After you created your website, one of your first moves was to choose a domain name. For many business owners, that’s a pretty simple task – combine your company’s name with “.com” and you have a domain.

The problem is that the .com domain extension is somewhat limiting. While it’s recognized around the world, it’s seen as “American” by many and won’t give your website the local credibility it needs if you’re going to start selling internationally.

That’s where ccTLDs come in – domain names that use a specific country code as part of their URL. Read on to discover why ccTLDs deliver big global benefits and how to choose the right one for your company.

How a ccTLD Enhances Your Global Brand

By choosing a ccTLD, you instantly communicate where your company – or, at least, its website – is located to anybody who visits. For instance, choosing the .mx ccTLD tells the visitor that they’re about to land on a Mexican website.

But why pay your hard-earned money to register one of these international domains in the first place?

Reason 1 – Create a Multilingual Collection of Websites

Let’s assume your business sells its products in five different countries.

If you stick with your .com address for all of those countries, you have two options – present English-language content to all five or implement a clunky translation feature. Neither is particularly desirable, especially to your international customers.

Having a domain that uses a ccTLD is far better. It allows you to create multiple websites – often using the same design – that appeal to each specific country in which you operate.

Reason 2 – Stronger Search Results

With multiple websites comes the potential for better search engine results.

The logic is simple.

If you’re selling in Mexico but your only website is a .com site – with English content – it won’t appear in Mexican or Spanish search engines. How could it? The site has no Spanish copy, meaning it can’t be optimized toward the keywords this audience uses, and it’s clearly American based on the domain name.

With ccTLD, you not only create a site that’s tailored to a specific country’s audience, but you also get a domain name that indicates the website is registered in that audience’s country of origin. Both are massive – and extremely positive – ranking factors in search engines.

Reason 3 – Strengthen Buyer Confidence

Imagine that you’re interested in buying a product from a company. You head to their website only to find that none of the content is in English and the site’s address indicates it’s registered in a different country.

You won’t feel confident in buying from that website, right?

Flip the script and you’ll realize you might be creating the same issue for your international customers by sticking with a .com domain while you try to sell in their country. Your website has no local credibility – meaning the buyer has less confidence – resulting in you making fewer sales.

With a ccTLD, you not only inject local flavor into your website. You also show its visitors that you’ve gone through whatever processes their country has in place to register a business address, lending instant credibility to your offering.

Choosing the Right ccTLD – The Quick Tips

Now that you know the “why,” let’s move into something just as vital – how to pick the right ccTLD.

These quick tips are designed to ensure you don’t waste any money trying out several international domains before you land on the right one:

• Find the Right Country Code – It may seem like an obvious tip, but every adventure into ccTLD land starts with figuring out which codes apply to which countries. A service like Nominus.com makes that easy – you get a full list of countries with their associated ccTLDs.
• Check the ccTLD’s History – Ideally, nobody will have used the ccTLD you intend to buy before you purchase it. If they have, you need to check the previous site’s history, especially if you want the domain for its search engine benefits. A blacklisted URL isn’t going to do you much good from a marketing perspective.
• Buy Before You Build – If you intend to build a new website – or even update your existing one in a new language – as part of your international launch, don’t get ahead of yourself. Always check that your desired ccTLD is available, and buy it if it is, before you invest in any web design work.

ccTLDs – The Key to Succeeding in Other Countries

Authority, credibility, and better marketing – that’s the three-piece set of benefits that investing in ccTLDs provides to your business. You’ll have a much stronger appeal to international audiences because they’ll trust your website, and the products it sells, since it uses a country code that’s local to them.