How Domain Extensions Can Help Your Business
There are many ways to use domain extensions for creative branding, marketing, and customer engagement. With so many options available today, you now have the option to use domain extensions creatively to better represent what type of business it is that youre running.
For example, you could use a .blog domain for your blog, a .shop domain for your online store, or a .city domain for your business in a specific city. You could also use an industry-specific domain to target a particular industry or a brand domain to promote your brand.
Lets look at some specific examples of how you might leverage the wonderful variety of new domain extension options below.
Give It A Brandable Title
Your domain name should roll off your tongue and call to mind your business specifically. If you choose a generic domain name and extension, then people wont be able to easily recall it. It should be simple and succinct. If you put in numbers or hyphens, you risk over-complicating the message.
As part of this, you should also stay away from strings of keywords in your domain. Keywords are okay, so long as they work together with a unique element to give your domain a brandable look and feel.
What To Do If The Domain Name Is Taken
You might have thought of the perfect domain name, but when you attempt to buy it, its not available. There can be many reasons for this, some of which include:
- The owner is using it for their own website
- The owner plans to use it for a site that hasnt yet been launched
- The owner is using the name since its similar to their actual domain, and visitors are being redirected from this domain to the owners actual domain
- The owner is using the domain for e-mail addresses
- The owner wants to stop others from using their name
- Cyberquatters are registering the name in order to make a profit
You can still use the name, but with a different TLD i.e. desireddomain.info instead of desireddomain.com. One of the downfalls of this is that when a visitor is trying to remember your domain, they might revert out of habit to the .com address and not find yours.
A short BBC documentary explains how domain traders, also referred to as domainers, can make hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars from buying and selling domains. In this video, find out how some of these entrepreneurs got involved in this big moneymaking business.
In order to protect your privacy, the video will not load until you click on it.
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Trick #: Consider Free Domain Registration
You dont have to pay for a domain name. In fact, you can even get a .com domain for free.
Lots of service providers out there offer a free domain, but that doesnt necessarily mean you should go with that particular option. Be selective. Nine times out of ten, its better to get your domain name from a domain registrar and your hosting from a web hosting provider. But there are exceptions to this rule.
If its your first time buying a domain and starting a website, it might be easier to bundle services under one roof. In this case, go with Bluehost. Bluehost is an industry leader in the web hosting space, and theyll give you a free domain for one year.
Ology: Who We Studied And How
We conducted this research using a tricky survey structure with three major parts:
Part 1: Perceived trustworthiness. We asked how trustworthy people would expect a site to be based purely on its URL, using the made-up brand mattressrankings.__ as the domain, with the blank filled in randomly with either .com, .net, .org, or one of the five other domain extensions I mentioned above.
Part 2: Palate cleanser. The second part of the survey consisted of several unrelated questions designed to distract people and find out their demographics.
Part 3: Memorability. Now that theyd been distracted for a little while, in the last part of the survey we asked people to write the exact URL they saw at the beginning.
Here were the demographics of the 1,500 people surveyed:
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How To Search For Domain Extensions
Before registering your domain name and extension, youll need to make sure its available . Assigned names are the specific domain names that have been given to organizations or businesses.
For example, suppose youre registering a .com domain. In that case, you can only register a name that has not already been taken by someone else.
You can purchase a domain name and extension from various places, including domain registrars like DreamHost. When choosing a registrar, comparing prices and features is important to find the best deal. Some registrars offer discounted rates for first-time customers, so you can take advantage of any available deals.
In addition to pricing, reputation is also important to consider you dont want to trust this valuable digital asset to an unknown or unreliable company. Ask yourself How long has this registrar been in business? Do they have good reviews?
A domain registrars location is also important due to political territory and privacy restrictions, as many countries ban using certain domain keywords in other countries .
More recently, some registrars have also started to ban users registering virus-related domains during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When People Remember The Top
This last factor is an interesting one:
When people remember the URL almost correctly when they remember the brand name but put the wrong domain extension at the end which domain extension do they say?
This helps us see how much of a bias people have in favor of each TLD.
For example, if the correct URL was mattressrankings dot net but they misremembered it as mattressrankings dot com instead, that would count as a point for the .com TLD.
The results of this test show an even bigger difference between .com vs other domains.
Heres the data:
First place again goes to .com, by far.
Out of all the wrong-but-almost-right answers, 57 of them said .com instead of the correct TLD. Thats 3.8 times more often than the next highest, .org.
When people arent sure which TLD a website uses, theyre much more likely to guess its .com than anything else.
In other words, .com domains are still thought of as the default.
The distant second place goes to .org, which people guessed only 15 times: 26% as often as they guessed .com.
Not shown on the chart above is the .co.uk domain suffix, which received two guesses. But it wasnt a subject of this study .
Key takeaway: People are 3.8 times more likely to assume a URL ends in .com than in anything else.
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What Should You Do When Your Com Isnt Available
Before digging into alternative ways of registering your domain name, its important to take a step back and think about your plan on bringing traffic to your website.
If your website will primarily be used in offline advertising like TV commercials, billboards, or business cards, it is critical that your domain be easy to spell.
Inventing a new word might seem like a fantastic idea and an easy way to get your perfect domain, but it can have unintended consequences. One older yet infamous example is that online photo service Flickr lost 3.6 million unique visits a year to Flicker.com.
On the other hand, if organic search is going to be the primary way visitors will find your website, having that perfect domain might not be as important.
On mobile search, domain names arent even visible in organic search results, so that great domain idea wont even have the opportunity to factor into the decision to click on your results.
Even on desktop search, the domain of a result isnt listed in the most prominent way.
For paid marketing channels social or search the domain name will be a very minor factor in the performance of a marketing campaign.
What Are The Parts Of An Url Address
What are the Parts of a URL protocol://. A URL contains protocols like http://, https://, ftp://, tftp etc. www. But in some cases today, there is no need to use it with the domain name. domainname. A domain name is the formatted text in the URL which is used to identify a website. location. A location is a folder name to store the files in the world wide web. filename.
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Trick #: Shop Around For The Url And Extension You Want
Generally speaking, any available domain name can be purchased from a reputable domain registrar, including the tools listed earlier in this guide. But some registrars only offer certain TLDs. This is usually the case if domain registration isnt the primary service offered by a particular platform.
So if the URL and domain extension you want cant be registered from the first place you looked, dont assume that its impossible to get. Shop around and look at other domain registrars. You can probably find what youre looking for elsewhere.
This is especially true if you want a really unique extension. You might not be able to get an extension like .wedding or .cool from a web hosting provider. But a service that specializes in domain registration will have more options.
Should You Use A New Tld For Your Website
The answer to this question depends on a few factors. Firstly, you should consider your target audience. If this group is primarily composed of people who are familiar with the internet, then using new domain extensions shouldnt be a problem.
However, if your target audience is people who are less familiar with the internet, they may have difficulty remembering or finding your website if you use a new TLD.
You should also consider your budget when deciding whether or not to use a new TLD. New TLDs can be more expensive than traditional ones, so youll need to weigh the cost against the potential benefits.
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Does Domain Extension Affect Seo
Its always beneficial to think about SEO when creating or changing a website. Your sites generic top-level domain will not affect its performance in search engines. Your top-level domain influences brand perception and trust more than anything, but s it does not take TLD into account when listing search results. Youre better off implementing other SEO best practices to climb the rankings.
There is one caveat here. If two or more websites share the same name and implement the same SEO practice, but have different extensions, the website with the .com domain extension will rank highest in most results. This is because people tend to trust .com websites and will generally choose them over .net or .biz alternatives, and websites with more traffic perform better in search engines.
Many webmasters raise a query about whether they should buy multiple domain extensions for their websites. Host IT Smart, a web hosting entity, states that you dont need all the extensions. They advise that you secure your primary domain extension & after that, you can buy the target country extensions like .us, .ca, or .in .
Unlike the TLD, the name component of your domain does affect SEO. Your sites name tells people and search engines what your organization is and/or does.
Choosing A Domain Name Ending
While some may have businesses that have been up on the web for a while, we understand there are always a lot of businesses that are new to the game. Maybe your business has had such a local focus that you really did not see the need for a website. Perhaps you knew your customers personally and few of them even used the internet, but now you find that the landscape has changed. Now you have come to realize that not only do you need a website, you need a plan to get it to the very top of the search engine results.
Do not fear. Increase Visibility is here to help. If someone has told you that you need to give them a lot of money, and that that they can get you high ranking status overnight, be wary.
Optimizing your website and getting noticed by search engines takes time. Before you optimize your website, you need to pick an optimal domain name.
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What Is The Best Domain Ending
1. The best domain ending depends on the purpose of the website.
There are many different domain endings, such as .com, .net, and .org. The best domain ending depends on the purpose of the website. For example, a website for a business would likely use a .com domain, while a website for a non-profit organization would use a .org domain.
2. For example, .com is best for commercial websites, while .org is best for nonprofit organizations.
Domains are the unique names that identify websites on the internet. For example, .com is best for commercial websites, while .org is best for nonprofit organizations. Domain names are important because they help people find your website and understand what it is about. When choosing a domain name, you should consider what kind of website you are creating and what kind of message you want to communicate.
3. There are also country-specific domain endings, like .us for websites based in the United States.
Domains are the unique names that identify websites on the internet. They are made up of a series of letters and numbers, and they can be used to find a specific website. There are also country-specific domain endings, like .us for websites based in the United States.
4. In general, shorter domain endings are better because they’re easier to remember.
5. Ultimately, the best domain ending for a website is the one that best suits the website’s purpose.
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Avoid Suspicious Sounding Domains
Are you more likely to give your credit card information to buywidgets.com or buywidgets.zip?
If you chose the first one, youre not alone.
People tend to be wary of specific domain extensions, often with good reason. There are extensions that spammy sites have almost entirely taken over.
So how do you avoid a sketchy-sounding domain name?
Unless you qualify for something like .gov or .mil, your best bet is to stick with .com.
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Reserving And Buying The Right Domain
You can register a domain online with a domain name registrar – an organization that distributes domains and provide other services such as web hosting. Generally speaking, providers also offer a domain name search, a function that enables users to find out if their desired domain is still available. However, its important to note that some of the new top-level domains can only be pre-ordered for now, as they have not yet been officially launched.
Of course, cost is an ever-important factor when choosing a domain name. Prices can vary wildly, ranging from a few cents all the way up to $10 a month. Users usually buy domains from domain name registrars, who then submit the application to the correct agency and ensure all the necessary steps for creating the domain are carried out. Check out our handy guide for more tips on domain registration.
Getting your own domain is easier than many people think. Even if your desired address is unavailable with a .com domain ending, theres now a whole host of solid TLD alternatives to choose from. This new abundance of nTLDs ensures that anyone can register a fitting domain name for their internet presence.
Register a domain name
A Brief History Of Domains And Extensions
Computers first started connecting to each other over Wide Area Networks . One such example was the ARPANET in the 1960s. During this time, people were looking for a way to identify the systems and easily access them.
In 1972, the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency created something called the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority , which would eventually become the Internet Protocol or IP addressing system.
The Internet continued to grow into the 70s with the rise of email. No longer could long and confusing number sequences work. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin developed the first name server in 1984. A year later, the Domain Name System was implemented, and the original top-level domains were introduced.
These included .com, .net, and .org. Jump forward to today, and there are over 19 million registered domain names. This number continues to grow by the day. This also means that the most popular option, .com, is becoming crowded.
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Include Seo Keywords In Your Domain Name If Possible
Try to use keywords in your domain name search, but only if it makes sense. A keyword in your domain tells search engines what your website is about. If you have a good user experience and quality content, you could rank higher in Google search results.
Youll need to get creative and mix keywords with your brand name to make it stand out. Start with a few broad keywords that represent your products, then add your company name.
If you sell apparel, for example, the term apparel could work well in your domain name. Try the formula + = :
- Sunday + apparel = sundayapparel.com
- Dianes + candles = dianescandles.com or candlesbydiane.com
- Cosmik + masks = cosmikmasks.com
Stick to one or two keywords. More can feel spammy and drive people away from your site.
A great example of this comes from Verve Coffee Roasters, a coffee brand from Santa Cruz, California. It chose the domain name vervecoffee.com, which covers both brand and broad keyword and is memorable and relatable for site visitors.