Free Domain, good or bad?

[sky103]

What do you think about free domain? Good for SEO?

In my opinion, SEO is not too bad if using a free domain. However, it should TLD. Not free domain which is made of sub-domains.

But for certainty in the future, and for high traffic I doubt it.

Well, what do you think? Share your opinion here

 

[Genesis]

I'd say one would have to work harder on SEO if it is a free domain. It is also easier to promote a paid domain. But if you work harder on a free domain SEO with no effort on the paid domain, then the free domain SEO may make it more successful. Although this is not necessarily always the case, a free domain can give the impression of "not permanent", or "not long lasting". Whereas paid gives the impression of serious and "permanent", even though it may not really be the case. Appearance is what counts however. And plenty of effort on SEO side including content first, then doing all the other things on a SEO "to do" list.

 

[agungrbud]

i think free domain will have a bad SEO rank

 

[Yozora]

What are you referring to by "free domain", exactly? If you mean the kind of thing like .tk, a lot of those seem to just mask the URL, or put it in an iframe or something, so you just see [yourdomainname].tk even when you go to other pages, while something like .com or .net domains will show [yourdomainname].com/pagename.html, or something, therefore it's harder for visitors to bookmark pages on certain free domains.

If you mean TLDs like .com or .net which you can pay for by posting on certain sites, or by completing surveys, etc, it shouldn't really matter.

 

[pan1]

Just use free domain for testing of your site only.

 

[GigaGreg]

What are you referring to by "free domain", exactly? If you mean the kind of thing like .tk, a lot of those seem to just mask the URL, or put it in an iframe or something, so you just see [yourdomainname].tk even when you go to other pages, while something like .com or .net domains will show [yourdomainname].com/pagename.html, or something, therefore it's harder for visitors to bookmark pages on certain free domains.

If you mean TLDs like .com or .net which you can pay for by posting on certain sites, or by completing surveys, etc, it shouldn't really matter.

On dot.tk you can point domain to your own dns, I have done that couple of times for my websites hosted on gigarank. But free domains are bad, because these are limited and we cannot choose what domain we want to use.

 

[Peter]

I think using a free domain is risky. How do we know we can trust the free domain service and that the domain will not be lost in a few years time? If that happens all links pointing to your website will be gone which means it will be harder to find your site and SEO will get hurt. The domain is much safer if you pay for it yourself.

 

[ogah]

i use free domain 4fd.us registered at 2014-11-22 and developed start from december 2014. yesterday i get 1097 unique visits and 1919 pageviews, today i get 1813 unique visits and 3745 pageviews (stats by statcounter)
majority visitors come from google.

 

[SUPERSTAR2013]

i think it is very very bad for seo

 

[Yozora]

@"iGdesigner"
Ah, OK. I must have mixed .tk up with another one, maybe .co.nr or one of them. It's been a while since I last used those sites.

@"Peter" Good point! I know at least a few of those sites which have died or went paid.

 

[Genesis]

I have a number of dot.tk domains and am happy using them. Quality is great and one can use DNS as explained by iG. DNS is immediate, like really immediate. One doesn't have to wait for the DNS to take effect. I know for a fact however through experiences of others that as soon as a person adds value to a "free" dot.tk domain through SEO or the site gets plenty of traffic, then dot.tk cashes in on those domains, by putting them up for sale. One all of a sudden finds the domain is no longer yours.

So for dot.tk I'd only use the names for parking Websites that don't have much traffic on them, or that I'm experimenting with in a sandbox situation.

 

[kalep]

u should buy pay domain for good result
free is for learning

 

[Gregoric]

[...] I know for a fact however through experiences of others that as soon as a person adds value to a "free" dot.tk domain through SEO or the site gets plenty of traffic, then dot.tk cashes in on those domains, by putting them up for sale. One all of a sudden finds the domain is no longer yours.

That's a pretty good advice for beginners. Luckily, I use the do.tk service only for the small projects. I have had a similar experience on some other free hosting, which provided a free domain as well, where my website got blocked for having too high traffic (althoughit was rather moderate amount, far less than my websites with dot.tk get nowadays). I had no access to the files for like two weeks, as the website administrators "investigated" whether the traffic was generated legally or not really. Sending emails to the administrators gave no response.

Now, I am using Gigarank and such problems have vanished

 

[Snowflake]

When I started, I used to have that kind of thing on co.vu (it was similar not this one, I cant remember) and co.nr, but those extensions would disappear after a while. Now I only use paid domains, it's safer.

 

[bijanbina]

the .tk one is good but when you tell that to your coustomer (if you have one) he make panic and even doubt that your are a fraudulent, domain is very cheap (compared to hosting) so getting one is a wise action

 

[Pablo]

I always use free domains first when I'm testing a Website. If it feels right, I then go ahead with purchasing the real thing. Free domains don't feel real, like toy domains.

 

[Soap]

I'm breaking myself and starting this adventure for the first time. I'm using a free domain because I'm (without a doubt) going to screw this up. I love learning!!!!!:bomb::drinks::yahoo:

 

[Briar Spirit]

I never really thought about this to be perfectly frank, a paid domain looks more professional so if you're looking to make money from a site then a paid domain would just make sense. If you only want a fun hobby site then why not just use the Gigarank sub-domain.

 

[alqutob]

@"iGdesigner"
Ah, OK. I must have mixed .tk up with another one, maybe .co.nr or one of them. It's been a while since I last used those sites.

@"Peter" Good point! I know at least a few of those sites which have died or went paid.

Yes exactly, I had have bad experiance with .co.cc which disappeared with all my free domains , and the same had happened with vv.cc free domains.

@Pablo
The same I am doing now.

 

[Genesis]

Haha .... @alqutob co.cc was my very first free domain registrar. I remember when I used .co.cc the first time some years ago one could have limitless free domains with the registrar. Then it got less and less, and just before they vanished into thin air - literally - one could only have three free domains and had to pay for any excess. I had good memories with those though. I then moved to dot.tk. I'm very happy with dot.tk, however only use them for "practice" domains. For my serious domains I prefer to get paid domains.