Own Your Space With New gTLDs
There’s an incredible land sale going on right now in the form of generic top level domains (gTLD). A top level domain is what you type after the dot in a url, which is usually “com”, which stands for commercial. Dot com worked well for the first two decades of the web soon outgrew supply of relatively short, easy to remember urls. So around 2015, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that over 500 new generic top-level domains.
Domains Are Cheap
I believe this is a huge opportunity for brands as you can own a lot of domains for pretty cheap. The average person can invest in domains as .coms run around $10 and even most of the domains in this post run from $20 to $40 per year. Brands can find interesting way to use them in their marketing which I hightlight below. I prefer to use Google Domains, who has over 200 gTLD’s.
Own Your Name
Have a Common Name? You were pretty much out of luck getting a good domain name unless you were one of the first ones to register a domain back in the 90’s, or if you had very deep pockets, but now there are a whole host of new options available.
Smith
Did you know that Smith, the most popular last name in America, still has around 100 gTLD’s available. For instance, if you’re a DDS, you can register smith.dental for $50 per year. Meanwhile http://www.smithbrothersfurniture.com/, http://www.smithfurniturestore.com/, and https://www.ivansmith.com/ could all register smith.furniture for $50 per year.
Mike
What about building your personal brand. There are a ton of possibilities for this too. If your name is Mike and you provide handyman services, you can register mike.services for $30 per year. If you’re a florist, you can get a “premium” domain for a whopping $40 per year.
Own Your Industry
These domains can be a great way to increase your visibility and stay top of mind in order to be recalled, especially in a crowded industry.
Quality
I know that there is a contractor out there with quality in their name and they can own quality.contractors for $40 per year. Same for quality.design but that one will run $280 per year.
Energy
I used to work for a company that did a lot of work for energy companies. They could have owned energy.construction for $72 per year.
Recruiting
There are a plethora of awesome great .career domains still available. Some of the domains I found still available are
- Banking.careers $440 per year
- Programmer.careers $220 per year
- Developer.careers $220 per year
That’s not to mention that you can also own your own brand for abccompanyname.careers and use as a recruiting portal.
Own Your City
There are many top level domains related to professions such as accountants,dental, agency, and builders to name a few. You can type in the name of your city to see if you can claim. Below are a select few for the city of Green Bay. There are many more available.
| Domain | Price |
| greenbay.apartments | $60 per year |
| greenbay.accountants | $120 per year |
| greenbay.agency | $26 per year |
| greenbay.builders | $72 per year |
| greenbay.cafe | $40 per year |
| greenbay.community | $30 per year |
So What Do I Do With Them
Let’s be clear – this won’t help you in organic search (at least right away). I don’t want you to think that you’ll buy greenbay.accountants and you’ll be the first result for that term, but I do think there are a couple of ways to use these assets.
Re-Directs
If you do any type of print or word of mouth advertising (business cards, print ads, billboards, networking etc.) these could be used as an easy way to remember your website. You don’t even have to move your website. You can setup a redirect rule so that when someone types in greenbay.marketing it goes to https://jasonraisleger.com/consulting/digital-marketing/. Go ahead.. try it out.
Landing Pages
The other way you can use the new gTLD’s is to create a landing page for visitors and collect email addresses. For instance, I helped an organization secure a .career site related to their industry so now when people visit the page, they can use it to disseminate information about current openings as well as collect email addresses to keep jobseekers updated. These could be used on a campaign basis as well.
Conclusion
A warning – don’t be a squatter or you will lose. For instance if you try to register prevea.clinic for $50 per year, Prevea will probably file a UDRP and you will lose however wisconsin.clinic for $110 per year is generic and probably fine. These are cheap assets to own. Don’t be These are ultra cheap investments. Let’s get creative and carve out space in our customers minds.
