Marketing: How Many Domain Extensions Should I Purchase?
Registering additional domain extensions can seem superfluous. Why buy what you won’t use? Why not save even that small amount and spend it on something that leads to trackable ROI?
If you are making a name for yourself on the Web, or have ANY ambitions to do so, you will eventually draw someone’s attention. That’s the whole point, right? And in drawing attention, it is a mathematical certainty that you will draw a percentage of negative attention and/or competition.
Cutting straight to the chase, someone may very well buy whatever domain extensions you don’t, and create websites or microsites that compete with your domain in search and mislead potential customers, clients, and investors. And at most, we’re talking a couple hundred dollars per year. It’s not really a question of whether your company can justify the expense, but whether your company can justify NOT guarding their domain name for a few hundred dollars per year.
There are many other opportunities for your corporate reputation to be tarnished online, but let’s not allow such an easy solution prevent us from the simplest of steps.
So which extensions should you buy?
If you can, buy them all. If you have to narrow it down, start with the following extensions, listed in order of importance for US businesses:
.COM – the de facto most important extension in the known universe
.NET
.ORG
.TV
.CO.UK
.INFO
.BIZ
.US
.ME
.CA
.MOBI
.CC
.ASIA
.CN
.BZ
.ORG.UK
.WS
.RU
.DE
.DK
.FR
And so on. You can cover all the country extensions that permit you to register. The top nine are non-negotiable. Own them and keep your registrations current. Any domain extensions you don’t use can be redirected to your primary domain.
Happy New Year from everyone at MarketNet!
Daniel Dessinger
MarketNet, Inc.
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