Whether you’re starting a new business, looking for a promotion, switching careers, hunting for a better job, or growing your network, building a personal brand can take your career to a whole new level. As a marketeer, it is essential to brand and market yourself with the same passion and intensity as your products and services.

What Is Personal Branding?

Personal branding is the process of developing a brand around your personality by consistently and effectively promoting yourself. Done well, you can tie your personal brand in with your business or career to achieve unparalleled success.

Building a personal brand can be an overwhelming and somewhat daunting task. This is because it’s easy to lose focus on what you wish to achieve and where to begin. Oprah Winfrey went through multiple style iterations before defining her voice as one of the most influential personal brands in the world.

However, building a personal brand in the digital world is a lot easier than you think. All you need is the right domain name! Now you may wonder what does a domain name have to do with building a personal brand? As it turns out, a whole lot!

5 Creative Ways To Use A .icu Domain Name To Build A Strong Personal Brand

Here are five creative ways to use your .icu domain name to build and augment your personal brand online:

1. Build A Brandable Virtual Portfolio 

A smart way to establish a strong personal brand online is to create a website that showcases your work portfolio complete with relevant links. Include your gamut of skills, projects undertaken, awards and accolades, social media handles, contact information, and testimonials from previous clients or colleagues.

For instance, if you are a marketing professional, using your first or full name with a short and distinctive .icu domain extension (www.ethanbrown.icu or www.ethan.icu) to host your body of work is a wise decision. A one-word or full name website address is easy to remember and even easier to build a personal brand with.

A domain name like www.firstname.icu goes a long way in building your personal brand. Whether you share your website address with potential employers or prospective clients, a short, meaningful, and smart domain gives people positive connotations about your work while establishing you as a highly professional and sophisticated individual. Using the right domain name is a great way to make a lasting first impression.

2. Start A Blog 

Starting a blog website is a great way to build authority in your niche and establish yourself as a thought leader. Having a blog also helps recruiters and employers get a more in-depth insight into your capabilities and skills. It’s the same with prospective clients or partners who want to learn about what drives you.

Include all relevant links to your social media handles and links to blogs that have been published on other reputable websites. If you already have a blog website, then it’s advisable to add more pages to it and build your personal brand website around it. Starting a blog aims to give employers or customers a better sense of who you are and help you establish yourself as an influential personality in a given industry.

If you are a chef, you can start a blog about healthy food habits, new recipes, baking hacks, etc. Be sure to include links to your LinkedIn and Twitter profile or your YouTube channel (if you have one). A smart, slick, and meaningful domain name like www.catherinebakes.icu or www.chefscorner.icu is a great way to write and share your blogs.

3. Convert Your LinkedIn Or YouTube Profile Into A Personal Brand Channel

Whether you’re a marketing guru, finance expert, nutritionist, medical professional, or a CEO, your LinkedIn profile is one of the most important social media channels to share as a reference with employers or clients. In case you don’t have a website or a blog site, your professional social media handle becomes the next most vital avenue to build your personal brand.

By sharing a link to your LinkedIn profile, you can give recruiters, clients, or partners an insight into your professional accomplishments, work experience, awards, endorsements, blogs, and more. Towards this, it’s better to share a personalized and memorable domain name like www.alan.icu as a smart forwarding address to Alan’s LinkedIn profile as compared to a rather long and hard to remember URL.

The same can be done for your YouTube channel too. If you are a real estate broker who also runs a property tours channel on YouTube, then a clean, crisp domain name like www.micahelsproperty.icu or www.channelname.icu makes for a smart forwarding address that will bolster personal brand in the minds of your audience.

Using a smart, short domain name as a redirect or forwarding link to your LinkedIn profile or YouTube channel will help you stand out from others and comes across as an innovative individual.

4. Rebrand Your Existing Website

If you’ve already created a website or a blog site, it’s wise to tweak that instead of creating a new website or online presence. If your website has a weird or awkward domain name that is hard to spell and harder to type, then replacing your domain name with an edgy .icu domain extension is a sensible way to rebrand your website.

For instance, if you’re using www.eric-theonline-marketingprofessional.com as your current website address, why not use www.ericmarketing.icu? Or www.eric.icu? Or www.onlinemarketing.icu?

Promote your new domain name via emails, newsletters, and social media posts to get people to remember your domain name and visit your newly revamped online presence. With a .icu domain name, you have a chance to rebuild your personal brand with a touch of flair and flamboyance – key ingredients to win mass appeal and credibility in the market.

5. Use A Professional Email Address

Your email address plays a massive role in establishing your personal brand as it speaks volumes about how professional you are. A branded professional email address is a must if you want to create a striking first impression and trust in the eyes of the people you deal with. A branded email address separates the professionals from the amateurs.

Any professional who is serious about their work and brand should invest in a professional email address. With a .icu domain name, you can register a custom-branded email address that adds character to your personal brand. For instance, if your website address is www.onlinemarketing.icu, you can choose eric@onlinemarketing.icu as your email address.

Choosing a branded email address will make you come across as a seasoned professional compared to someone who uses free email services for their business.

Final Thoughts

Building a strong personal brand is in today’s digital age can be a game-changer for your professional growth. By pairing a meaningful word or name with a short, snappy, and brandable .icu domain extension, you can create a formidable and authentic personal brand online.

With over 6.5 million registrations, .icu continues to be the largest selling new domain extension. .cyou has followed suit to become one of the fastest-growing new domain extensions on the planet with over 20,000 registrations in just over 90 days of its global launch.

We’re getting ready to end 2020 with some great promotions for #BlackFriday but here is a look back at #ShortDot2020.

Why is this unusual? Because the trademark law prohibits any company or brand or individual to claim ownership of generic words or terms that describe a specific class of products by registering them under the trademark law.

Simply put, words like ‘cars’, ‘computers, ‘shoes’, or other generic words cannot be registered as trademarks as that would give an unfair advantage to that particular company over its competitors. For instance, anyone can name their shoe store brand “The Shoe Store,” but they can’t use the trademark law to register that name and stop others from adopting the same identity.

The same rule was applied almost a decade ago when online travel giant Bookings Holdings sought to trademark its booking.com domain. This time though, Booking Holdings challenged the court’s decision by proving that consumers associate the phrase “booking.com” with a specific website as opposed to a generic term for travel websites.

This opinion was furthered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (and joined by seven other justices) who stated that travel companies like Expedia might describe themselves as “a booking website,” but not as “a booking.com.”

Booking.com’s lawyer David Bernstein said the decision was “a victory for countless brand owners that have invested significant resources in building their brands – such as Weather.com, Law.com, Wine.com, and Hotels.com.”

Why You Should Choose To Trademark Your .bond Domain Name?

The ‘Booking.com’ judgment is a clear indication that meaningful domain names are brand assets and should be chosen wisely. However, acquiring meaningful domain names on conventional domain extensions like .com or .net can be challenging given the sheer volume of registrations that have already been made.

Fortunately, new domain extensions like .bond offer contextual relevance and wide availability of desirable names. The .bond domain extension is perfect for finance brands and professionals looking to build a memorable and formidable online presence.

For instance, a domain name like green.bond can be trademarked and used as your brand identity across platforms. Some amazing .bond domain names that have been registered include price.bond, bail.bond, tezos.bond, and among others.

Here are three reasons why you should choose to trademark your domain name:

1. Names with .bond are short and easy to remember

.bond is a short domain extension which makes for an easy to remember choice to pair your brand name with. Being a relatively new domain extension, there is a wide availability of meaningful and memorable names with .bond.

2. Names with .bond are distinctive and unique

.bond is a distinctive and unique domain extension that adds flair and flamboyance to otherwise uninteresting finance website addresses and brand monikers. This is augmented by the fact that the word ‘bond’ is universally associated with authority, panache, and fiscal solutions.

3. Names with .bond are premium and professional

Anyone who comes across your .bond domain name will know right from the get-go that they are interacting with an expert. Using a .bond domain name sends strong and positive connotations to your visitors and reinforces the benefits clients will receive when working with your firm.

How To Choose The Perfect Domain Name Worthy Of A Trademark?

In addition to choosing a meaningful name with a distinctive .bond domain extension, here are five handy tips to keep in mind when registering a domain name worthy of a trademark:

1. Choose a name that is short, easy to type, easy to spell, and easy to remember so that it gets imprinted in the minds of everyone who comes across it.

2. Pick a name that is meaningful, contextual, definitive, and one that meets SEO requirements and also passes the radio test.

3. Your domain name should be relevant and descriptive of what you do, which industry you belong to, and the nature of your brand.

4. Select a moniker that is unique, creative, innovative, and one that makes a lasting first impression.

5. Keep your domain name clean, crisp, and free of hyphens, misspellings, numbers, special characters, copyright issues.

Trademark Your Domain Name Today!

The ‘Booking.com’ judgment certainly makes it easier for brands and businesses to trademark generic terms with a domain extension. For newer brands and businesses, this verdict serves as a great opportunity to trademark generic terms with meaningful new domain extensions like .bond. For instance, names like capital.bond, fund.bond, holdings.bond, vc.bond, to name a few, are available for registrations.

Want to trademark your domain name? First, head over to the homepage to search for and register the perfect .bond name today!

Read on!

1. How has SEO evolved in the last two decades?

Bill Hartzer

At the beginning (the late 1990s to early 2000s), the focus was more on the on-page and on-site SEO. HTML markup was necessary. Then, we saw a strong focus on off-page and off-site issues, mainly links from other websites and anchor text links that seemed to be more critical than on-site and on-page SEO.

Now, in the past few years, the on-page and on-site issues have been increasingly important, where sites and pages can “rank well” if the content and on-page & on-site SEO is done well.

2. Do domain names or the choice of domain extensions affect SEO? Will the new domain extensions negatively impact your SEO?

Technically speaking, all domain names have the same opportunity to rank well in the search engine results pages. There is some bias when it comes to crawling and indexing, but ultimately all of the domain name extensions (TLDs) have the same opportunity for rankings and search engine visibility. When choosing a domain name, though, I prefer to have the keyword in the domain name, either in the beginning or the ending.

If the main keyword or topic is in the domain name and matches the content on the site, then it has a better chance of being referred to by other websites in a way that helps SEO. For example, if a website about Red Bond uses Red.bond for its domain name, other sites will refer to it and link it to the anchor text “red bond.” That ends up helping, rather than hurting, a website’s ability to rank well.

3. What are the best SEO techniques for a new website?

For a new website, it’s essential to focus on the site’s content, but also on the on-page SEO. The website will need some links from other quality websites, but pages can rank fairly quickly if you spend time developing quality content and optimizing the pages. For instance, starting a blog for your website would surely help with SEO.

From an SEO standpoint, are there any hidden or indirect advantages of choosing a name with a new domain extension?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that there is a hidden or indirect advantage of choosing a domain name with a new domain name extension. However, if you can use an on-topic keyword-rich domain name in a new extension (new TLD), it’s preferred over one that doesn’t have a keyword in the domain name.

4. What best practices or tips would you suggest to anyone who wants to migrate their website from one domain name to another without losing much SEO value?

When migrating a website from one domain name to another, ideally, it’s preferred to take some time to do it. Initially, the new domain name would be, at a minimum, a microsite, a website on the same topic as the website that’s being moved. Give it time to get the microsite crawled and indexed in the search engines. Get some links to it and verify the website in Google Search Console.

Once you’re comfortable that the microsite is indexed, usually a month or two, proceed to move the content over to the microsite. Set up 301 Permanent Redirects from the old website URLs to the new pages on the new domain name. Use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to tell them you’ve moved from one domain name to the new domain name.

Then, update any links that you have control over, such as social media profiles and other website listings.

5. How does having a sitemap help with SEO?

There are two types of sitemaps, an HTML sitemap, and an XML sitemap. The HTML sitemap can be helpful for users if it doesn’t have too many links as it tends to get unusable if it contains more than about 50 links on the page. If there are important pages that you need to keep indexed and if it’s a large website, you may want to include those critical pages in the HTML sitemap.

An XML sitemap file, and potentially multiple XML sitemap files are important—to make sure that the search engines can find and crawl all of the pages on your website. While having an XML sitemap won’t help rankings directly, it can indirectly help, as it ensures that all of your pages are index.

Want to register a keyword-rich domain name that will help with SEO? Search for and register short, meaningful, and memorable names with .icu, .cyou, and .bond!

ShortDot is one of the largest domain registrars in the world. We currently manage .icu, .bond and .cyou. We use multiple internal and external tools and sources to actively monitor our zone files for DNS abuse and other domains that may violate our Terms and Conditions found here: https://nic.icu/terms/. We do not tolerate any abusive domains, and when we’re alerted to DNS abuse on Domain(s) in one of our zones, we promptly take action. Usually, this means placing the Domain(s) on ServerHold status, and sometimes we’ll first notify the Registrar, giving them time to investigate the issue. Registrants that believe this action was taken by mistake can always reach out to us, and we will review the case; however, as you will learn, most of our tools are built to reduce false positives.

In 2019 we explained our process for handling DNS abuse here at ShortDot and the .icu registry; https://nic.icu/how-.icu-handles-abusive-domain-names/. In 2020 as the digital environment evolves, so has our process for handling reports of DNS abuse. For this article, we’re going to use the types of DNS abuse as defined in the ‘Framework for DNS Abuse’ letter put together by Domain Industry Leaders found here: http://dnsabuseframework.org/.

Malware is malicious software, installed on a device without the user’s consent, which disrupts the device’s operations, gathers sensitive information, and/or gains access to private computer systems. Malware includes viruses, spyware, ransomware, and other unwanted software.

Botnets are collections of Internet-connected computers that have been infected with malware and commanded to perform activities under the control of a remote administrator.

Phishing occurs when an attacker tricks a victim into revealing sensitive personal, corporate, or financial information (e.g. account numbers, login IDs, passwords), whether through sending fraudulent or ‘look-alike’ emails, or luring end users to copycat websites. Some phishing campaigns aim to persuade the user to install software, which is in fact malware.

Pharming is the redirection of unknowing users to fraudulent sites or services, typically through DNS hijacking or poisoning. DNS hijacking occurs when attackers use malware to redirect victims to [the attacker’s] site instead of the one initially requested. DNS poisoning causes a DNS server [or resolver] to respond with a false IP address bearing malicious code. Phishing differs from pharming in that the latter involves modifying DNS entries, while the former tricks users into entering personal information.

Spam is unsolicited bulk email, where the recipient has not granted permission for the message to be sent, and where the message was sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

These definitions and their sources sourced in the Framework letter at the link above.

The next factor in DNS abuse is how abusive domain names are reported to Registrars and Registries. At ShortDot and with the .icu domain extension, there are two primary avenues for DNS abuse reports to reach our abuse team. Trusted Sources and Publicly Reported Domains.

Trusted Sources are typically companies in the cybersecurity industry that monitor the internet for DNS Abuse. When we receive a report of DNS abuse from a Trusted Source, we immediately take action, typically this involves placing the Domain (s) on ServerHold status and notifying the Registrar where the Domain is registered that there is an issue. Some of the Trusted Sources that we use to monitor the .icu zone are below, keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list.

SpamHaus.org is one of the most well known non-profit organizations that actively monitors more than 3 Billion¹ mailboxes globally for Spam emails. ShortDot uses a third party service that pulls domains from an API into SpamHaus and notifies us when Domain (s) violate our Terms and Conditions. According to SpamHaus, their Domain Block List is compiled by:

The DBL’s reputation database is maintained by a dedicated team of specialists using various data from many sources to craft and maintain a large set of rules controlling an automated system that constantly analyses a large portion of the world’s email flow and the domains in it. Most DBL listings occur automatically, although where necessary Spamhaus researchers will add or remove listings manually. DBL data is exchanged with other Spamhaus systems which can result in further listings in the DBL, or in IP addresses being listed in other Spamhaus zones.²

PhishTank is an information clearinghouse operated by OpenDNS. While their data is reported by users around the internet, they have a verification system that significantly reduces false positives making their reports accurate. Anytime PhishTank reports an abusive domain to ShortDot we take immediate action as described above. More information about PhishTank can be found by visiting: https://www.phishtank.com/

Google Safe Browsing (GSB) helps protect over four billion devices every day by showing warnings to users when they attempt to navigate to dangerous sites or download dangerous files. ShortDot’s third-party monitoring software also pulls data from GSB, anytime a .icu or other ShortDot Domain is reported by GSB we take immediate action by placing the Domain on ServerHold status and notifying the Registrar.

1. Self-reported from https://www.spamhaus.org/organization/
   2. Compilation method as defined by SpamHaus: https://www.spamhaus.org/dbl/
   3. Description of Google Safe Browsing from: https://safebrowsing.google.com/

Publicly Reported Domains is the classification we give domains that are reported by the general public. These reports come to ShortDot in multiple ways, some of which are: our abuse reporting form located at www.nic.icu/reportabuse, by internet users forwarding abusive domains to abuse@nic.icu, or by reports filed via phone by calling our toll free or international phone numbers +1 (844) 447-4678 or +1 (512) 596-2935. When domains fall into this category we notify the Registrar where the Domain is registered that there may be an issue, give them 48 hours to investigate and report their findings and any actions taken back to ShortDot. If we have not received a response or can verify that the Domain violates our Terms and Conditions, we place the Domain(s) on ServerHold.

What is ServerHold, and once a domain is placed on ServerHold, how is it removed?

ServerHold is a mechanism available to Registries that removes all DNS records from a domain name. It also eliminates the ability for a Registrar to modify the domain name until the Registry removes the ServerHold status. Essentially Your Domain is not activated in the DNS.¹

If you are the registrant of a .icu or other ShortDot Registry Domain and want to request that the ServerHold status be removed, send an email to legal@nic.icu with an explanation of the issue, and the actions you have taken to remedy the issue. It is also important to confirm that the issue will not happen again. Our abuse team will review all requests to remove ServerHold and respond within 48 hours.

1. ICANN’s definitions can be found: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/epp-status-codes-2014-06-16-en

ShortDot is proud to be one of the largest new domain registries on the planet. Our extensions include .icu, .bond and .cyou. We are constantly looking to acquire more extensions and to continue being a leader in the domain name space. The DNS abuse information and process outlined here is meant to not only be informative as to how ShortDot handles DNS abuse but also to demonstrate our commitment to combating abusive content on the internet.

Thank you for reading, we’re happy to answer questions or provide further clarification.

-The ShortDot Team

.icu | .bond | .cyou