How to End Your Domain Name And does It Matter?
So you’ve picked your company name, decided on your domain name, and gone to buy your domain name, through a company like 123-reg or godaddy. Then you realise you’ve got lots of options to choose from. All domain names end with a (dot)and a series of letter i.e. .com, .co.uk or .biz.
 |
| Domain name endings. |
.com Commercial is by the the most common option although is traditionally for American based businesses.
.co.uk this is the UK’s own commercial
.edu for education sites
.mil military.
.net networks
.me personal sites
.tv was originally the extension for Tuvalu but now can be used for entertainment and fansite.
.co the Columbian code is .co but now .co can be used by anyone,
.info information websites
.biz an alternative ending for businesses.
Each country also has it’s own letters which can be offered by providers, added to a number of the above, i.e. .co.uk, org.uk or uk.net
So which one should you choose?
From an SEO point of view it really makes no difference. It’s your on page optimisation and back links that really make or break a site.
However that said in the UK, there is an expectation that UK based companies will use .co.uk domain name.
Do you need to buy all the domain variations?
Well buying them all will stop anyone else using that name, but will also set you back a lot of money. Personally I would advise if you’re UK based and serve the UK stick with a .co.uk if you’re a global company, you might want to go for .com However if someone the other end of the country to you has the .co.uk version of your preferred domain but the .biz or .net or even .me version is still available there is nothing to stop you choosing that.
So if you have your own domain, what extension / ending did you go with, and what made you choose that?
To see how Pippasweb could help your business, check us out.
3 ways to pick your domain name.
You’ve made that decision that your company wants a web site. So your next task is what to call it. It needs a domain name or url.
1) Use your company name. The simplest idea is to buy a domain name using your company name. This is great if you’re an existing established company. After all how will people know to look for your company, if they don’t already know it’s name? Of course that’s where SEO would come in, you’d arrange your site so it could be found using the keywords
2)What do you do? Describe a service that your site offers, using a keyword you would expect people to use to find you in Google for example. Window cleaning and select a domain name using the term somewhere within. This will give a bit of extra juice for search engine ranking for that term.
3)Place names, if you serve a specific area, a town, city, county, then it may be in your interest to chose a domain name with it in the name.
Of course, you’re not just limited to one domain name either. If you are entering into a field with a lot of competition you may want to approach it from several different ways.
You could buy as many domains as you need on for services, one for name, one for location and then use a domain re-direction point them to your site. However think about this before you do it, the more you buy the more links you’ll need to build for each name. Also do you want to be in competition with yourself? If you do buy extra domain names, then you will need to create 301 redirection to direct them to you site so that only one version of your site is visible to search engines, or you’ll end up with duplicate content which is another SEO NO-No.
So if this has given you some inspiration then check your short list of suggestions on www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names and make sure that no-one else has your combination.
In the next post I want to look at the domain name endings and does it make a difference.
So how did you select your domain name? Leave me a comment and share.
To see how Pippasweb could help your business, check us out.
