Will buying a .co url domain name help or hurt my SEO?

There has been a lot of hype about the .co TLDs, there are many people posting that Google will accept them as the new .com, although it’s the TLD for Colombia. Will Google treat the .co as generic like .com or .net or as a local TLD?  Does google index .co domain names?

Here is Google’s Matt Cutt’s take on it.

So, yes even though .co url’s are originally meant for Columbia, the web developer community and the sellers of URLs have pushed this to a new cyber squatter frenzy.  There is no advantage or disadvantage to using .co URLs it is all a matter of how much quality content and authoritative value your site adds to web.

What to do if you bought a .co URL and you are not in Columbia?

Log in to your analytics on google, and set up your account.  You will receive a small snippet of code and once you validate your website, you can then easily change your configuration in settings so that the .co url will point to the United States.  The google analytics is where you can target your site to the United States.

Seo and Local SEO

There are many factors that determine where websites rank on Google searches, one of the most recent changes refers to websites being mobile friendly. You can read more here.