The Dot Com is Taken for My Name…Am I Screwed?

by Guest

The following is from Jörgen Sundberg of The Undercover Recruiter, a blog that contains  pearls of wisdom on recruitment, careers, social media, personal branding and more.  Today, he has a question for all of you – please leave a comment!

I always advise people to make sure to buy their own .com name domain, either to set up a blog or website today, or to just hold it for the future. It’s obviously great for personal branding – the URL with your name in it will be about as search engine optimized as it gets.

Why should it be “.com”?

The .com is the default suffix online and it is probably more SEO friendly than any others. I say probably as some would argue that the content matters, not the suffix. Whatever the case may be, the .com is where people start their search and you should aim to be there waiting.

What if it’s taken?

Not really practicing my own preaching, I have missed to register my own jorgensundberg.com name domain. Well, in my defense it was taken about ten years ago, but it is gone nevertheless. My namesake in the wild north of Sweden has some sort of blog going there. Before you ask, no he won’t sell the domain at any reasonable price.

I now find myself in the position where I want to set up a site in my name but the obvious domain choice is gone and lots of options are lined up. My goal is to have my personal site up in a few weeks so need to get this settled once and for all.  The options lined up:

1.  Use “.com”, hyphenate full name.

Ryan Rancatore and Mike Cliffe Jones both advise going for jorgen-sundberg.com. This as the .com is favored by Google and separating the first name from the last name can actually help in searches.

The problem I have here is that it’s simply not pleasing on the eye and people will always ask about that hyphen.

2.  Use the .net suffix

Darren Rowse is someone that has done alright out of a .net domain with his his problogger.net. Some say .net is the best domain to choose when .com is gone, as it is not tied down to a specific country and doesn’t denote industry like .edu for instance.

My reservations here: is it a bit too Microsofty? How well could Darren Rowse have done if he had gone problogger.com straight away?

3.  Use the .me suffix

The .me has grown in popularity for personal websites and blogs. Its growth has been fueled by the John Smiths of this world (well, only one of them actually, but you know what I mean).

I’m not convinced because a.) the .me doesn’t look entirely professional and b.) I can’t actually think of anyone that has used this to much success.

4.  Try .co.uk, org. or .info

There are lots of other suffixes to choose from, country specific ones like .co.uk are useful on a domestic basis but don’t help you much overseas. Using the .org makes one look like a charity case (there is some truth to that), the .info looks like a public awareness campaign of some sort.

5.  Give up

Should I just not bother as people will find me anyway? I do have profiles on virtually every social media network under the sun already. I dominate the first page of Google when searching for me anyway.

My reservation here will be that while the social media profiles are great, their purpose it to be outposts that drive interested readers back to the spiritual home – my personal website.  Please help!

Can you please have a think and let me know what you would do? Or what did you do? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments and I promise to let everyone know what I went for. Many thanks in advance folks!

Jörgen Sundberg is a Personal Branding Consultant based in London. He helps entrepreneurs, sales people, managers and executives to create, optimize and maintain their brands. He works with individuals and businesses, doing consulting as well as in-house trainings and workshops.

Jörgen has a strong commercial background, having worked in the FMCG, banking, insurance, technology, recruitment and consultancy sectors. After 7 years of marketing people in recruitment, he  started Personal Branding UK , the blog The Undercover Recruiter and other projects in 2009.

 

Connect with him on Twitter (@jorgensundberg @undercoverrec) and Linkedin.

Photo credit, dot com sign and www dot sign.

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  • http://personalbrandinguk.com/ Jörgen Sundberg

    Thanks for pimping the post/question for me Ryan, looks like the hyphenators are definitely in the lead!

  • http://jakelacaze.com/ Jake LaCaze

    I don't like the hyphenated scenario or the .net or .anything because I think people naturally assume .com. Have you thought about trying something like jsunderberg.com?

  • http://twitter.com/cassie_wallace Cassie Wallace

    But that pretty much defeats the idea of helping SEO for your name – so if your goal is to rank well for you name, go for something that has the whole name (at one point my LinkedIn was cassbwallace.. now it is cassiebwallace and it ranks much better).

    I agree with the general questioning that might go with a hyphenate – that being said, I didn't think of that when registering my domain name. I went with a .net and right now (in my browser at least) I'm ranking first for my name.

  • http://jakelacaze.com/ Jake LaCaze

    Using a middle initial might help in some cases. In mine, I don't think it would because my name would be something like: jakeelacaze. The double e's would look very confusing. But also, if you're not the first to the game, chances are you're going to have SEO problems anyway, so you're going to have to get creative. The middle name thing works great for David Meerman Scott.

    But also, the more active you are online (writing blog posts and commenting on other people's blogs), the more things you'll have pointing toward your blog.

    It's a predicament to be in with seemingly no easy solution. I know of one other Jake LaCaze and I'm lucky enough to have secured my .com before he did and I have begun to wipe him off the face of Google!

  • http://personalbranding101.com/ Ryan Rancatore

    Great conversation so far, Cassie and Jake – this question might be one
    with no perfect answer. And yes…you both show up #1 in Google search
    results for your name…so you must be doing something right!

  • Maruti

    Setup a personal website, with any suffix, doesn't really matter. Have an absolutely amazing professional profile, on something like LinkedIn. And add your personal website in LinkedIn profile.

    Since your profile on LinkedIn is fabulous, it will show up easily in Google search. Interested viewers will definitely check the link for your personal website from your LinkedIn profile! :)

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    Thanks for the link. Funnily enough, I now own the .com for my full name, but just use it as a kind of holding page for my books and stuff. One day, I may go through the pain of moving the blog to it.

  • http://marianlibrarian.com Marian Schembari

    I definitely think hyphenating is the way to go. However, if you're already dominating the Google fields, it just goes to show that the little details like that don't even matter. I, for one, don't even use my name as a URL. Mostly because I'm too lazy to figure out how to direct my current URL to the new one. My reason behind not going for my name is because of spelling. My last name, Schembari, is a pain in the ass to spell and pronounce. As is my first name, weirdly enough. People pronounce it “Mary Anne” or “Mariam”. Which is odd. Regardless, making it marianlibrarian.com, makes it so people know EXACTLY how to pronounce my first name (it rhymes with “librarian”, get it?). Anyhoozey, I do know marianschembari.com is more professional, but I have more pressing matter to address than my domain. And so far, it works :)

  • http://personalbranding101.com/ Ryan Rancatore

    Marian – I like that you always add thoughtful comments, but I must admit I
    tend to focus on words like “anyhoozey” and completely forget the rest of
    what you said. I get so distracted figuring out how I can work anyhoozey
    into my next conversation! But seriously…thanks for the smart comments,
    always appreciated.

  • http://personalbranding101.com/ Ryan Rancatore

    True, 99% of people will find you via link or search – if you can ensure
    they DO find you via these methods, your problems are solved no matter what
    you choose!

  • http://personalbranding101.com/ Ryan Rancatore

    Thanks for the perspective, Mike – I've actually taken the same route. Sort
    of a “buy and hold” approach.

  • http://personalbrandinguk.com/ Jörgen Sundberg

    Whoa, I didn't check all these comments… With that many opinions I am obviously non the wiser now :-) My head is edging towards .net as I don't think I could live with the hyphen. Promise to let y'all know when it's up, many thanks for everyone's input!

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  • Linzie nacole

    I too am in the same situation my had my own name as a dot com but then let it go now I want it back and the person that has it as a parked site wants 2,500 that is BS I just don’t know what to do  my mother just laughs and says you shouldn’t of giving it up and all I can say it “I want my name back” to top it all off it’s an unusual spelling of my name evening my hosting company says that is weird that someone took it.

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