New Top Level Domains Offer Amazing Dealer Branding Opportunties
Having a hard time finding a good website domain name? Are your best options ending in .com already gone? You might want to try different top level domains (known as “TLDs”). Originally when the internet was created, there were only a few TLDs, such as .com, .org, .net, .gov and .mil. Unfortunately, with millions of websites on the internet nowadays, the best domain names ending with .com are typically already taken. However there might be an easy solution to your internet branding dilemma.
In 2014, the organization responsible for controlling TLDs decided to dramatically expand the options available. Now there are literally hundreds of TLDs, some of which have seen very little use. Some of these extensions are perfect for dealerships and especially, dealer lead generation pages. The best examples include:
- .auto (expensive)
- .autos
- .car (expensive)
- .cars (expensive)
- .credit
- .finance
- .loan
- .loans
These TLDs are currently little used and provide wide open branding opportunities. As of the date of this post, creative options like “dallascar.loans”, “myfirstcar.credit” or “ineedcar.finance” are all available. Think of the radio advertising potential of these domain names!
While these extensions are not yet in high demand, as the internet becomes increasingly crowded, expect them to gain traction with the public. This is a rare opportunity to obtain a “high ground” position with a name that, in the future, may become unavailable or too expensive to acquire.
So are there disadvantages to these new TLDs?
Because they are so new, most internet users have not encountered them…yet. Expect a little confusion in the beginning. For a main dealership website, the .com extension is probably still best. But for lead generation sites that rely on distinctive branding and easy recall, it is probably worthwhile to experiment with different TLDs. Don’t worry about SEO--Google has stated that using a newer TLD does not hurt the site’s SEO. For a comprehensive guide on the advantages and disadvantages of these domain extensions, check out this post by Dreamhost.
And if you are ready to start searching for new domain, try the search tools offered by Google or GoDaddy.
