Small Business Websites

As you’ve no doubt seen, domain names come in all kinds of endings, called domain name extensions. The only domain extensions I use and most highly recommend are .com and .net. Read more about each below:

.com - The most popular, .com literally designates it as a commercial site. People have been conditioned to remember .com more than any other ending. If given a choice, ALWAYS choose a .com
.net - Second most used and quite popular. Literally designated as Network.
.org - For non-profits although these rules aren’t always followed. Unless you have a non-profit business, I do not recommend this extension.
.gov - Strictly for government sites only.
.edu - For educational institutions and similar areas.
.biz - For business, although it hasn’t gained much popularity and I don’t use this extension for anything myself at this time.
.info - Supposed to be for informational sites only, although as more domain names are snatched up each day, more people are using .info.

In addition, each country has it’s own extensions, so if you’re traveling to Italy and checking out a hotel’s website, it will likely end in .it. The United States is .us, Australia is .au and so on. These domain name extensions can tell you a lot about the company and it’s location.

The most important thing when choosing a domain name extension is checking the competition. Perhaps you want www.woodfurniture.com but see that it’s already taken and .net isn’t taken. Visit the .com website to see what’s there. If they are going to be competitors, you DON’T want to choose .net. People can get confused or forget that you’re .net and visit your competitor’s site instead, thus you lose business. I think we can agree that would spell disaster.

In a situation like that, I highly suggest you change your domain name to something a little different, like www.realwoodfurniture.com. If you discover that .com isn’t taken, then you should also purchase .net and perhaps .biz, .org and .info as well. Some domain registration companies offer package deals like that. The point to this is keeping your domain name unique and only serving YOUR company. You don’t want to purchase .com, just to have two of your competitors purchase .net and .biz.

Once domain names are purchased, you can then set up a forward (which is where you type in one domain name and it automatically takes you to another) or landing pages (which we’ll discuss later) for all your .net, .biz and .info names so they go to your .com website where your actual site is. Your web designer can easily take care of this for you, or you can contact the company you registered your domain names with and have them do it or walk you through it.

Summary:
1) .com and .net are your best bets.
2) Don’t just purchase .com. Purchase .net, .org, .biz, .info etc. to keep your domain name unique and serving only your company.
3) Set up forwards (or landing pages which we’ll discuss later) so all your domain names go to the same website (which should be your .com one).

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