I see many new developers and even some senior developers going by a .in or even a .tk for their websites.
But this is short-sighted. Why?
Because you might move out of India. Or you might work for US and UK companies remotely. In that case, .in is not the ideal TLD you want for your domain. And .tk is not even worth a mention. It’s available for free and it doesn’t make a good impression of you.
Get a .com if possible. If your name is too common, get a .io or .tech or .co or .net. Anything less than that is selling yourself short.
Saving $7/year by getting a .in instead of a .com might look like a deal when you are starting as a developer but after a few years, you will regret saving $28 by not getting a .com.
So do it right whilst you still have time (SEO!) and get a proper domain.
Otherwise, you will be like me, renewing your .in domain every year (aviaryan.in) till the end of the universe so that you can permanently redirect its traffic to your .com domain.
This article was first posted to my newsletter.
Top comments (13)
Check this out.
techelex.org/why-not-use-dot-tk-do...
Maybe
.tkis good if your site is not too popular but if it does become popular, you risk losing your domain or not getting as much as SEO as you should.Not worth saving a few bucks for this.
How about
.medomains?Or
.devdomains. They are good and highlight more as if it's a personal space.True. Both are good. I even have
aavi.me.I didn't add
.devbecause people in dev move to leadership and growth roles and then I am not sure if.devdoes the justice..dev I believe is a fine choice for a developer
I think .me is perfect if you are a developer and you like to posts about other stuffs, like exercising, mental health, your life..
The current domain system is broken. I don't feel it's worth it, either for me or an organization I'm interested in building, to play the domain game as it is today. The status quo can't last, and soon we will have alternatives to the current DNS registry that could make TLDs as we know it obsolete for all we know. In the meantime, I'm perfectly fine with using the .in TLD for my personal domain.
.xyzsounds good to me. It's not long, not free, not local.Good advice, I went for the .com domain but even .io and .tech are good choices in my opinion. I avoided my country's domain as I'm interested in a broader audience
Same here.
I see someone with a .tk domain and I think, "hey, they're sensible, they know they don't need to waste money on domains".
I say this, but I have a .net as my personal domain.
.tkis problematic because it used to be free for unlimited time and so was used by hackers and spammers. That gives it a bad reputation in the tech and SEO industry.Also, they had a lot of horror stories, it was true 7 years ago when I got my first domain. Not sure now but this recent article claims that it still happens.
techelex.org/why-not-use-dot-tk-do...
That article sounds pretty iffy to me.
Anyway, we're talking about getting a domain "for yourself". SEO isn't much of a consideration, as even if - if companies like Google didn't rank these domains they'd list them if someone was searching for you.
Nobody has a personal domain and expects inbound traffic to come from a search for "best web developer". You network in other ways and have your website as a resource to support you, not the other way around.
No, but a client or a low-tech business owner or even big tech teams in some cases, can search "React list performance" and find your article(s) and then hire you as a consultant.
Anyway, I see the reason for this disagreement. You are thinking of using a website for just writing your bio and I am thinking of using the website for writing about myself, my blogs and my projects.
If you use your website only just your bio and contact details, yes, then SEO isn't important.