When starting a new website, many businesses or people struggle with the decision to pick a domain name and top-level domain (TLD). Simply put, the domain name is the main part of your website. The TLD is what comes after that, usually .com, .net. org, etc. For this website BigLeapWeb would be the domain name and .com would be the TLD. Ultimately, the decision comes down to the purpose of your website. Some people don’t put a lot of thought into their domain name but if you follow some of the tips below, you will be setting yourself up better to serve your customers and make your SEO and Internet Marketing efforts a little easier.

Off-line Business & Branding – If someone had to guess the TLD of any website, they typically start with a .com. If you are a well-known business or are trying to make a brand name for yourself, your best option is to get yourcompanyname.com. This will make it much easier when customers are looking for you by name. Avoid using hyphens (your-company-name.com) if possible. Most people don’t expect hyphens when they are looking for a popular website. There are some SEO advantages to this as well. Websites with a .com TLD are a little more trusted by Google and other search engines. Next time you do a search, take notice of how many in the top 10 are .com. The biggest problem you may face is being able to get your desired .com. Internet real estate is going quickly and .com TLD’s can be hard to come by.

Internet Business – If you do most of your business online, chances are you aren’t quite a household name. While this may initially sound like a disadvantage, it opens up your domain name possibilities quite a bit. Instead of being tied down to a domain name like yourcompanyname.com where people expect to find your website, you can go after alternative domains that may be easier to find. Also, you can incorporate keywords into your domain which will help your SEO campaign in a few ways. First, if someone searches for Provo dentist and your domain name is provodentist.com, this is a good indication to the search engines as well as potential customers that your site is related to their search term. Secondly, if other people are linking to your website without anchor text, your domain name will provide keywords by default. You will still want to avoid hyphens in your domain name if possible but if you find a quality domain name, there are some cases where you might want to buy it with hyphens.

Top-level Domains (TLD) - Whether you are worried about branding or not, you always want to get the .com version of your domain name if possible. As I mentioned before, .com’s are more trusted by Google and Internet users recognize them as more important sites. If your desired .com is not available, .net is your next best option. Currently, most people should avoid .biz or .tv TLD’s. However, this may change as search engine’s evolve and domain names are harder to come by.

Summary
If you are a brand name or wish to create a brand, stick to yourcompanyname.com or yourcompanyname.net.
If your company name isn’t as important, try other approaches like keywordrichurl.com or keyword-rich-url.com.

If you are stuck between a few different domain names orTLD’s and aren’t sure which one will be the best for your business or website, contact us for recommendations. Good luck!

Many business owners that have been on the web for awhile have more than one website. A common purpose for this is to flood the Internet with your websites so searchers are more likely to find one of your sites than your competitions. This is a well-known and commonly used strategy but there are a few key points to remember when using it.

Tip #1 – Unique Content
It is extremely important to insure that the content on each of your websites is unique and not duplicated. This can be tricky when it comes to certain pages like “About Us” or a company history page. If you duplicate some of this content, having multiple sites can work against you more than actually help you.

Tip #2 – Target different audiences
To avoid having duplicate content issues, you can always use each site to target a different market. For example, if you were a Realtor with multiple sites, you could use each one to target a different city or county. This can be extremely useful since it may be easier to rank well for individual city real estate searches.

Tip #3 – Great Domain Names
You will always want to make sure you own your company’s name as your primary website. If you are going to buy multiple sites, your secondary sites can include keyword rich domains. Search engines give some weight to those sites who have keywords in their domain name.

Tip #4 – Lead Generators
Your primary site should obviously be your place of business where people can buy from your or learn more about your services. The great part about having an alternative site is you can have fun with it. Instead of focusing on bringing in customers, you can be creative and include linkbait type content that people will enjoy looking at. There can always be a little pitch about your business and a link to your main website to make the most of it.

Tip #5 – Enter the Blogosphere
More and more professionals are including blogs as part of their business. Many companies integrate this into their website but if you feel that a blog doesn’t fit your site or you don’t want to pay a web developer to add one, you can always use an additional domain to run your blog. Blogs have the potential to do very well in search engines because of their frequently changing content and you may find that a blog can be an incredible business generator.

For the average small business owner, dedicating the limited amount of time and resources you have into one good website is typically a better strategy than releasing multiple sites and sacrificing quality for quantity. However, if you already have multiple sites out there on the web, taking advantage of your small network of sites can push you to the top of the search engine results and knock your competitors down the list. Make the most of your websites and make sure that they are helping each other instead of hurting.