The Benefits of having a country Top Level Domain(tld) name
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