Your experience with .us domains

[sids70]

How are your .us domains doing in SERP rankings?
I have quite a few .us domains and they are mini websites, they did ok for a while some of them actually ranked on google page 1 results. But lately they are not doing well.

I have not updated them either but at the same time I do not see much buzz around .us domains.

I would appreciate if anybody can share some info as to how they are doing, in particular your well developed .us website.

I am willing to develop them if I get some +ve feedback.

This should help other .us owners too.

thanks,


Sid

 

[Eric Lyon]

My developed .us domains do pretty good and consistently generate ad revenue for me. The sites pay their own renewal every year and bring in profits (which is all that really matters to me).

As for the dropping in the serps, that's due to many factors, not specifically the extension. Naturally .us does better in U.S. google data centers than say in a German or French data center.

Your target key words is at the base of your competition and people are constantly competing for key word priority. What's probably happening is a combination of you no longer marketing / promoting the sites + competitors popping up targeting the same key words you are. This added competition will cause your sites to fluctuate in the serps.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a constant battle and never sleeps. The more time off you take from promotions (unless your site goes viral by itself), the further you will drop in the serps.

I love my .us extensions and have no complaints about them.

Just my thoughts on this anyways

Eric lyon

 

[sids70]

hi Eric,

Thanks for your answer. This helps me a great deal. I have few really lucrative .us domains but I was just afraid to renew/develop them. Your answer certainly steer me to focus on them more.

Really appreciate this.

Sid

 

[sids70]

What are your views about .us domains now in 2013?
I think now they have lost popular rankings in SE.

Let us know your experiences.

 

[Eric Lyon]

What are your views about .us domains now in 2013?
I think now they have lost popular rankings in SE.

Let us know your experiences.

My Developed .Us are still doing fairly well actually. While they aren't making me rich, they pay their own renewals and generate an ok profit every year on autopilot. Of course, you have to keep in mind that I'm only targeting U.S. SE results with them. However, even with my strict geo country targeting, they still seem to be ranking on page one in a few other countries such as, but not limited to: Mexico, Canada, Germany, India, England, Etc..

I don't think .Us have been devalued over the years in search results, I just think that many .Us developments may or may not be using completely unique content nor are they being geo targeted properly for it's own country.

One must keep in mind that even something as minor as backlinks pointing to a .us domain play a big roll in a geo campaign. E.G. a site linking in with relevant content + on a USA IP server pointing to another USA ip will more than likely provide better geo value in the local U.S. search results than a German website on a German IP pointing to a USA IP site. Granted, the German IP site may still help you get some authority in German search results.

Naturally there's countless other aspects to keep in mind when dealing with cctld development, however I've always found that my cctld's tend to do better with strict geo targeted campaigns when I don't have a huge branding / marketing budget to push any tld on a global popularity level.

IMO, Focus on local targeting and then slowly expand after you've started getting established. It's much easier to get results faster in a smaller niche than trying to take on the whole world out of the gate with no capital.

We all have different experiences though, The above is just a fraction of mine with .us

Eric Lyon

 

[dcristo]

SEO benefits aside I think .us is a turd of an extension.