The benefits
of having a country top level domain name (TLD)
Most new websites tend to look for a domain name with a .com or .net tld (Top
Level Domain). They feel this gives the site a more professional appearance
and will appeal to a more international audience and in many cases this is
true. However, it can also be beneficial to look at purchasing a domain name
with a country specific tld.
There are a number of benefits that can be gained from choosing a domain name
with a country specific tld, especially if you conduct your business primarily
in one particular country.
Search Engine Benefits
Most of the large search engines will give you a higher search ranking for
a site that has the tld of the searchers country. For example, if someone from
the United Kingdom is performing a search for widgets, a search engine will
often rank widgets.co.uk higher than other sites selling the same product but
only have a .com tld.
Having a country specific tld will also allow you to be included in a lot of
great country directories that stipulate that your domain name has a certain
tld. Getting your site into these directories can be a great way of improving
your search engine ranking as these are 1 way links from authority sites for
your chosen subject. These kind of links are graded much higher than reciprocal
linking.
Buyer Confidence
Having a domain tld will often give the buyer more confidence when making a
purchase as they consider the site to be local, therefore governed under the
same laws as the buyer. This makes it easier to follow up and sales and make
complaints if any problems occur during the purchase of the product. It also
helps to settle any nerves if the buyer is able to see a street address that
they recognize, rather than a foreign address.
Sometimes the best policy is to purchase both a .com and a country tld. This
allows you to appeal to both international and national customers. The potential
sales that you can get with a country domain tld should not be overlooked as
a small investment in an extra domain can bring big returns for you and your
business.
Gather information about your customer before they
start browsing
Another benefit of having a country domain name is that you already know
where your customer is likely to be from. This means that you can display
products for that particular customers region without having to ask the
customer to select which geographic area they are in.
When a customer types
in their country domain, you can forward them to your main domain name
but display only products that will be of interest to them and have all
the prices in their own currency. This gives the site a local feel and
will again bring that buying confidence that is so important when trying
to make a sale.
Summary
I hope you've seen the importance of not overlooking this great opportunity
to bring in extra customers, simply by choosing a country domain name
or simply adding as an extra name that points to your main domain name.
About the Author:
Steve Ashton is a programmer and web developer. http://www.webdevshed.com
for more information about domain names
The benefits
of having a country top level domain (TLD) name
How to optimize keywords in the hyperlink text
Rules for
Domain Name Registration
Title tag optimisation
Meta tag optimisation
