One of the first things every startup does, is thinking about a good name. Preferably a catchy and recognisable one.
Later the given domain name often doesn’t seem to be available.
Almost all the generic words with a .com are taken. And in most cases the .net, .org and .eu, too. But there is hope.
Extensions
There is a tremendous amount of extensions available on the internet. Most of them are connected to a country.
When you build a website on a .de, Google assumes that your website is targeted on Germany. That’s an important thing to keep in my mind for SEO purposes.
Furthermore there are domain extensions that Google treats as generic ones. Those are available in a handy overview on Wikipedia.
Ánd there are some country code domains that Google treats as generic ones, for example:
- ad
- .as
- .bz
- .cc
- .cd
- .co
- .dj
- .fm
- .gg
- .io
- .la
- .me
- .ms
- .nu
- .sc
- .sr
- .su
- .tv
- .tk
- .ws
When you buy a domain name with a generic extension, you can set your target area in Google Webmaster Tools.
Creative with extensions
So this gives a lot of opportunities. Mostly there will be an extension available for the name of your startup.
For Belong we chose belong.house, for example.
Potentially you can buy the .com in a later phase, when your idea turns out to be successful.
Mostly those ones are hijacked by companies with a purpose to make money out of it.