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Is It Worth Investing In Multiple Domains?
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About the Author
Rebecca Appleton (173 Posts)
Rebecca is the managing director of search engine optimization agency Dakota Digital a full-service agency offering SEO, online PR, web copywriting, media relationship management, and social media strategy. Rebecca works directly with each client to increase online visibility, brand profile, and search engine rankings. She has headed a number of international campaigns for large brands.
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When I read the title of this article, my first thought was, ok, this is going to confirm that nagging feeling that I’m wasting money regstering domain names that I don’t use. Reading this article makes me feel much more comfortable with my decision. I certainly don’t fall in the category where I own hundreds but even with what I do have, the cost adds up. They are all pointed to active websites. So, at least they’re not parked and making monejy for the registrar.
We always recommend to our clients that they register as many domains as they need to in order to protect their intellectual property.
In practice this generally means registering their preferred prefiix based on their company name/brand/whatever) as country level domains in the territories they operate in (or are likely to operate in) and if possible the best available gTLD version of the web name.
In practice this means the will have the registrations of at least the .com.au and .com/.net secured. Total cost about $40 per annum or less if they can be bothered to do it themselves.
If they don;t they run the risk of what happened to one of our clients fairly large outfit. They wouldn’t register the .com version of their company name which was made up of two English names which were both first names and second names eg. like “James”. It so happened that the .com was grabbed by an err… adult film industry actor who published a site full of explicit action shots. Our client was amazed how many people forgot to type the .au when looking for the site and complained about what they were confronted with. Eventually they had to rename the company and completely rebrand. An expensive exercise.
Sorry Rebecca but I have to disagree with much of what you said in this article.
1. Owning more domains will NOT lead to more traffic. The examples you give in the 2nd paragraph are foolish. Nobody searches for websites by typing keywords into the address bar. There’s this tiny thing today called Search Engines, notably Google.
2. There’s nothing strategic about registering a .net or .biz if you’re a .com site. If you’re not a .com site it would be smart to register a .com domain and redirect it to your .biz or.net site.
3. Registering a whole domain for complaints and bad reviews is outrageous. If you’re getting that much bad feedback you wouldn’t be in business in the first place.
4. If you see people are making common mistakes with spelling your website name, this would make sense. But most of the time if someone is having trouble getting to your website they will simply search google and find the correct site address.
Sorry for all the bashing but understand that I feel different about the topic.
“The examples you give in the 2nd paragraph are foolish. Nobody searches for websites by typing keywords into the address bar.”
You’d be amazed how often that happens.
Actually, Shawn, as Chris points out, people do type in keywords in the address bar. I know I do sometimes when it’s the fastest way to enter the search query because of where my cursor has wound up.
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