The .com domain is the hottest ticket out there. It fetches the most money, and has all the biggest domains. Out of the current PR10 domains, only a handful are non-.coms. But does this mean that you should disregard your potential goldmine just because it’s not a .com domain? Of course not. While the other domains may not have to notoriety of the .com, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t work for you. But how can you know if your website can compete with the .com? Keep reading to find out.

What You Need To Keep In Mind

1. What Is Your Site For? To begin with, you need to determine just exactly why you are creating your website. If it’s purely a landing page, only directing visitors to an affiliate site, then there is no need for a more expensive premium domain name. Typically, in a case like this, traffic is the visit-and-move-on type. They don’t tend to stick around or come back later. Alternatively, if you are going after a trafficked site, with repeat visitors, then a .com may serve you a little better.

2. Clever >Boring. Think about all those witty domain names out there. Ever use del.icio.us? How about blo.gs? Both are great examples of clever domain name hacks. Unconventional domain names that combines different domain levels to spell out a full name or keyword not only look good, but are also memorable. If your .com keyword domain is taken, consider splitting it up in this manner. Most major name registrar’s (such as sedo) will now allow you to register these unconventional extensions, making these hacks easy to get. All it takes is a little creativity.

3. Research those keywords! If you can get a great keyword, but it’s a .info domain, take it! People underestimate the value of having your keyword in your URL. Some may say that keywords are of little importance when choosing your domain, but I have to disagree. Search for anything through Google - notice the URLs? The large majority will have your search query in them. If, however, you really can’t get your keywords into your base domain name, then a keyword rich subdomain or directory is still an option.

4. Remember to keep it short. If your choosing between a 10 letter .com and a four letter .info, take the .info. This should be a no-brainer. Short is always better than long. May of the non-premium domain extensions still have great cvcv (character-vowel-character-vowel) domains available at a fraction of the price that the .com version would cost. The benefits of this should seem pretty obvious. People generally remember short URLs much easier than long ones.

One Last Thought About .com’s

In the end, if your website is unique, memorable, and worthy enough, your users will hopefully sign up for the RSS feed or bookmark your webpage - and then they will never have to type in the domain anyway… But, until then, remember that a .com domain isn’t everthing. More and more websites are jumping on great, non-premium extensions and making them work.