Some of my struggles and ways to avoid them
Intro
When getting a new domain name for yourself or for a business that you are growing, you should be aware of ccTLDs and TLDs and their relevance and portability. Having those explained and clear in your mind will possibly make your decisions easier to invest and evolve your stuff. This article is meant to clarify things when choosing your domain name and extension. (by extension, I refer to the TLD used – generically speaking)
I am Romanian. And why this may seem irrelevant to this subject, it is. The Romanian ccTLD is *.ro, so for example, my personal website is “stefanplesca.ro”
Just a reminder TLD stands for Top Level Domain, and well ccTLD (country-code Top Level Domain) can be explained as such:
“Country-specific domain extensions generally indicate the region or language that the website’s content is relevant for. Furthermore, ccTLDs always include two letters of the Latin alphabet. The only exceptions to this rule are the countries with IDN-ccTLDs (internationalized country code top-level domains). In addition to the standard ccTLD, these countries have one or more variants of the same ccTLD in a language that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet. An example of a country with several variations of the same ccTLD is Sri Lanka; as well as the country code, .lk, Sri Lanka also uses the TLDs, .ලංකා and .இலங்கை, which refer to the country in Sinhalese and Tamil, respectively.” — from here
You, dear reader, might be from a different country where your common ccTLD might be something different like *.ch, *.nl, *.md, *.ru, etc.
The thing that is problematic with most ccTLDs is that they have less relevance and are less portable than TLDs. Next, I will jump into some arguments, why getting a ccTLD can be a bad move, or not?
The problem(s)
Just to give you a bit of context, when I was young, I used to search endlessly for “free domains” I could get to experiment with. I could not buy one at that time, nor was the legal age to do so 😀
I do not recommend any free domain as part of any project, personal and especially business-wise. And here I’m referring to such constructions:
<your domain name>.somethingElse.TLD
This is a losing situation for you because you will gain partial control of your domain, and the owner of your files and infra is “sometingElse” from the above example. Also, the deal with those free domains(actually marketed as domains but, in fact, subdomains, is that they will fill your website with their ads and affiliate links).
Now, why shouldn’t you get a ccTLD? Well, this is really up to you so here is a small list of questions to help you out:
- Do you want to reach out to only people in your region or country? (while online, you will reach out to everyone, but the focus will remain on the regional TLD – will explain this further)
- While expanding your idea, do you want to be bound by territory or grow outside of it?
- Do you feel that your message is national or international?
- Are you interested in living in another country? Did you think about moving your digital assets elsewhere?
- Are you interested in clients from outside your region?
- Is SEO (search engine optimization) important to you?
After you have carefully read and answered the above questions, let’s dive a bit into some arguments between the two:
- When you choose a ccTLD you limit yourself and the perception of others to only the country or region represented by that TLD. Even with perfect SEO and language optimizations, you will still be visually an almost unknown domain to someone outside your country. Just to give you a small example, due to my *.ro domain, from time to time, I receive emails being asked if I am Russian (confusion between *.ro and *.ru – I am not offended, but it is a waste of time to have misconceptions online 🙂
- Also, another thing besides outside perception is SEO. Search engines are in favor of TLDs, above ccTLDs. If you buy for example, “awesomeDomain.ro” and “awesomeDomain.com” and put the same website on both, the .com domain will give more results and be above the ccTLD one. (An interesting discussion about how google works with different TLD types can be found here.)
- Did you find another domain provider? With a better deal? Do you want to move or group your digital assets? Portability is an issue with ccTLDs because they can only be moved(if ever) between local domain providers. Again, my *.ro example – I can’t move it to NameCheap, GoDaddy, or any international domain platform, for that matter. Is this something that in the future might block you? Just give it a thought.
- Last but not least, ccTLDs are cheaper than TLDs. So all need to be measured and carefully taken into consideration. It all resumes to what is your target, and where is your audience. If everything happens in your territory, go with a ccTLD, but if you have other plans, you should go further with your domain(s) and consider a TLD.
This was just a wake-up call to plan things ahead of time for your needs and future development. Don’t just jump in and get your domain(s). If you already have your awesome domain name and want to start with an email address, this might interest you as well:
https://stefan-plesca.medium.com/how-to-set-up-a-professional-email-address-for-free-fcc938ea43bb
Before you go
Don’t forget to smile more. Even with a strong, overwhelming online presence, the real impact goes to the person next to you offline. Be kind and smile more. Till next time.
https://stefan-plesca.medium.com/how-to-set-up-a-professional-email-address-for-free-fcc938ea43bb