What Impression do I Give by Branding a .TV Domain Name?

I've been working hard on developing content for a yet to be released website dedicated to a particular travel region of over several million inhabitants, great seasonal vacation numbers, and a direct appeal to the outdoors/hunting/fishing/camping niches.

I have been waiting a long time for the right domain name to show up and with several hundred high quality articles written by dozens of established authors I'm ready to pounce on the domain name, but what does the City.TV tell potential visitors?

I'm worried that visitors will expect video in a Youtube like setting, but I have no video content (at least not yet). I'm sure the average user has no intention of visiting a site about Tuvalu... The .com, .org, .net, and .info are long gone and quite expensive, but here I have an opportunity. What's your advice? Pony up for one of those or strike now?

 

I would expect a .TV site to be 90% video...

 

A .TV domain does create an expectation of video content but the site does not need to be pure video. Just make sure it isn't pure text. Include plenty of photos and note you can create quasi-videos from a collection of photos using Animoto.com. See what I did with the following minisites....

HollywoodBeach.TV
Doral.TV
Weston.TV
Brickell.TV
PembrokePines.TV

Note I had to abandon these because I was unable to land advertisers and Google AdSense does not pay enough to justify producing content.

 

Obvioulsy with .tv they will expect video content in first place. But, for example, I have a website in .tv with no video at all and it still does great

 

I'd say about the same as the others: I would expect videos, but a modest video content is probably enough.

 

We must be in the same neck of the woods. South Florida representing.

 

Have you though of one of the new gtlds? eg: yourcity.online, yourcity.site...

 

Not really... I think they're pretty ugly and I do want something with some age and backlinks. The .TV and .INFO are both for sale and have a fair number of backlinks and age, even some social profiles pointing to them. I do want to start with a head start.

Thanks for the examples. I'm starting to believe that the video creation can be a later element. Like I said, I have a lot of written content stored up and that can form the basis of the site initially. If things take off, I could commission videos later on.

I can respect that point. When I first started out, about 6-8 years ago, these kind of sites were doing quite well with Google Adsense. That method has been largely abandoned from all of my projects. Like you said, the money doesn't justify the work.

I figured it was obvious, but I am trying to brainstorm ways that I can make the user interpret the .TV as standing for something else, maybe it's short for another word or two... Would you mind sharing and example of a .TV site that does great and has zero video?

 

That may indeed be the worst limitation. Users don't link to your site, only 'linkerati' (influencers) do. I have some doubt that a top rated travel magazine/blog will link to a .tv site, even if the content is top quality.

Reason: so many spammy sites have been built based on uncommon extensions. It certainly is not impossible, but it may be more difficult. However, if a linkerati decides that your site is of interest to their readers, the .tv extenion is not a limitation and the absence of video is not a problem: these people know that the extension means nothing.

I suggest to try to contact Brian Dean of backlinko.com, or at least read some of his pages: he is one of the top experts in link building and white hat seo.

Back to the perception by users (by oppositon to influcencers), I think that if they see an attractive document in the serp that correspond to their search, most users will not even notice it's a .tv site.