Should you buy the .net, .org, and .us versions of your .com domain?
Business owners know that they’ve got to own a really good domain name in order to get online. Most go with their business name, which is a perfectly good strategy for most businesses. But where the owners fall short is that they only buy the .com version, and ignore the others. This mistake is easy (and cheap) to fix, and could save some big headaches down the road.
Last year I had a very prominent Saint Louis company contact me to get started on a new website. They didn’t have anything, so we had to start with their domain name. Problem was, it was already taken by a squatter, and was for sale for $60,000. Not a good way to start my relationship with them, but I broke the news to them anyway. Obviously they weren’t happy.
There have been plenty of documented cases online where squatters have purchased business name domain names in attempt to do just that, sell at a profit. It’s an uncool thing to do, but it’s out there. Sure, there are ways to possibly reclaim the domain name, but that can put you into a long and drawn out legal battle, something that no one wants.
So grabbing your .com domain name is very important – if you haven’t done it, you need to do it TODAY.
Secondly, there are other domain names available, such as
- yourbusiness.net
- yourbusiness.org
- yourbusiness.us
and many more, too. These are the most popular (after .com). I advise every one of my customers to purchase all of these domains for as long as possible (usually ten years at a time.) The cost is generally around $125 or so for ten years (per domain), but it’s well worth it.
The biggest reason to purchase these alternate domain names is simply so your competition can’t get them. Can you imagine if you owned bluewidgets.com and a competitor bought bluewidgets.net and started to outrank you in the search engines? Of course you’d want to shoot them. Don’t let them get the upper hand.
At a minimum, purchase the .net, .org and .us domain extensions of your main domain. If you’ve got the cash, get others too, like .info, .me and .biz.
Need help securing domain names? Just contact me and I’ll help you out.
Related posts:
- Domain Names and Good Ideas
- Should I Register My Domain or Build My Site First?
- Choosing a Domain Name
- Do I Have to Buy a .com?
- Buying a House: Most Realtors Missing Big Opportunities
Great advice. I had a customer a few years ago who hired me to create his web site. Another company had already designed his logo and business card and his preferred domain name had been included on the card…only problem was they had not registered it and when I went to investigate it had gone. He’d had his business cards printed too!