I'm in the process of planning a website aimed at children in the fields of space and things relating to the topic. The website is aimed at children in the 7-13 years range, although it may appeal to young teenagers too.With that said, what are your opinions on a domain using the .com, .info or .net TLDs, bearing in mind the aforementioned? I was naturally considering the .info TLD due to the nature of the website, but I keep hearing that it's not doing very well in today's market. And yes, I am fully aware of the intended usage for each TLD, but people don't exactly use them how they're defined in the specification, do they?Also, I was considering the usage of a hyphen to separate any double-worded domain ideas that I may have to improve legibility for children. As of right now, I don't have anything specific in mind. Does the usage of a hyphen cause issues with SEO or perhaps any other factors that I'm missing?
Thoughts on .com, .info or .net (and hyphens) for a space-related educational/informative website aimed at children
seo;domains;education
Some gTLDs are more popular than others. For example, .com over .info. However, there is no performance difference short of people not remembering that your site is .info and not .com. Generally speaking, all gTLDs enjoy the same penetration in search engines and there is functionally no difference between them. So the selection process is really one where you think your audience should find your site.As far as hyphens, again, there is no difference in performance. Search engines by code when examining URLs remove special characters anyway when indexing and weighting terms within the URL. So a hyphen has no difference between keyword1-keyword2 or keyword1keyword2. As a side note, keyword domains have little effect these days except within a fairly narrow set of circumstances.So the advice here is to chose a domain name where people will be able to keep your domain name in top of mind presence. It is important that domain names be memorable and easy to type. This may be especially true for kids. As well, I would suggesting checking that typing your proposed domain name incorrectly does not get your users to a site you would not want a parent or child to get to. Years ago, whitehouse.com was a famous porn site and families would make this mistake often. I would suggest avoiding this as much as you can.