The 4 big benefits of .uk domains

With our current Sizzling Summer UK domains sale, the time seems right to talk about the benefits of owning a .uk domain name. In this short blog post I’ll discuss the benefits of owning ANY domain ending in .uk, including .co.uk, .org.uk and the rest!

 

1. Don’t be generic, build your brand

Many people have asked me in the past, “Should I purchase a .com domain? Isn’t that what everyone else uses?” The answer is that yes, .com is the most popular by a wide margin, but “everyone else has one” shouldn’t be your only reason in buying a domain. Don’t be generic. You aren’t building a generic site, don’t pick a generic domain,
think branding.

I’m making the assumption that you want to attract a British audience for the most part. Whether it’s for your business or for your own personal needs, you want to connect with an audience who share your interests. Having a domain name ending in .uk builds upon that brand.

In order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard time ranking without a .co.uk domain.” seo.com

Likewise with other countries, using .fr in France or .de in Germany will give you an edge by associating your brand with the region the traffic is coming from.

 

2. Trust me with your personal details

Do you ask your visitors to give you personal details? Whether it’s their email address, home address, or financial details such as credit card information, try to put yourself in your visitor’s position. Would you offer up your details to a more generalised site? Would you check where you are buying something from before you buy it?

Don’t make your visitors work to learn about who you are and whether you are based in the UK. The chances are you may not keep their attention with all those clicks. Having a .uk domain cuts out a lot of guessing and gives your visitors a much more trust in your site.

 

3. Why get one domain when you can have several?

Don’t own only one domain such as 34SP.com, make sure you own the collection! 34SP.co.uk, 34SP.uk, 34SP.net etc. and solidify your brand. You really don’t want someone else buying one of those and using it for their own purposes. You can also extend that further to specific countries and activities. That’s what gTLD’s are for (.scot, .London, .Cymru).

In terms of SEO ranking, we’re often asked if multiple domain names improve SEO? Having multiple domains with different keywords used to be a common practice among many businesses online. That was an old practice and these days there is little to no merit in adding this to your traffic driving plans. That said, there’s absolutely no harm in adding a couple of additional domains to your collection. Note that I use the words ‘a couple’ here; there are implications to adding domains in their hundreds, but there couldn’t be  a more perfect time to try  mixing them up and having domains forward to your website.

 

4. The newest addition, .uk 🇬🇧

If you already played your part and bought your .uk domain, nice work! If not, why not? We have a blog post coming up about password security soon, where I explain that longer passwords are better passwords. The same cannot be said of domain names. It’s true that most shorter domain names are hard to come by, or at least it seems that way, but if you get chance to shorten the domain extension then why not?

.uk is following the lead of other countries and encouraging .co.uk owners to purchase the .uk extension by giving them first refusal.

This means there are rules in place temporarily to prevent other people snapping up your .uk domain. If you own a .co.uk domain name, purchasing the .uk counterpart is an absolute MUST whilst the first refusal rules set by Nominet are still in place. I talked above about branding – make sure you are covered.

 

So what are you waiting for? Get your £1.20 .uk domain names today. Available for a limited time, only during May 2017.

may one pound twenty dot UK domain names sale

 

-Siobhan @SiobhanLHancock

Siobhan Hancock

Siobhan is Head of Community at 34SP.com. You'll often find Siobhan socialising at tech meetups throughout the UK. When she's not doing that, Siobhan looks after our social media and is passionate about photography and videography.

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