7 ways to make your domain name slave for you

In my presentation to local SMEs during SCCCI’s 15th SMEs Conference & 16th Infocomm-Commerce Conference in mid August this year, I touched upon how local businesses in Singapore can benefit from a well-planned online presence.

One pre-requisite of a well-planned online presence is the selection of the right domain name(s).
You should have domain names that work for you.
Selection of the right domain name(s) is not a new topic in Singapore or in the domain name industry, but it is a topic that needs a revisit now and again as technology, the Internet and our environment evolves.

It is a supply and demand issue

Throughout the entirety of the Internet, there are now more than 110 million .COMs, more than 15 million .NETs and more than 2.5 million .BIZs registered.
Even though .COM is familiar to any Internet user, .COM is not good enough anymore for new Internet domain name registrants as .COM is running out of available name combinations.

When was the last time you as a domain name registrant tried to register for a .COM domain name and after trying as many relevant combinations that you can think of, your choice remained unavailable?
The Internet desperately needs a change as it is “running out” of .COMs and even .NETs.

Any business can have more than one Internet domain name address

Industry experts have been working on a massive new generic Top Level Domain (TLD) project since 2011 for more than 700 new generic TLDs such as .WEB, .SHOP and .APP to be offered to the world.
Soon, Internet registrants can get the domain names that they want, and Internet users will be educated to recognize and adopt the use of new Internet domain names.

One way of educating Internet users is to introduce to them how the TLD may be utilized.
In April 2000, SG Registry launched a third-level TLD for individual domain name registrants. Through the launch of the .PER.SG domain, the SG Registry was able to push forth the notion that .COM.SG is a third-level TLD for companies and .PER.SG is a third level TLD for personal use.

The more locations you occupy, the more likely you will be found

There are currently more than 2.4 billion active Internet users.
Out of this, 1.1 billion people are from Asia alone. Half of this number is from Europe, and a quarter of this number comes from North America.
One way to identify which ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains) are applicable for you as the domain name registrant is to identify besides Singapore, which countries your business has established a presence in or which countries your businesses needs to protect its brand name in.

Many brands from Europe and North America have registered their brands on Asian country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) for purposes of defending their brand against “piracy” and for current or future market penetration.
Singapore brands must realize that this is the lowest cost and most effective way of protecting your brands in the neighbourhood and beyond.

7 Ways to Make Your Domain Name Work For You

With these big facts, how do you make yourself stand out and how do you make yourself heard? Luckily, you can stand out and you can shout louder with a good portfolio of domain names.

Whether your objective of registering a domain name is:
- to have an effective online presence
- to be able to campaign to the right audience
- to defend your brand online
- to have a domain name that is easy for your customers to remember
- to make yourself more easily searchable on the Internet
Your domain name portfolio is your entry point towards helping you achieve one or all these goals.

1. Tie your main domain name with your brand

If you sell shoes and the name of your shop is Turbo, your main domain name address should be Turbo.TLD or Turboshoes.TLD
If this domain name is not available in a .COM forget about .COM for the moment – look elsewhere to other unrestricted TLDs such as:

.NET (used to be for telecommunications industry but now any entity)
.INFO (particularly useful if your website is going to be an informative one)
.CO (ccTLD for Colombia; looks like CO-operation or CO-mpany)
.CC (ccTLD for Cocos Islands; looks like email-CC or Company)
.AT (ccTLD for Austria; looks like you have arrived AT someplace)
.BE (ccTLD for Belgium; looks like you will BE someplace)
.ME (ccTLD for Montenegro; great for businesses that want to appeal to the young)
.LA (ccTLD for Laos; great for any businesses that wish to appeal to the Singaporean community)

The list goes on. There are many unrestricted TLDs out there – unrestricted in the sense that anyone can register the TLD, as opposed to semi-restricted TLDs that impose localized requirements unto registrants.

With the new TLDs coming into the Internet arena, you may want to register Turbo.shoes and either point visitors of that domain name address to your main website (it is best that you keep all sites actively updated) or make www.Turbo.shoes your main website.

2. Make your main domain name simple and short

Your main domain name address should ideally be how most customers remember you by. It should also represent your brand identity and be simple, short and easy to remember.
Bear in mind that this is the domain name address that people type into the address bar of their favourite browser.
It is also easy for your customer service rep to repeat a clear and simple domain name address to your customers.

3. Register your brand and names of products with other TLDs

This is mainly for protection reason. The cheapest, long-term way in protecting your brand online is to register it with as many TLDs as possible. You may wish to first begin with the Asian region since you wish to be or already are better known in this region.

Why is this cheapest way to protect your online brand?
Simply because you can avoid two possible scenarios: any domain name dispute requiring an out-of-court settlement that costs money and, losing precious web traffic to “pirates” riding on your brand or product names that impacts your revenue!
Registering 10 domain names may cost $1,000.00 per year but a single UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) case against one cybersquatter sets you back at least $6,000.00 .

Asian TLDs include .SG (Singapore), .MY (Malaysia), .ID (Indonesia), .TH (Thailand), .MM (Myanmar), .VN (Vietnam), .LA (Laos), .KH (Cambodia), .CN (China), .TW (Taiwan), .HK (Hong Kong), .JP (Japan), .KR (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), .PH (The Philippines), .IN (India), etc.

4. Register domain names for promotions

For each promotion that you want to reach out to a certain geographical audience, register a domain name separately for it and create websites that you actively update while the promotion is ongoing.
Be sure to leave links that visitors can click on to visit your main website if you wish to link the promotion back to yourself.

These are good SEO practices; enables you to track the success of each promotion and helps to provide continuity even as the promotion has past.
As long as you keep up the renewals of the domain name hosting, you can leave the data on those websites for anyone to revisit.

5. Register domain names for informative campaigns

If you are Turbo Shoes and to support your business, you wish to have informative website(s) providing tips on “caring for your shoes” or “caring for your feet” etc, register domain names that are descriptive.
For example, “Howtokeepmyfeetfromsmelling.SG” or “Howtofixmyfeetproblems.CO” may be two such websites. This is where you will want to use TLDs that allow you to register almost domain name string.

With descriptive domain names, you can effectively capture visitors who have typed that string of words into their Search engine searchbox and who go on to click on your website URL that shows up in the first page of search engine results.

6. Register all the above domain names for the maximum periods

Again, this is a great but little known SEO practice.
Searchbots are trained to look out for domain name addresses that have been registered for maximum periods, for example, 10 years in the case of .COMs, as long registration periods are taken to mean that these businesses are genuine businesses and are here to stay.
Searchbots rank these domain name addresses higher up in search rankings and your domain name addresses (URLs) are more likely to appear in the first page of search results.

7. Register your domain names with a reliable registrar

This cannot be stressed enough.
You should entrust your company’s domain names addresses with a reliable registrar who should also be able to provide you with domain name security locks to block third parties’ abilities to amend the active zone records of your important domain names; allow you to have control over your DNS zone records and provide you with other handy features to better control your domain name portfolio.

Take action today

Getting the right domain names and using them will provide you with endless possibilities for expansion of your business.
In many cases, it is really marketing on the cheap compared to putting up advertisements with expensive print or mobile media.

If these do not compel you to take action, what will?

Links

SCCCI Conference https://goo.gl/A2LR7W
Domain Numbers https://www.dailychanges.com
Population Numbers https://www.internetworldstats.com
Track new TLDs https://www.ipmirror.com/new-gtld