What You Can Do if Your Ideal .Com is Taken
                     What You Can Do if Your Ideal .Com is 
Taken
Yash Kumar
Writes for search-marketing.in, 
provides information on 
Digital marketing in india to improve 
Digital marketing strategies.
You have a new business plan in mind or thinking of diversifying your current 
business. Either way, you will require a new website. The first step of a website 
creation is obviously a domain name registration. Unless you came up with really a 
weird name, you will find that .com version of your domain is already taken. It either 
belongs to another organization or a hosting company might have taken it. More than 
millions of websites are registered with .com. This makes it quite clear that the.com 
you are after may not be available.
ad serving platformsDo not lose hope. There are plenty of other options available to 
make your domain name attractive and easy to remember. The .com is only one of 
the top level domains (TLD) along with .NET, ORG and many others. The TLD 
represents the ending for the site, for google.com, the TLD is ‘.com’. For 
Wikipedia.org the TLD is ‘.org’ and for speedtest.net, the TLD is ‘.net’
Check if the Domain is for Sale
Registered domain does not mean that it is unavailable. If your preferred domain 
is registered there is still a chance that it is available for purchase. Do a search to 
know to whom the domain belongs and how to contact the person.
Send a mail to that owner and see if the domain name is available for sale. If not, 
you have to think of other ways.
Tweak the Name
Before thinking of any other alternative domain name, first think how you are 
going to use the website for business. The primary target of any website is to 
bring in traffic. For that you need a name that is simple, small and easy to 
remember. It should not be confused with any other brand name. An abbreviated 
version of business name can be effective. You can tweak the name little bit to 
create a domain name. Web address of the famous Wall Street Journal is 
wsj.com. There are several other examples like that.
However, while tweaking the name make sure there is no other similar name 
open for registration. Flickr, online photo service, lost millions of visitors as they 
often visit Flicker.com instead.
Consider not Using .com
 If your web traffic usually comes from your social media platform, they will 
hardly notice whether the extension is .com or not. You may try other 
popular extensions like .net or .org.
 In the past few years, plenty of domain extensions are rolled out. These new 
Top Level Domains (TLDs) range anything from .tech to .biz. The greatest 
advantage of using a new TLD is that it conveys the meaning of your site. 
From the domain extension the visitors are already aware the kind of site 
they are going to visit.
 ad serversIf your target audience is local, you may use country code top 
level domains (ccTLDs). These geographical ccTLDs not only tells the web 
traffic the site is local, it also help the search engine to understand it. For 
example: instead of .com use .co.in which is represents a company top level 
domain with India country code.
Irrespective of the domain name that you finally select, stick to these 
following guidelines:
Keep your domain name short. Short names are also easier to remember.
If possible avoid using hyphens or numbers in the domain name.
Do not use a name too similar to another website. It can cause confusion among 
the visitors.
With little thinking and creativity, you can find an ideal domain name. However, 
if you find that the domain name you have selected is not working for your 
business, think of changing it.
About Search-marketing 
Search-marketing.in website is a useful resource which caters to 
micro businesses on developments in digital marketing in India. It 
provides information on digital marketing strategies and helps Indian 
micro businesses to establish strong online presence and to leverage 
the Internet for business performance and growth.
Thank you for reading this 
article!