Looking to make a Korean Website? Well, first things first..

what domain should I get for Korea? .kr, .com, or .co.kr?

In order:

1. .com
2. .co.kr
3. .kr

with the slight disclaimer:
.com and .co.kr are both about the same depending on some other factors relative to the business.

eg. .com is still most prevalent, but .co.kr is standard enough were from a biz marketing side… the different is nomincal.

from an SEO or other image factors, though .com good for all the reasons its good… it will crawl a better/faster if the host server is in korea. As foreign company looking to look more “korean” then .co.kr would be better in terms of raw first impression (its basically assumed that foreign companies do not use co.kr at all). I haven’t really done .co.kr’s from out of country servers, so can’t really say.

Would a .com need to be hosted in Korea for SEO purposes (for Naver and Daum)?

In that very narrow parameter of only looking at host country ccTLD assignment etc: Yes.

But in larger scope the total SEO sense for Korea given, its not quite as straight-forward.

Naver and Daum are completely different SEO beasts. But very broadly speaking, you will do better on Daum than Naver for pure SEO plays.

Naver has all the search and is very different approach and tough for SEO in the strict by-the-book sense. And last I tested… korea hosted sites did significantly better for even near same content. Others may say differently, but I would bet it more the case than not.

Daum is more like “US SEO” cause of its connections with Google (use google for its web results). But its search volume is a DISTANT second to Naver.

But for both:
* US/foreign hosted sites are have a speed performance drop. Japan might be ok, but for a site from a US server it is significant enough to effect usage.

but for REF: West Coast US servers will ping better better than East.

* its still true that web page search is very low in the ranks of combination SERPs of both. So how it actually gets exposed and for what percentage of searches by default is a major consideration for any pure SEO strategy.

* You need to register your site (or pay on an Ad block basis) with most portals here (yes, that is still done here). At least, you do if you are to get anywhere outside of the web page search area (which again, is very low in the ranks).

* Some companies may happy with Yahoo korea or google korea (and some) Daum optimization only… (like some are happy not worrying about Google optimization.

Some. But in the reverse… do well on Naver and you really don’t need to worry about others.

soo….
IF you did all the other SEO stuff needed to be done for Korean market. Then, “no” the server location issue can be minimized for Korean big two portal SEO (except for the performance issue).

But in an of itself: host in Korea.

For example, would a Korean language .com site hosted outside the country run into problems with the leading SEs?

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer:

Again, any ccTLD can lead, of course… theoretically. But what section? Web page results area? or say.. business site search results area?

Also, same rule applies that it depends on what keywords you are going for… if it a targeted keyword category, and if you’ve registered your site with the portals.

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