Whether you’re a small business looking to expand into new markets or a start-up just getting your first website launched off the ground, I am going to tell you right now that you’ll want to plan on registering more domains than just that one perfect .COM you managed to purchase from its previous owner. In fact, many small business owners are probably wondering what comes next after they’ve gone out and managed to claim the ideal .COM domain name for their business. Once you own the .COM for your website is there any other extension out there that is really worthwhile? The simple answer to that is, YES! There is actually an acronym I once heard for this exact topic: CNOBI.
What’s a CNOBI domain?
CNOBI is an acronym for the five legacy domain extensions that virtually every business should own. Anyone out there who is serious about owning their space on the web should start picking up CNOBI domains at the very least. But keep in mind, this term doesn’t really apply to domain investors. CNOBI domains are more about protecting your brand as opposed to investing for flipping purposes. Now, we all know .COM is the leading TLD. It makes up for roughly half of all domain registrations alone. .NET is often thought of as the second-best option to it’s COM rival. Everyone is familiar with .NET but it isn’t as desirable as a .COM domain. Then comes .ORG. Everyone knows this extension as well, and I would also consider it slightly more professional since this extension mainly deals with organizations.
Finally, we have .BIZ and .INFO. Although these extensions or newer than the other three I’ve listed, they can still be considered worthwhile TLDs because they’re common and somewhat generic terms. All of the domains which make up CNOBI live up to the original purpose of TLDs to categorize content on the Internet.
Extensions Trending Now
In addition to CNOBI domains, I would also recommend protecting your brand by registering domains in some of the newer domain extensions which are popular. The more online real estate you have under your brand, the more opportunities you will have to capitalize on your brands term. Remember, you don’t want to be competing with energetic, cutting-edge entrepreneurs for your brands term. .APP launched mid-way through 2018 and is still very popular in the market. .AI which the domain hack for artificial intelligence and .IO which stands for for input-output are also very hot in the start-up world.
Are Country Code Extensions Worthwhile?
There are a few reasons country code extensions will usually make for worthwhile TLDs. The first reason is that these can come in handy should your brand ever expand into international markets. Secondly, registering more extensions obviously gives your brand that much more protection. Believe it or not, some ccTLDs are known for having higher rates of cybersquatting than others. The list of worthwhile TLDs for brand protection are .CN for China, .ES for Spain, .COM.BR for Brazil, .COM.AU for Australia and .RU for Russia.
