This is a tough question if you are registering your first domain and you are also on a tight budget.
- As a minimum, you need to register the .co.uk if you are a UK based company and also the .com version if available.
- If your site is important, consider registering as many extensions as possible to prevent others pretending to be you.
- While your business is new you can register the domains at cost. Once you are established, obtaining the domain names from a squatter is going to be expensive, if not impossible.
- Find a comfortable budget for your domain registrations. Annually the costs is much less than it used to be.
- You may need to consider registering misspellings if your brand name can easily be misspelt for additional protection.
The reason you need to register both the .co.uk and the .com becomes apparent once your site becomes successful. Do you really want someone to launch a site with your company brand and have them ride on your coat tails – or even bring your business in to disrepute? So, if you can, get both the .co.uk and the .com extensions.
So how about the rest of the extensions?
If you are serious about your business, you need to purchase as many extensions as your budget will afford. Domain registration is very cheap these days and there are no excuses for cutting corners. Once your business is successful it will be very difficult if not impossible to collect the extensions after they have been registered by other parties.
So I should register all of the extensions?
If you can, in this order, you should take the .co.uk, .com, .net, .biz, .info and .eu. As stated earlier, if you are serious about your business then register as many of the extensions as you can afford.