in telling me the majority of your sites are heading towards 'authority' type status.

I'm not knocking the domain name business in general, good luck to you all but if you've got no experience of content rich websites that are USEFUL then you're in for a big shock when you try and accomplish this goal, unless of course you're willing to pay a lot of money for your content/development.

your blog is so good,i come from china,want to learn seo

I think .org should have stronger controls like those for .edu and .gov. What say you?

I think what's happening is that the general public was molded into thinking that a domain name have to be a .com to be successful in the internet. And that stems from the commercial nature of some of the sites.

However, people tend to think of .org as a 'non-profit' form of sites. That brings about the classical thinking that a .org does not have value. I like to see a company with a .com presence and a .org that provides some form of reach-out in their .org.

Sadly, what's happening is that because the domain that customers want is no longer available in the .com, they still pursue to register the domain in the .org which brings down the credibility of .org domain type.

Mmmm blog need more soy sauce (or is that seo sauce?) kung pow blog anyone?

I'm not sure there is any greater value of having a .org vs. a .com. Why would people really "trust" the .org more if the .org is not a legitimate non-profit?

... But would most people know enough or delve far enough to find out whether or not they are legitimate?

"As a PPC lander page it is hard to earn much as a .net or .org."

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

I agree with you Aaron. I recently sold a .com but kept the .org. I knew the value of the type in traffic and the price made sense. The break even on the ROI is several years out.

The .org will be used differently than the .com to take advantage of the perceived trust of the .org and it has the same profit potential as the .com.

Nice post, but I hate to see .orgs get as over priced as .coms.

Lol, 99 times out of 100 .com is better than .org. keep telling yourself that