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.