When creating your website, choosing a domain extension is one of the most significant decisions. Because, the domain extension can enable or restrict the options available for the domain name. It may not have much impact on your SEO performance but a good domain name makes an impact on your customers. Quality and usefulness of a site are still the primary determinants when it is about ranking. However, we cannot rule out the fact that an easy to remember domain name that is relevant to your business has a contribution to your business success.
Today, there is a wide variety of TLDs available (Top Level Domains) and the choice is difficult. People perceive a website differently based on its domain extension. This is the reason why you need to do all the hard work to finalize a domain extension. Without any doubt, the web traffic is most familiar with .com extension. This is not a surprise if you find that your dream.com is already registered or very expensive.If you fail to find a good alternative with .com domain extension, consider .net and .org. According to various studies, these are the most used extensions after .com are .net and .org.
If that does not work you may consider the generic TLDs. While selecting a generic TLD as an extension the first question that comes to mind- what will be the effect of a new extension of the site’s SEO ranking? Google has already assured that they treat all the extensions equally. It is seen that some of the site using new TLDs rank higher than the .com sites. It is expected that your site will not lose rank in search result because you are using a new extension.
Advantages of Using new Domain Extensions
While it is taking some time, the new domain extensions are slowly making their place in the web addresses. Selection of new TLDs has gained momentum as some of the big brands have picked these up. Google select a domain name abc.xyz for its new company Alphabet. Here are some benefits of using these new domain names:
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From these new choices, you can find an exact match for your business name. driftway.coffee leaves no space for web audience imagination. These non-traditional domain names are descriptive and meaningful, that reflect what exactly you are trying to say or do through your website.
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The country code (cc) domain extensions no doubt provide SEO advantages. If your target audience is local, try using a ccTLDs. It will help the search engine and the web users to understand your area of operation.
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Website using long domain names can find something short and meaningful from the options. It is seen that web traffic usually prefers short domain extension that is easy to spell and remember.
If you do not get a domain name of your choice in .com, .net or .org, do look for suitable names with new extensions. Finally, to come up with a name that helps to lift your business you need to remember certain tips:
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Carefully think, what your brand proposition is, who your target audience is and what you want to achieve
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Come up with a new idea. If your domain name is close to another domain name chances are high that your users may land up in that other site. You may lose traffic
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Search for the alternative that is relevant, short and meaningful
