One of the most difficult challenges for any new company is finding a way of standing out from the vast number of .com domains on the internet. Having a short, easily-remembered name is clearly a plus, but one of the depressing facts any start-up team hoping to make a statement online must grapple with is that every four-character combination of letters with the suffix “.com” has already been taken – along with most of the attractive five character ones!
However, don’t despair. A ready solution is at hand for Scottish companies in the shape of .scot, a top-level domain for Scotland and Scottish culture. This became available in September 2014 from DotScot Registry and has helped many companies and organisations achieve a distinctive Scottish identity and branding for themselves. Users of the domain can be found in 43 countries, with .scot being used to represent a myriad of businesses and organisations.
This works equally well for both large, established organisations and for new start-ups keen to forge their own brand and identity. No less an organisation than the Scottish Government uses the name, and the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is on record saying the .scot domain helps give the Government a crisp, clear online identity.
For a new Scottish company looking to develop an export market for itself, the distinctive Scottish branding given by the .scot domain is a huge advantage. For example, a company doing anything involved with the outdoors - be it organising tours to various Scottish locations or selling outdoor gear abroad - Scotland’s natural heritage is a huge plus. The grandeur of the Scottish landscape, with its mountains, lochs, forests, glens and castles combined with the .scot domain lends itself to conjuring up such images, even while the viewer is keying in the address.
Two other areas where Scotland’s unique reputation and history can help to add weight to a new brand are in the fields of finance and innovation. The Bank of Scotland, now part of Lloyds Banking Group, was one of the first banks in Europe to print its own notes and Scottish bankers have a centuries-old reputation for probity and prudence. With that history behind you, flagging up any piece of fintech or financial services offering as “.scot” is bound to carry a certain weight.
On innovation, the case for branding your operation as “Scottish” is even stronger. For a small country, Scotland has an astonishing history of “firsts” in world-changing inventions. Whether it’s John Napier inventing logarithms, John Logie Baird inventing television, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone or James Clerk Maxwell laying the foundations for colour photography, Scots have pioneered way more than their share of breakthroughs. So if you have a startling new product, or innovative app to take to market, .scot is definitely the way to go.
Moreover, using a new gTLD such as .scot can help boost your SEO rankings, and the popular myth that these domains can have a negative impact on your Google rankings has been debunked. Thousands of companies worldwide are taking advantage of the versatile .scot domain name; a growing community benefiting from distinctive branding from the get-go.
Show your Scottish connection with a .scot domain at www.dot.scot
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article