The Only URLs You Should Be Using
To answer a question I have gotten more times than I can count as a marketing agency director over the last decade — here is my short, definitive list of acceptable URL domains that you should be purchasing for your startup, brand, product, initiative or event.
These are the most acceptable URL domains to buy for your brand, product or service in 2024:
Dot.com
Dot.co
Dot.xyz
Dot.io
Dot.shop
Dot.store
Dot.org
That’s the list.
Don’t waste your time trying to build traffic and turn any other URL domains into online destinations.
In the long run, it’s just not winning strategy.
Business is hard, time flies.
If you can’t get your business name or brand paired with one of these top-level domains (as they literally are called) — change your business or brand name to one that is available.
It’s that important. There is no time. Get to it.
Btw, for my Canadian clients, colleagues and collaborators, that burning age old question that comes up in all the meetings — should I get the Dot.ca?
The answer is it depends.
If you are a hyper-local business with no plans of ever leaving the province or country, grab the dot.ca but by all means move mountains to also acquire as many of the top level domains that match with your brand. As well, if you’re hosting an event, a temporary, ephemeral experience like a pop-up or a bazaar or a concert or conference, a dot.ca is appropriate.
In all other circumstances, if you have any aims of building a scalable brand with global appeal selling and marketing and shipping to global audiences, for GDs sakes — focus on acquiring top level domains.
This also comes up more than I think it should: Dot.co.
100% a legitimate URL domain, one of the most used in the world, one of the most sensible choices to select if you cannot acquire the dot.com, but yes I get it, dot.co is always treated with incredulity and doubt when presented as an option in brand meetings.
My suspicion is something as simple that because it is a single letter different from dot.com, dot.co suffers from being mistaken as a mistake; in many instances, when suggested, dot.co is erroneously thought to be a typo or clerical error.
The truth is we should all be using dot.co a lot more for product and brand launches.
This article is adapted from Edition 1 of Commerce & Capital: https://www.commerceandcapital.xyz/p/dawn-new-era
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