Having an online presence is a sure way to protect 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 we say ‘local’, we do not mean it in the derogatory sense rather, we 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 and .COM.NG which is her Country Code Top Level Domain and we should be proud of this national asset.
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Analysis
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 MSMEs actually patronize the .NG or the .COM.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.
First Benefit
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.
Search Results and Metrics
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.
Second Benefit
Secondly, registering .NG domain gives those that do business with companies an air of confidence and trust in doing business with them. 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 with websites registered with those country code top-level domains.
Third Benefit
A third benefit is that the .NG domain is affordable and payments are made in Naira as against trying to source for forex for registering a foreign domain. On the aggregate, this will go on to save businesses and the country huge resources in hard foreign exchange.
Fourth Benefit
A fourth benefit is a speed.
We will not be too technical but, each time one visits any website with a foreign string, there is usually a delay that occurs because of the calls that have to be made before the web page opens. If one, however, uses the .NG string and also host your website locally, then, it helps to improve the speed which is now a major ranking factor.
On our part, we’re making conscious and deliberate efforts to walk the talk by flaunting the Nigerian brand online.
