I have a client who is considering buying a ($3) .us TLD for a U.S.-only
commercial site because his first choice of .com is unavailable. The
other option he’s considering is .net which he’s not thrilled with and
costs $4k though he’s willing to pay it if the long-term benefits of
.net outweigh .us. Having read several SEO articles no one can seem to
agree (big surprise) on whether there’s any real-world benefits with
regard to search engines of .net vs. .us.
So the $4000 question is: Is there any difference, really, that would
warrant spending thousands of dollars for a .net domain vs. $3 for .us?
I’ve had people tell me that it has to be .com, no one understands the others, but this was years ago. To me, TLDs don’t make a difference in that I’ll go to whatever you say your TLD is if I want to visit your site. But, I’m a geek. I can’t say what “normal” people do. It may not matter to them anymore, either. Years ago, we all had these short domain names, nobody wanted anything longer than an average word or so. Now there are domains that are practically sentences. Things change and people adapt.
I’d go for the .us if it has a ring to it with whatever his domain is.
I think a lot depends on what they plan to do with their site. If they’re a
business, I think they should own the com TLD. Probably also net and org,
just to funnel users to the com domain. Since com is not available, they
would have to come up with a plan and a budget, and a timeframe to obtain
them.
Or they could just settle for net… provided they made a firm commitment to
making potential users aware of how to find them – so SEO, branding,
advertising efforts all a must. But since that commitment is mandatory for
the net TLD, it would also be so for the us TLD – which is cheaper.
But why not pick a different domain name altogether, so as to sew up the
com, net, org, info, us, and whatever TLDs they felt necessary to drive
users to them? Is the name they are seeking now that important in the
scheme of things?
I also meant to add that, personally, I reserve a special hell for domain
squatters that make it so impossible to find available names.
I would recommend some derivation of their desired .com plus all the others that go with it.
I’m pushing for a .com variation if possible though there may be other
legal considerations specific to this project that may get in the way.
Regarding the suggestions of also buying the .net, .us etc. variations
in addition to .com … I understand the reasoning but wouldn’t that
essentially be domain squatting? And even if he did buy those other
TLDs, how could he leverage those to drive traffic to the .com site?
With .htaccess?
On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 8:06 PM, Todd email@hidden wrote:
Regarding the suggestions of also buying the .net, .us etc. variations in
addition to .com … I understand the reasoning but wouldn’t that
essentially be domain squatting? And even if he did buy those other TLDs,
how could he leverage those to drive traffic to the .com site? With
.htaccess?
I have used the additional TLDs to point to the com domain either by domain
forwarding at the registry (like GoDaddy) or by erecting supporting sites
using the org, net, info TLDs that link support and have links back to the
com site. I think of this as brand managing as opposed to domain squatting.
The owners of Pepsi.com should not allow anyone else to control a
pepsi-named TLD – that would allow competitors and detractors to tarnish
their brand. The best example I can think of off-hand is how
whitehouse.comlampooned the official whitehouse.gov during the Bush Jr. years and the office of the President of
the United States couldn’t do a thing to stop the harsh attacks.
To me, domain squatting would be to put TLDs to no good purpose, simply use
them to extort money from people who would use them. I don’t believe in
brand weakness. >:D
I have used the additional TLDs to point to the com domain either by domain
forwarding at the registry (like GoDaddy) or by erecting supporting sites
using the org, net, info TLDs that link support and have links back to the
com site.
Ah, I see. That’s something I will pass along. Thank you.