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As you may have already heard, there are now more options when buying domain names. Rather than your typical .com, .org, .net, etc… you can choose from domains like .photography or .graphics.

Here’s a complete list of the new domain extensions:

• .estate
• .photography
• .ventures
• .guru
• .bike
• .clothing
• .gallery
• .singles
• .camera
• .lighting
• .plumbing
• .equipment
• .graphics
• .holdings

Before you go nuts and buy every .photography domain name you can think of, we wanted to let you know our thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of these new domains:

Advantages

• You can get the keyword “photography” right in your domain name, which is worth points when it comes to SEO. (Though, you can also put “photography” in your domain name with a .com domain name too.)
• Domains are like real estate, and now is an opportunity to get some better real estate for your business.

Disadvantages

• More traditional domain extensions like .com and .net are typically seen as more valuable by search engines, since they’ve been around longer and are harder to come by. As it stands now, JoesPhotoStudio.com would outrank JoesPhotoStudio.org, which would outrank JoesPhotoStudio.photography.
• They’re not familiar to people. Having to explain to someone that your website is “dot photography” is a conversation you’ll need to get used to, because no one will know what you’re talking about.
• They’re not familiar to browsers. If you type “JoesPhotoStudio.photography” into some browsers, it won’t know what you want and start a web search instead of going to the website (This may change in the future).
• There’s a chance they could be a passing fad, or never really gain popularity.

Conclusion

We feel .photography domains are a little too close to the bleeding edge of technology to be practical. If you find a .photography domain name you like, We’d recommend registering it, but forwarding it (using a 301 redirect) to your main .com domain for now. You can always make it your primary domain name later.

I don’t care, I want to use a .photography domain now It’s bad practice to have more than one domain setup with a single website. Search engines will penalize sites like this for “duplicate content”.

Instead, you’ll need to choose a primary domain, then have any other domains forward to it using a “301 redirect”. It’s very important to not use masking, cloaking, domain hiding, or any other option that sounds similar. These options will hurt your site’s SEO dramatically.

For example. Lets say you own JoesPhotoStudio.com, but you would like to instead use JoesPhotoStudio.photography. Here’s how you’d do that:

1. Be warned that your domain name may be down for a few minutes during this process, so don’t change anything during peak business hours.
2. Sign into your domain registrar’s website and setup the DNS records for JoesPhotoStudio.photography just like you would any other domain (instructions here http://help.22slides.com/article/custom-domain).
3. Also from your domain registrar’s website, forward JoesPhotoStudio.com to JoesPhotoStudio.photography, using a 301 redirect (no cloaking, masking, etc).
4. Login to your 22Slides control panel, go to your Settings page, and change your domain name to JoesPhotoStudio.photography.
5. You’re done! It may take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or two to start working.

P.S. Here’s a $2 coupon for domains at Hover.com: https://hover.com/4KXQoGLE