Having your brand name as a domain is one of the most common strategies when creating a website. Besides recognition and brand awareness, it also contributes to your SEO scores and ranking.
If you still haven’t created or built your brand, you might prefer to claim a domain name with a call to action that resonates with your prospective visitors. All in all, once you come up with a domain name suitable for your brand and its voice, make sure you reserve it as soon as possible before anyone else does.
Choose Your TLD
TLD (Top-Level Domains) might not be an unpopular topic online and yet there’s still too much that remains unclear. Choosing a TLD usually relies on its general popularity and not on its specifications.
So, let’s examine the most widely-used top-level domains to understand the differences between them.
.com – Even though it’s now open for general purposes, the .com used to indicate the website’s commercial intention. Nowadays, its popularity suggests a more liberal understanding of its purposes and is, therefore, used for a variety of websites.
.org – Here once again, we can see a shift from its original meaning to a wider interpretation. At first, .org was truncated from the word organization and was meant to serve the needs of non-profit entities. Today, how-ever, you can easily see a for profit website using this domain.
.net – As a gTLD (generic top-level domain), .net is incredibly popular among a palette of different industries. Nevertheless, its main intention for networking technologies websites has remained persistent and it is widely-used among Internet service providers, advertising agencies, and network operators.
.biz – using your website as a business portfolio might not seem as something exceptional now but used to be indicated with its own TLD.
.info – This is another gTLD which was among the 8 new ones chosen as a response to ICANN’s announcement to take the pressure off the .com domain. It’s also used as a generic top-level domain but is particularly popular among information portals and newspapers.
.us / .co.uk – Local domains are preferential for local businesses, communities, and organizations. These are particularly useful when aimed at a certain market.
