If you’re reading this blog post, you’re probably in the process of investigating .qa domains either as a local in Qatar or an international business, perhaps looking to expand into Qatar. If this sounds like you, then we can understand why you’re asking the question, is .qa a good domain?
Let’s get straight to the point. A .qa TLD (top-level domain) is a good domain if you’re looking to do business within Qatar. That sentence somewhat undersells just how good of a domain .qa is as there’s no better domain you can register if you’re trying to reach an audience in Qatar.
Let’s explore what makes .qa such a good domain.
Is .qa a Good Domain For Qatar?
As alluded to in the opening, .qa is the best domain you can buy if your goal is the reach an audience in Qatar. There are other domain names that target Qatar, such as the Arabic language قطر. internationalised domain name (IDN) and the .com.qa second-level domain but they’re not as popular as .qa, which holds nearly 59% of the Qatar domain registration market.
When a Qatari citizen sees a website that uses a .qa domain, they’ll immediately know that the website targets them. You don’t get this type of instant feedback from generic domains like .com so if you want to connect with the people of Qatar, .qa is a good domain.
How Popular Are .qa Domains?
On a global scale, .qa domains aren’t as popular as .com, which has over 100 million registered domains. By comparison, at the end of 2021, there were around 25,000 registered Qatari domains, with .qa most likely accounting for close to 15,000 of those.
While .qa is the most popular Qatari domain you can buy, it’s not as popular as .com. This is a good thing though as you should have no issues registering the exact .qa domain you want. The same can’t be said about .com, where you’ll most likely need to get creative or use a domain suggestion tool due to your preferred .com domain probably being registered years ago.
Are .qa Domains Safe?
If you’re looking to register a domain for hosting a website, you want to be sure that the visitors to your site aren’t immediately going to think that it’s used for fraudulent purposes. This can happen if you choose the wrong domain extension, but you don’t need to worry about fraud reputation with .qa domains.
According to Spamhaus, a leader in detecting online fraudulent activity, only 0.3% of .qa domains have been used for spamming or fraudulent activities.
Due to this low percentage, we can confirm that .qa domains are safe and have a good reputation.
What SEO Benefits Does .qa Offer?
Search engine providers like Google take into account the type of domain a website is using during the ranking process. The .qa domain is considered a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD). What this means for you is that unlike generic domains, such as .com, which aren’t given any special ranking boosts, ccTLDs do receive ranking boosts in their target country.
When you use .qa for a website, this will indicate to Google that you’re a localised website, which should give you a nice ranking benefit in Qatar-based search engines. Allow us to further explain by using an example.
Let’s say you’re based in Qatar and want to buy some new clothes. When you use a search engine like google.com.qa and do a search for ‘buy men’s clothes online’, the listings you see should all be for Qatar-based retailers or international retailers that ship to Qatar.
Search engines will localise the search results for the user so that they get a good experience. It wouldn’t make sense to show online retailers that are based in the USA or UK to Qatar users. For that reason, register a .qa domain if you want to rank better within google.com.qa.
So, Is .qa a Good Domain?
Now that you’ve made it to the end of the article, we hope you can see why we call .qa a good domain but allow us to summarise:
- There’s no better domain when trying to target a Qatari audience.
- It’s very popular in Qatar, with lots of good domain names still available for registration.
- They’re safe, with little fraudulent activity detected on them.
- They have great SEO benefits in the localised Qatar search engines.
With those points in mind, it would be hard to disagree that .qa is a good domain. If you’ve been convinced that .qa is the right domain for you, start your online journey by buying your .qa domain name today.
