Having an online presence is a sure way to project your personal initiative or business to the world, be it nationally or internationally and at the core of this is a website that does the job of projecting the best of you online. Your website needs an address or a name if you like, hence the need for a domain.
In having a website, however, one is left with the choice of either going for a foreign domain registry such as the .com, .org, etc., or the local .NG domain.
When I say ‘local’, I do not mean it in the derogatory sense rather, I mean it in the sense that it is a proudly Nigerian brand available in Nigeria and also of international value.
Nigeria as a nation is blessed with a unique domain string known as .NG which is her Country Code Top Level Domain and we should be proud of this national asset.
In a 2013 joint survey conducted by SMEDAN and the National Bureau of Statistics, it was found that there were about 37 million Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Nigeria.
You can imagine how cool it will be if a sizable percentage of these MSME’s actually patronise the .NG domain for the development of their website with the national identity that comes with it.
For Nigerians to fully embrace the use of the .NG domain name for their website, they need to know the benefits that can be derived from the domain name. Some of these benefits are highlighted in this piece.
The first benefit accruing to businesses that register the .NG domain name in Nigeria is that the .NG domains are ranked first on the search engines during a search online. This means that, using it and maintaining good SEO for your website will, over time, lead to an increase in local traffic.
Why do you think that Google would rather serve you results using google.com.ng when you search for stuff within Nigeria and if you travel to, say, Ghana, and use the same device, it will go ahead and serve you results via google.com.gh? What is even interesting is that, in the case of Nigeria, Google has both .com.ng as well as .ng, an example of a forward looking company.
Secondly, registering .NG domain gives those that do business with you an air of confidence and trust in doing business with you. This is because the .NG domain is managed by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association, NiRA, which is a Nigerian outfit where clients can lodge complaints in case they have issues — Finish Reading on the Punch Website
