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Should I buy more than one domain name for a single website?

This is a common question, and the short answer is a resounding YES.  It is highly recommended that you register multiple domains for several reasons.  The main one being, the correlation between key words and the domain name itself. 

Case Study

We have a client who owns a salon, and a large wedding business as well.  For weddings, she offers test run hair and makeup, long before the big day, at the salon, and on the wedding day, she often goes onsite to not only do the bride’s hair and makeup, but the attendants and the mother of the bride as well.   Her shop is also close to two high schools, which of course have proms, semi-formal, and other events that often warrant up-dos, spray tans, and makeup, In order to increase her reach without spending thousands on ads, she purchased several domain names including spraytanokc.com, weddinghairokc.com eyelashesokc.com, promhairokc.com updookc.com, and salonhairokc.com.  What happened next is easy to guess, when people did a search for spray tans OKC, her domain name would pop up and take them directly to her actual salon page.  Not only did this increase her base, but it also pushed her website up in the rankings on ALL browsers, and it did it organically, which is the very best way to do it.  In short, for the one-time cost of a handful of domain names which amounted to less than $150, the effect gave her the rankings of similar websites that would have spent thousands, if not tens of thousands to achieve the same ranking.   

The next logical question is generally, should I buy all domain name extensions? This time the answer is no.  You don’t need to buy all the domain extensions for your website. What you do want to consider is, if your product or name, or service is new and potentially a target for copycats, then purchasing .com, .net, .co and a few others is a smart investment to keep your competitors from purchasing the same name as you, only with a different extension.  How many you buy (and how many variations on your name you buy) also depends on the size of your budget. It’s important to consider, the reasons for registering more than one domain name, mainly focused on future growth, enhancing online identity, and bringing more potential traffic to your online presence. As you can see there are several good reasons for registering more than one domain name, mainly focused on future growth, enhancing online identity and allowing more ways to access your online presence.  A huge bonus reason is to protect your company from competitors hijacking your name, or similar names to direct your potential clients from your website to theirs.

Here are 7 key benefits when you register more than one domain name.

Expansion

You may start your business locally, however, over the years your direction may move to a global platform. Should you start branching into international markets it will be important to have country specific domains. It is best to do this as search engines will rank country specific domains, such as; .com.au, higher than the typical .com domain name.

Misspelling

It is common practice to ensure you add keywords with misspellings when you select keywords for a pay per click campaign, therefore it stands to reason to do the same with your domain name. This will help potential customers find your business online. Allowing for misspellings of the name will mean you can direct users who misspell your business name to the right destination instead of sending users to an error page or even worse a competitor’s page. Here is a great resource for the top 100 misspelled words. Visit EnglishClub.

Special Offers

Having various domains registered can enable a business to promote various products and services via specialized landings pages. This allows your users to go directly to the page with the information or product they seek.  Taking them to the home page is far too risky, as you are expecting them to “dig” until they find what they want/need, or just leave.

Restricting Competitors

Registering more than one domain name for your company can help avoid your competition from registering a similar domain name, restricting your online reach, and potentially losing your current and future clients to your competitor.

Search Engines

When a website with multiple domain names is a lot easier to find for both your prospects and the bots on each browser.  Your prospects prefer having more than one way of finding you when using search engines.

Protection of Brand

Protection of your brand and online identity is essential for any business online.  Securing a variety of names will inevitably boost your brand presence and prevent others from hijacking your company’s presence and sales.

SEO

When using keyword domains, it plays an important part in a search engine optimization (SEO) plan and will increase traffic and search engine discoverability. Registering a domain name is a very easy and inexpensive task.  Simply Google domain names or visit a business like whois.net and use their domain name tools to see what’s available for your business.  Or contact your marketing person to handle it for you.  They will reserve the name, in your name, and remind you when it’s time to renew, or renew it on your behalf.  They can also keep you from paying a third party to renew your name, when in fact it’s just a scam.

The Perfect Email

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To gain a higher open rate your email campaign needs to be personalized. How do you do that? You categorize your audience. The more targeted each email list is, the more likely your emails will be opened. You will be able to cater your emails to each small number of recipients. Another important part of the email is the subject line. The first thing people will see is the subject line. No matter how targeted the inside of your email is, it will not be opened without a great subject line. Using numbers in your subject line increase open rates by 57 percent. Also if your subject line has between 6-10 words its chances of being open is 21 percent. If you are promoting a product using the words “free” or “exclusive” will help. Other key words are polite, I mean words like “sorry,” “please,” and “thank you”. If you don’t feel like being polite negative words also have a higher opening rate. If you are talking about the “best” change it to the “worst”. If all else fails, include the receipt’s name in the subject line. Grab your recipient’s attention and add your company’s name or yours as the sender. They will trust the email if they see it is from you.

The Perfect Time

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Now that your content is set and personalized you have to send your email at the perfect time. If your email is not opened within the first hour of being delivered, its chances of being opened begin to decrease. The best days to send your emails are Tuesdays and Saturdays. The times when most emails are opened are 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. This information is based on an overall study. This may not work for your campaign. Always check your own insights based on your audience.

The Perfect Sender

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You don’t want to create the perfect email and send it at the perfect time to later realize it was never delivered. When an email is sent it has to go through a gateway and a spam filter. There are a couple of things you can do to insure your email is delivered to the recipient. You can add a footer asking recipients to add your email to their contacts list. This may not always work if gateway or the spam filter find the email untrustworthy. How do you fix that? Try not to use a new IP address or domain name. The younger those are the more alert spam filters become. Build your reputation by authenticating your IP address and domain name. You can always use https://glockapps.com/ to check your email before you send it. This app will tell you if your email will bypass the gateway and spam filters.
Increase your email open rates by tweaking little things. Always check your insights to make sure your changes are working.

Social media in today’s world is a vital part of any marketing strategy. Remaining today is only a very spare few companies who would not benefit from the use of social media. It is the optimal way to engage your audience in a way that is convenient and unobtrusive. Additionally, it is inexpensive and easy for companies to use.

1.Driving traffic

Every website owner wants to increase the traffic to their website. Perhaps the most effective way to do this is through social media – it easily is seen by a large number of people, and then all the viewer has to do is click a link and they are exposed to the website.

2.SEO

With every update to search engines, more social results are being integrated. Whether it be through Facebook’s new algorithm or Google using Google +, these are not taking social results into account. Even the social networks themselves are becoming search engines – if you type key words into Twitter, real-time results are brought up from users and outlets from around the world. Your efforts through social will become more significant in your SEO strategies. You can no longer do one or the other without compromising your results.

3.Engagement

Social media provides a unique outlet for brand-to-audience communication. There has never before been a platform that allows a company or brand to actually interact with people in such a way. Positive engagement improves a brand’s reputation and overall image, while also increasing sales!

4.Branding

With every profile being unique companies can give brands personalities on social networks. The way they interact with customers, the kind of content that they post, and the look of their profiles all contribute to the way audiences view and form opinions of the brand. For many businesses, social media pages can be more important than their website.

5.Mobile

One of the most important aspects of social networking is that its mobile – a lot of the usage is being done from a mobile device. This means it’s important to keep in mind your structure and strategy when designing its compatibility. This also means that the brand is more widely accessible – everyone always has their phones on them.

As we welcome 2016, think about what lessons can you and your business took from 2015. How can you improve on last year? What did you do right last year? What could you have done better?

The best way to capitalize off these lessons is to hold a crucial “year-in-review” meeting. Rally your employees together in a conference room, restaurant or anywhere you can discuss business. There, you should discuss and plan for the next year which includes solutions to the hurdles you faced in 2015. Let everyone have a voice; it never hurts to have differing viewpoints on what your company can build upon for more success. Creating a clear and organized plan for your 2016 is the key to success. Getting focused and organized will help your group work harder for the New Year, as well as more efficiently.

 

How do you increase your business’ influence on social media? The most important thing to do is probably the most obvious – post fresh, interesting and engaging content. Utilize a strategy for posting content on Social Media.

Be calculating in what you post, when you post it and where you post it. The time of day, the platform and the type of information you plan to post all should be taken into consideration before you engage.  Don’t just make random announcements or shout-outs.  Some announcements can aid in helping your business grow, however if that is all you post, don’t be surprised when you don’t get the retweets/shares you had hoped for.

Some humor may be appropriate, just be very careful not to make the post anything which could offend someone, or groups of people.  Talk about a fast Business Killer. If killing your business or at least cutting it in half is your goal, then go ahead and make posts about Politics, Religion, and anything controversial. You are sure to ruffle feathers and lose current and potential clients

Do use good images.  They catch the eye and make the post more appealing.  Often a good photo or graphic is what drew them in first, not the content.  Just remember whatever got them to read your post, make it worth their while. The ultimate goal is to make your posts as interesting as possible to encourage people to do something (share, click the link, etc.).

Finally, don’t be afraid to reach out to people who have influence. Go ahead and Comment, Like, Retweet, and Mention people. But remember this … If your interest isn’t genuine, it will not work.  At the very least it will end annoying people. So show genuine interest in someone and talk to them, after all that’s what puts the word Social in Social Media.

Assuming your reason for blogging is to increase traffic for your brand, business, etc. be sure to avoid these mistakes. These pitfalls can cost you loss of traffic, loss of followers – and you may never be able to recover from the bad exposure.

 

• Mistake #1: You don’t post enough. Often bloggers have the grandiose idea of posting once a day, a week, a month but then may go weeks between posts. Consistency and frequency are what separates the professional blogger from the amateur. You cannot build a steady traffic flow without regular and frequent posts. Don’t take our word for it. Check it out on Google Analytics.  There is a direct correlation between frequency and traffic. The more bloggers post—within reason—the greater the traffic.

 

• Mistake #2: You post too much.Yes, this too is the kiss of death.  Most people don’t want to hear from you more than once a day—unless it is a group blog or a news site. You are better off focusing on one excellent post a day, or week, rather than several mediocre ones. The real trick is to find your frequency sweet spot. Depending upon the topic and type of posts, it might be once a week. Or once a month.

 

• Mistake #3: Your post is too long.Become the master of the short, concise post. The sweet-spot is 200–400 words. If possible shoot for less than 500 words. However, that doesn’t mean if you have a compelling subject matter you can’t hit the 750-word mark, or even more.  The real key is to make your posts “scannable”.  In other words, keep your paragraphs very short.  Reduce the length of your sentences and eliminate compound sentences.  It’s almost bullet points without the bullets. These make for the most widely read blogs.

 

• Mistake #4: You don’t invite engagement. Engagement is the number one goal.  Engagement refers to a combination of page views, reader comments, and social media mentions. Your posts that generate the most engagement tend to be controversial, have transparency, and are open-ended. Expert bloggers end every post with a question.

 

• Mistake #5: You don’t participate in the conversation.When bloggers don’t participate in the conversation by commenting on their posts and responding to their readers, you are missing out on the best part. Engage with your readers. Don’t make the mistake of posting and running out and not checking for comments. People want to have a conversation.

 

• Mistake #6: You don’t make your content accessible or have headlines that make people want to read it. It’s funny; most people think there are fewer people reading today. The truth is, there are more, but they do more skimming than reading.  If you use a great headline and break up your post into easy-to-skim, bite-sized chunks, they are far more likely to read it – and remember it.  So draw them in with the headline and keep the paragraphs short.

 

• Mistake #8: Your post is about YOU.Unless you are a mega-celebrity, readers don’t typically care about you. They all want to know what’s in it for THEM. Your personal stories can be a doorway to that, but in the end, the best posts are about your readers’ needs, fears, problems or concerns. Always ask yourself, “What’s the take-away for my reader?” Just remember your reader’s favorite radio station is WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?