How To Decide How Many Domains You Should Buy
You’ve finally thought up the perfect domain name. It makes no secret of what you do, and it’s available. But when you’re about to snap it up, you notice other variations of that domain name are listed. Do you really need to register some of these as well?
It makes good sense to do so.
Buying multiple domains for your business can improve its online identity and protect your brand from fierce competitors. Think how simple it could be for someone to write .co” instead of .com” at the end of your domain name. How would you feel if they were to land on what they thought was your website and end up buying from your closest rival?
Keeping domain names out of the hands of competitors is just one of the reasons why it is a great idea to invest in multiple variations of your primary domain.
Niche Website For Showcasing Specialization
Niche websites can be much more appealing over a large, generic site. Larger sites run the risk of having too much overlap with a competing site, which diminishes the likelihood of adding links. Niche sites which dont necessarily have to be small allow for the kind of specialization that can be helpful to complement the information of other sites. This can support the development of deep, topic-specific content making your site a valuable resource. From a and sales standpoint, these niche sites can support niche products and services.
Nowadays, with the new donuts domain extensions, there is a new complexity involved. If you intend to run a serious business, you will definitely consider securing a complimentary twin domain. For exmaple, if your business is k-12school.com, common sense dictates to get k12.school as well. The same applies to similar cases like k12group.com -> the twin donut domain would be k12.group. Or k12shop.com with its counterpart k12.shop.
Do Consider Memorability + Readability + Seo
Some marketers swear by 6 letter domain names. Some like to make the domain name a word like or del.icio.us .
But there are other sites like IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com or CopywritingCourse.com that violate nearly every best practice but are still successful. Its good to have a memorable domain name, and one that is easy to type in, and maybe has a keyword, or not but the main goal of buying the domain is to allow people to get to your site.
If your site is good and well-promoted, then people will come, and if notthen it really doesnt matter what domain you have or how many you own.
Recommended Reading: What Is A Domain Vs Website
Buy Domains If Your Brand Name Is Similar To Another Unrelated Brand
Though this happens less frequently, sometimes you have a brand name that is almost the same as another company in another category.
In cases like this, youll already be working double-time to separate your brand from theirs, but having a distinct main domain name becomes more important.
This doesnt add SEO value its more of a branding issue.
Is There A Search Engine Benefit To Having Multiple Domains
There is no real search engine benefit to owning multiple domain names. If your site is on a .com and you buy the .net and .info to forward them to your website, dont expect this to get you any extra search engine rankings. Google and other search engines will only rank your site with actual hosted content on a real website. Search engines will not index or rank domains that are forwarding to another domain.
Many people will purchase extra domains with other keywords in them that are related to their business or website. They think that these domains will help their website show for these keywords but since the domains have no website on them and they wont be indexed in search engines, they will have no effect. If you were to put a website on every domain, thats a different story, and also a large undertaking!
So if youre going to spend money on extra domains, it should TYPICALLY only be for the reasons above.
BUT there is a final reason that DOES have a possible SEO benefit.
Recommended Reading: What Does Custom Domain Mean
Cybercriminals Will Manipulate Your Domain Name To Trick People
Did you know there are over 116,000 fake domains around the World Wide Web?
Yes, these domains serve fake websites and malicious emails. Cybercriminals create them to fool people into sharing their personal information, like login credentials and bank account details.
If you have an ecommerce website, this particularly applies to you.
People with bad intentions may take advantage of your domain name, register a variation, and use it to steal your customers personal information. If this happens, youll lose brand reputation and customer trust.
Real-Life Example: Google
As the king of the internet, Google has sixty other domains. Aside from its main domain google.com, it also owns other variations like gogle.com, googel.com, and goggle.com.
Try it yourself! Keying in Googel.com on your browser redirects you to Googles main website.
This strategy protects Google from imitators trying to profit from their brand.
Another Real-Life Example: Apple
When developers launched internationalised domain names , it provided a platform for non-English speakers to register domains using the character sets in their language.
Unfortunately, this also paved the way for cybercriminals to create domain names that look exactly like the known ones.
Apple is one such case.
Why You Need Multiple Domain Names
DIYMarketing Expert, Marketing Strategist and Small Business Marketing Advisor, DIY Marketers
Summary
How would you feel if you walked into work one day and another company had set up shop right therein the middle of your office space? If yo
How would you feel if you walked into work one day and another company had set up shop right therein the middle of your office space? If you dont own a series of domain names that represent your product or service, this is exactly the risk you are taking.
While this is technically a search engine optimization and search engine marketing issue, Id like to focus more on how important this is to your brand position, brand value and competitive advantage.
Owning Just Your Company Name Isnt Enough
I just about fell off my chair when I decided to research domain names for a client that were descriptive of the products they sell to specific markets, like naturalgaswidget.com. Every descriptive industry/product combination was available as a .com domain nameevery single one. I was shocked because with billions of websites out there, youd think that just about every obvious name had been taken, but this is just not true. Especially if youre selling into a specialty niche, market or industry.
Want to read more about building a website? Check these out:
Why You Need to Own Descriptive Domain Names
How to Buy More Domains and What to Do With Them
Don’t Miss: What Does Net Domain Mean
How To Solve The Duplicate Content Problem
After pointing all your domains to your website, you’ll have to decide which of those domains is going to be yourprimary or main domain. This will be the domain you use to refer to your own site, and it is the domain that you’ll usewhen you advertise your site. You will be redirecting all the other domains to this main domain. For example, themain domain for this site is thesitewizard.com. If you were to type the “.net” variant, you will be redirected tomy “.com” version that is, you’ll end up at a web address beginning with “https://www.thesitewizard.com/”.
After you’ve made your decision, follow the tutorialHow to Redirect fromYour Root Domain to the WWW Subdomain and Vice Versa Using mod_rewrite to redirect all your secondary domainsto your main one. Although the tutorial talks about either adding the “www” or removing the “www” from your domainname, the problem it solves is essentially the same one: that of multiple domains delivering the same content.However, since you have to solve your multiple domains problem in addition to the “www” issue, you should usethe second block of code given on the page, namely, the following:
Is It Worth Buying Multiple Domains And Pointing Them At Your Website
It is commonly believed that you can increase your search engine ranking by buying up lots of domain names and forwarding them to your primary domain. This article explores how and when this could be beneficial and dispels a few SEO myths on the topic.
All websites have a primary domain name. For example yourname.com. Some people choose to register one or more secondary domain names and forward them to their primary name. For example yourname.ca automatically forwarding to yourname.com.
There are many benefits of doing this, but almost none of them are related to SEO:
Also Check: How To Transfer Domain Away From Godaddy
Why You Should Buy Multiple Domain Names
If youre a business owner and want to save your online brand from your competitors and build your solid online presence with excellent SEO, then you are landed on the right page. Lets apply these things and rank your business in the top searches by understating the top reasons why you need multiple domain names.
Do I Need More Than One Domain Name
If you run a business , having a solid website may mean the difference between failure and success, and choosing your primary top-level domain is a crucial first step.
Buying multiple domains for your company can increase the visibility of your business and protect your brand from hungry competitors.
In fact, there are several good reasons that more than one domain for your website should be purchased â even if it means coughing up some extra cash up front. In this article, Here are a few reasons why itâs a solid idea to have multiple domains and how this can impact your business.
Recommended Reading: How To Buy Only Domain Name
Dont Believe That Boring Is Brandable
And why will there always be another domain name? Because the domain name should always follow the successful business. Sure, you have to have something to start out with but it doesnt have to be perfect. And it doesnt even need to make sense. Why?
Because first, boring domain names are just that boring. Who wants to get books from bookstore.com or search the Internet at searchengine.com or buy jackets from wintercoats.com.
No! We buy books from Amazon, search the Internet at Google, and buy jackets from TheNorthFace.com.
Thats because domain names are really memory hooks if a customer knows your business, then theyll know your domain name .
Everything You Need To Know About Using Multiple Domains For Your Site
Your domain name is your home on the web, but it needn’t be your only address. In some cases, organizations can benefit from having multiple addresses for different reasons. Maintaining multiple domains can help with everything from marketing to maximizing traffic, but there’s a right and a wrong way to do it.
You might use the domain somecompany.com for your main site. Think of ‘somecompany’ as your online house, and ‘.com’ as its neighborhood. But what if you wanted to make a particular part of your company easier for the world to reach? This is where using multiple domains can sometimes be helpful.
Also Check: How To Add Email To Godaddy Domain
Can I Have Two Domain Namesone Of Each Typeand Redirect Them To The Same Website
You buy sweetdreams.co.nz and bestbeds.co.nz, and have the secondary one redirect to the primary one. Sounds like good idea, doesnt it? At least some experts think it is, but others are much more skeptical about the idea. The complicating factor is the way search engines view, assess and ultimately rank your website. Search engines, like Google, are suspicious of duplicate content, the wrong sorts of redirects etc., meaning that having multiple domains could be detrimental to your search rankings if youre not careful. If you do use multiple domains, then you should use the 301 redirect method only. There are other ways to skin this proverbial cat, but using a 301 redirect is the only safe way to do it.
So the jurys out on this issue, with no clear answer. But that fact alone tells us something crucial: its probably safe to assume that having multiple domains usually wont hurt your search rankings a whole lot but nor will it help it much. If it did, the research would bear this out more clearly. ButAchtung! If you mismanage multiple domain names, this can definitely hurt you .
To Better Target Different Audiences
Businesses that have multiple target audienceslike those that offer products for millennials and other products for baby boomers, or those that provide services for both low-income and high-income clientscan benefit from creating a separate domain for each one. This enables them to target the content on each site specifically to the audience theyre trying to capture without negatively impacting the other audiences.
A prime example of this would be a medical device company that delivers products and services to physicians as well as directly to patients. The information that each category of individuals would seek about those products and services would likely be different as doctors might be more interested in testing or how a product works whereas patients would want to know what type of benefits it provides. Plus, the medical device company would probably use different wording and terminology when creating content directed toward medical professionals compared to content designed to educate consumers, which they could easily do if each was on its own domain.
Read Also: What Is A Domain For
What To Do If You Have Already Registered Multiple Domains For Your Site
The answer is simple. Pick one and stick to it. Figure out which domain name resonates best with you and your business model. Preferably a short one with the .com extension , easy to remember and type. The rest of your domain pack should be permanently redirected to this main domain. The 301 permanent url redirection can be easily set up at your domain registrar or directly with your web hosting provider.
Each website owner is going to have a unique combination of goals and priorities. Those, not a fabulous web hosting package, need to guide this kind of domain decision.
Some Important Points To Look Over
- Buy a domain name that is concise, unique, and easy to type in.
- The domain name is your online identity therefore your site should have a name, page title, meta-description, and on-page communication to help search engines figure out what your page is all about.
- If you are a big company then you can buy multiple domain names to secure your brand name.
- Many companies have long domain names because their company name is long but this is the mistake. Try and make your domain name short and easy to type.
- If you want people to find you then you can use different domain names, for example, Curvearro.com, theCurvearro.com, etc.
Recommended Reading: How To Own Your Domain Name Forever