Purchasing a domain name for your business is one of the most important tasks to complete when planning a new website. The following information will help you when choosing your domain
names(s).

Why is a .co.uk Domain Name, in some cases, better than a .com?

Choose and use .co.uk as your primary domain. This will help search engines, like Google, recognise you as a UK-based business. It is possible to use a .com domain, but other internet marketing techniques will have to be employed to ensure you rank well in major search engines.

Is there any need to purchase a .com Domain Name for my Business?

At PSP we advise our clients to always secure common TLDs (Top Level Domains) for their business. For example, if you were going to use mycompany.co.uk as your primary domain name, we would advise also purchasing mycompany.com. There may come a day when your company goes international and for companies that have operations overseas, using a .com domain name is more appropriate.

Using your Domain Name to Optimise your Website

Search engines (Google in particular) place great emphasis on domain names when ranking websites. I recommend purchasing a keyword-rich domain name if possible.

Type ‘good food’ into Google and see what the first listing is. At the time of writing,
href=”http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/”>www.bbcgoodfood.com was ranked as the number one website. Note how the keywords ‘good food‘ are highlighted in bold.

Some businesses squander this golden opportunity to take advantage of one of the most powerful search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing tools at their disposal. However, some businesses feel that not having their trading name in their domain name will lead to brand deflation, which can be a valid point.

Indeed, there have been many instances where domain names are abused by ‘stuffing’ them with too many keywords. However, used sensibly, a domain name containing valuable keywords need not compromise your brand. Your main website can be driven from your primary domain name and the keyword-based one can be used to run a business blog, for example.

Protecting your Domain Names

.co.uk and .com are the most common TLDs used by UK businesses. I would advise you to purchase both at the same time (and any others you feel are necessary) to avoid ‘cyber squatting’ at a later date (I will elaborate more on this in a moment).

Whether you have purchased your domain name through PSP or another provider, always ensure your contact details are up-to-date. If they are not, renewal notices will go unanswered and your domain name will go back on the market.

Nominet (the internet registry for .uk domain names) produced the Domain Name Industry Report in 2007. It highlighted that over 140,000 .co.uk domain names were

registered less than ten seconds after they became available. This emphasises the need for usinesses to make it a top priority to renew their domain names before they are quickly bagged by someone else.

Often domain names are snapped up by individuals known as ‘cyber squatters’. Their objective is solely to capitalise on well-known and growing brands by purchasing certain domain names and then selling them back to the businesses that originally owned them at extremely over-inflated prices.

If you are in any doubt as to how the value of domain names can increase, perhaps this will make you think again: in 2006 Escom LLC paid $14m for the domain name sex.com. This might
sound like a lot of money, but it is a bargain if reports in 2006 of a $154m estimated valuation are to be believed. Indeed, for some, ‘sex sells!’