When you set up a blog or website you naturally pick a domain name which ends with .com, mainly because it’s become the de facto standard on the internet. I run a few blogs and they all end with .com with the notable exception of this blog, which is jorgensundberg dot net.

Why did I go with .net?

First of all, the reason for setting up this blog was to claim my personal brand on search engines once and for all. There is nothing that gives you more link juice than running your own blog on your own name. And nothing that can steal more Google ranking than your namesake doing it first!

When I did set it up it was natural to go for jorgensundberg.com. This was unfortunately taken already, I was only about 7 years late apparently. After many weeks and months on the fence I had to go with another one out of .net, .info, .org etc. In the end the .net was the best option. More on this terrible ordeal in this post over at Ryan Rancatore’s blog Personal Branding 101.

How's that .net working out for you?

The good news is that blogging on a .net domain name has worked absolutely fine and I haven't encountered any users getting lost looking for me. The only person that got a bit confused in the beginning was myself, I sometimes entered my URL here and there with the .com suffix just out of habit I suppose. So all in all, it’s worked out really well and I forgot about the domain suffix question altogether, until…

The .com is now available!

Some eight months after starting this blog, I receive an email from a domain registrar saying that jorgensundberg.com is coming available in a few days. These guys wanted money for ‘reserving’ it and making sure I got it first. I didn’t bite on that offer but I did keep an eye on the domain name and sure enough the .com did come available and snapped it up in a flash. I guess this doesn’t happen very often, my cyber twin in Sweden probably went Luddite or just couldn’t be bothered to maintain his site any longer.

Do I now stick with .net or go with .com?

Feels like I’m back at square one, should I now migrate my site to the preferred .com URL or keep it at .net? As much as I am sick of any more techy tasks for my blogging I can’t deny that having a .com blog looks better.

Option 1: Change to .com

Changing the domain suffix will require a bit of work but will make it all look very neat and once it’s done I can sleep better. Not exactly sure how it would work with backlinks though. And what about redirections?

Option 2: People don’t enter the URL anymore, they search

Let's face it, less and less people actually tap in a full URL address in the browser field; it's a lot easier to simply search for what you want. This is probably why one of Google's top searches is for the word "Google".

In my case it’s people searching for my name “jorgen sundberg” and not having the slightest interested in the domain suffix. In fact, some people just tap in "jorgen" and they seem to find me.

Option 3: Forget search, they’ll find you on social media

The social aspect on the Interwebs has also relaxed things; less people actually use search nowadays as opposed to clicking through from my profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Chances are most people that have read this blog once will connect with me on one of these networks or perhaps even Google Plus, FourSquare or Meetup. Wherever they connect, they can easily click their way back to this blog without having to tap in a URL or do a search.

What did I go with?

Well, as you are reading this on my .net blog you'll know that I never changed it. For a combination of option 2 & 3 I believe the domain suffix isn't really that important, a .com might look neater but it's not really an issue. Hope I made the right decision here, if you disagree please let me know!

More blogging tips at How To Get 20 High Ranking Backlinks of the Non-Turkey variety.

Image credit myself at Stoneage Reclamation