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One of the most important things that you will ever do with your business is deciding on a domain name. These names are critical to how your business is identified and then how it is recognized across platforms. Using a good domain name means that your business is easily discovered by customers and that in turn leads to more business, which means you get more money. That is always the goal of business, so doing something simple like having a .com domain name is something that should not be overlooked, as this is the first way that a customer will interact with your company.
The first thing you should do is look into registering your domain that you like. Make sure this is a good name, and search it on the internet first so that you know if you have a unique domain name. Once you have established that the name exists, you need to find a domain name registrar. Here are our recommended domain name registrars – there is GoDaddy, Wix, or you can go straight through ICANN. Once you register your domain name, that means you are ready to go with building out your site. Now, the next thing to understand is the reasoning behind having a .com domain name. These domain names have become ubiquitous, so you are sitting there with your domain and know that it is something that is used on every major site, however, you may not know why. Well, here are some reasons that should illuminate this for you.
Massive Use
One crazy statistic about .com is that this domain name is used in 46% of all internet websites. The crazy part is this – the next highest extension is .ru at 5.1% and .org coming in right on its heels at 5%. This means that when you are using .com, you are using something that is familiar to most people who are on the internet and know what you are looking for. The reason for this massive level of .com use is because when the internet became a thing, what happened is that all of the major brands snapped up .com names. This lent credibility to the URL extension, which is something that smaller sites wanted to take part in, and that is why today nearly half of the internet ends with .com as a URL extension.
Visitors Make Assumptions
Carrying on-off the point above, most people will assume that your site has a .com URL extension. This is a good thing because what it means is most will just type in your site with .com domain at the end, and your site will come up. This is a great thing for you because of what that proves is credibility for your site. Because it ends in .com and everyone is making that assumption, having it pop up with that URL means that your business instantly gets the sheen of being a reputable business.
Now, getting away from the intangible qualities, because most people assume that this is the site, they will go to the site. Make sure that you are making every attempt to use .com domain with your browser because that will help you tremendously with appealing to your customers and not have them stuck wondering how they can get to your site.
Search Engine Favorability
Everything with the .com starts with the fact that this URL extension is the most popular, and in the case of search engines, they are looking for the sites that check the most boxes in the algorithm and those are the sites that get shoved right to the top of the search results. This starts with the .com URL because it is so popular, that search algorithms make sure to incorporate it. This has a great effect on your site, and the best part is you don’t need to do much to get the site to be search engine friendly the way you would if you did not have that .com URL extension. So, if your site is appearing higher up in the searches, that is always a positive development for what you are building and something you wouldn’t want to give away.
The .Com Domain has No Rules
The best part about the .com domain is that there are no rules like country of origin, for example. UK sites have to end in .co.uk, Canadian sites must end in .ca, and as states earlier, Russian sites must be .ru. These are rules that right away limit the traffic that will go to those sites, and thus make it that much more difficult for people searching or information to find sites that end with those extensions. Furthermore, the great thing about .com is that you do not need to be based in the United States to use it. You can be anywhere in the world and create a site that ends in .com. This is definitely a boon for whatever it is that you are doing and you will have no problem building a highly visited site with this extension on the end.
Your Business is Established
Back when websites were first developed, getting a URL that ended in .com domain was not the easy task that it is today. There were different standards and the approval was not the easiest to come by – the equivalent in today’s world would be Twitter’s verified blue check. That said, the .com domain is still used today and it is still used by many established businesses. By using .com, what you are doing is adding to the prestige of having your site seem as if it was established back in the days when getting a .com really meant that your business fulfilled a specific criterion.
The bottom line is that having .com domain at the end of your website address gives you a lot of advantages, and it would always be wise to register your site and use this ending, therefore you put yourself in the best position to succeed.
