Should You Register A .Lawyer or .Attorney Domain?
Thursday, October 23, 2014

There is a new growing trend in the Top Level Domain (TLD) market and my clients have asked if these new TLD options are something they should consider purchasing for their firms or practices.

What is a TLD?

A TLD is the extension of your domain name. Most commonly they are known as .com, .net, .gov, .edu and .org. But there are thousands of other lesser known TLDs. Recently, there have been many more released including variations that would appeal to attorneys such as:

.attorney

.law

.lawyer

.legal

So for example, if your practice is a personal injury firm located in NJ, you may be curious to know if www.njpersonalinjury.attorney would be of value to you from a search engine or ranking perspective.

If you already have an existing website at njpersonalinjuryattorney.com – then we would not recommend the purchase of a new TLD as there would be no real benefit to you.

Your existing website already has authoritative back links to it and probably has an SEO strategy in place that is bringing results. By moving your existing website to a new TLD, you will risk losing a lot of the current rank and efforts you have put into your website.

There is also an issue of the cost of these domains. You can register a .com or any other more common domain for less than $20. The new TLDs have been going for as high as thousands of dollars. For example, the domain referenced for this post is available for purchase right now on GoDaddy for $799.99. Is that an investment that is worth making? In my opinion, no.

Finally and more importantly is your branding. If you are an existing firm you likely already have a brand in place which includes your business name, URL and logo. By procuring a new TLD and trying to utilize that, you are in essence changing your brand and that can cause confusion.

TDAD

But Don’t Exact Match Domains (EMD) Help Websites Rank Better?

This was the case many years ago, but Google did an update several years ago that started removing exact match domains as a rank criteria. Exact Match Domains now have little impact on your rank, so if the lure of having a new TLD because of the EMD factor, that is just another reason to not do it. Moz.com reported on this strategy back in 2012 and offered some great insight into the fall of the EMD. (http://moz.com/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline).

I Heard that TLDs Will Outrank Other Domains – Is This True?

One of the most common theories on TLDs is that they help with rank and that Google will favor a TLD over the more generic counterparts. This myth was quickly put to rest back in 2012 by Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, when he noted:

“Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”

So Are There Are Any Good Reasons To Purchase A TLD?

If your firm or practice name is trademarked, them it may be a good idea to secure your TLD so no one else can register it. So if you have a trademark for the name “NJ Personal Injury Attorney”, then securing www.njpersonalinjury.attorney may be of value to you and you can simply redirect that domain to your existing website.

If you are a new attorney with no current domain or website, then getting a TLD may be a good option for you.

Conclusion

If you have an existing practice that already has a brand, traffic and website that brings leads, then a TLD is not necessary or recommended. Although I do recommend purchasing TLDs so you can protect your trademark or copyrights, I do not see any value if you are just interested in a TLD as a search engine tactic.

 

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