Let’s say you’ve come up with a great new website name. It’s catchy and unique and you’re lucky because no one has registered it yet.

The only question now is what top-level domain (TLD) extension should you get? .com? .us? .info? There are a few hundred TLDs to choose from so how do you pick?

It’s always a good practice (if you don’t mind spending $35/year) to purchase the .com, .org, and .net extensions of your domain name – especially if you plan on building a large brand on the internet. Most of the major search engines give a lot of value to these three extensions when it comes to "exact match" searches.

Let’s say you own Example.com but you didn’t bother buying Example.net. Well someone could go and buy Example.net and just park the page or he or she could rank for your brand name or product. An example of someone else buying up a branded name is Twitter.ca. If you type in Twitter.ca you will not go to the Twitter service that you normally use – instead there is landing page.

Twitter.com might be able to take Twitter.ca to court over that name but this problem could have been easily avoided for $10/year.

Google doesn’t give any "exact match" value to most other extensions such as: .info, .biz, .tel, .us, etc. That’s why you don’t see these extensions ranking in the search engines as often as other TLDs.

The search engines do give value to many local extensions such as .ca for Canada, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany, and .fr for France etc.

Deciding which other TLDs to purchase is entirely dependent on the website you are building.

Here are a few choices:

Choice #1

You could buy up the main country extensions that actually help in ranking for those territories then re-direct them all to Example.com. So let’s say you’re selling a lot of products in the UK. If that is the case you might want to buy Example.co.uk and have it redirect to Example.com for now.

The best thing you can do is buy the domains for the countries that you’re sure you will market to in the future – just so that the domains are locked up.

Pros: You’re protected against "squatters" and you pretty much own your brand in the markets you’re hoping to pursue. It’s relatively inexpensive and you can develop those sites whenever you want.

Cons: Simply buying a domain like Example.co.uk and redirecting it to the Example.com wont help your rankings in the UK. That’s why sites like Pepsi advertise in Canada as Pepsi.ca instead of Pepsi.com. They want content focused to that country but they also want to rank for cola related search terms when people search in Google.ca.

This doesn’t mean Example.com wont get business from the UK right now; it just means that if they also build a site for Example.co.uk, they would rank better and convert better for the terms they are targeting in the United Kingdom.

Choice #2

Buy up the main country extensions that actually help in ranking for those territories (IE. Example.ca, Example.co.uk…) then build separate sites and host that content locally in those countries. You will need to write new content to avoid duplicate content issues but you can also cater your content, language and images specifically to that country.

Pros: Your brand will rank better in each of those countries. People like to see their own extension in the domain name to signal location, pricing, currency, shipping, etc.

Cons: Time & costs are higher. You need to put up different sites for each extension & you will also need to build links to each site. Thankfully the competition will likely to be far less than in the US because the markets are usually smaller in other countries.

Choice #3

Use sub domains for each country. In this case you would use something like www.uk.example.com, www.fr.example.com. This is the cheapest & easiest option but it will only help you rank a little bit better in those countries. It does let you cater content to each specific country and it does give your main site more authority.

If you are just going to market the main site then setting up sub domains for each region (de.example.com, fr.example.com), which are hosted locally within the target regions, can work as well. Even if you go this route you should still register example.de, example.fr, etc. and redirect them to the sub domains – in case people try to type them in and/or if you later want to grow them out as their own sites.

Pros: Cheapest. You can cater content to specific regions. It will help you rank moderately better in each country.

Cons: You have less options and it will still be harder to rank in each country. It might not look as professional and visitors might not trust it as much although a lot of companies are still using this format.

Of the three options, the first will give you the most options at the lowest price but the best solution really depends on what you want to do with your online properties. It’s also important to note that your domain name might not even be available in other TLDs unless it is quite unique and then you may be lucky.

It might not be realistic to build 10 different sites with unique content right now – to target 10 different countries – but it should be an option if they’re planning to go international with your website.

About Guest Author:

Donald Farber works in the field of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). He has worked extensively with local businesses as well as life insurance websites like LifeCover.ca.

Donald lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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Getting to Grips with Google

Many local businesses around the world are looking to the search engines to help find customers.

The following steps will help these businesses increase the number of visitors to their website and therefore find new customers:

1) Get listed in the Google Local Directory

Google is the biggest player in the search world. When you use Google to search something like "eye doctor New York" or "dentist Fargo" there is typically a top 10 listing of results for local businesses at the top of the page.

Having your local business listed here is the cheapest and easiest way to attract new customers. You can sign up for the Google Local Directory here: www.google.com/local/add. It only takes a few minutes and it’s quite a simple process.

If you’re a bit more web savvy, David Mihm has a very thorough post on increasing your ranking for local listings.

2) Build a great website

What is the purpose of your website?

My guess is that you want more customers to contact you – therefore you should make sure that your contact information is very prominent throughout your website.

The web design on many local websites looks like it’s from the 1990s. If you’re serious about generating clients from your website you should think about getting a new design. In some cases that 1990s look will give your website a trusting “we’ve been around a long time” vibe. This could mean that keeping your current site might not be the worst option (but it probably is!). One thing you can do is look at some of your competitor’s sites and see what they’re doing.

Building out a lot of great features and content will also help your website rank and increase the chance of people linking to your site.

One thing you could do is start a blog and then contribute lots of quality content to it. Don’t just fill the blog with self-promotional garbage either – try to write about things that your customer will be interested in. If you wouldn’t read it, why would your customer?

And don’t forget that contact information.

3) Get the word out about your website

• Tell people about your site.
• Ask friends, family, customers, and suppliers to link to your site where appropriate.
• Add insightful commentary to blogs in your field.
• Submit content to related websites.
• Join a forum related to your industry.
• Submit to some of the better directories (Business.com, DMOZ, Yahoo directory etc)

4) Hire a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialist

Professionals in this field can dramatically increase the rankings of your website and bring in highly converting traffic.

A few services they can provide include:

• Adwords campaigns – Adwords are the sponsored ads on the right-hand side when you search for things in Google. SEM professionals can help you decide the best words to purchase and will implement a strategy that will yield a high return on investment (if they know what they’re doing!).
• Website ranking – If you live in small or medium sized city it is usually quite easy to rank your local business for its main search terms. Dentists in larger cities like New York might find that ranking their website is a lot harder than pulling teeth.
• Google Local ranking – As mentioned above, there are a few strategies that you can use to improve your ranking in the local search listings. Implementing these strategies can take some time but finding lifetime customers through search could be a very lucrative way of building a successful local business.

Warning: There are a lot of very poor SEM and SEO companies out there that will do nothing but take your money. At present, word of mouth is the best way to find a SEM or SEO company that will help you generate high converting traffic for your website.

I guess the same could be said of finding a great local business but sometimes word of mouth moves too slow and that’s why we need Google.

Donald Farber works in the field of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). He has worked extensively with local businesses as well as life insurance websites like LifeCover.ca.

Donald lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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