By Leah Harold, Little Biz Online, affordable web solutions for small businesses
Handbags. Some women are happy with one good quality, dependable one. Others have a few for different occasions, while some have one for every outfit. Some women are handbag collectors. Then you get the ones who see handbags as an investment – something worthy of selling one day for thousands of dollars. Why? Ummm… pass…!
Domain names. Some businesses are more than happy with one, a solid component of their brand. Others have a few, perhaps for different markets around the world. Other people seem to collect and hoard them. Why? A few reasons are listed below. The green I totally agree with, the orange depends on your situation, the red – ummm… pass…!
Why do people own more than one domain name?
Multiple suffixes
Totally understandable – if you have a business that has (or has the potential to have) an international audience as well as a local one, grab the .co.nz, .com – or even .co.uk or .com.au if you have your eye on other markets in the future. This protects your brand in these countries and future-proofs your plans.
Mis-spellings
If you have a domain name that could easily be mis-spelled, then securing these alternative domain names and redirecting them to your correct domain name makes good sense (especially if you are doing radio advertising).
Business re-branding or amalgamations
If your business has changed name, or businesses have been amalgamated – ensuring that you keep the old domain names and redirect them to your new domain (at least for the first year or two) will ensure that latent customers can easily find you. It also ensures that any directory listings or links on other websites continue to direct potential clients to you.
TIP: Monitor your Google Analytics to see where your referral traffic acquisition is coming from and contact site owners to have your links updated if possible.
Promotional campaigns
If you have a key product or promotion, you may like to get an easy to remember, catchy domain name that directs to a specific website section or leadpage. This can be great for single-minded, easy to remember messages in advertising, but it could also dilute your branding if you are using this instead of your actual domain name in marketing materials.
Competitive advantage
In a competitive environment, if you spot your key competitors domain name available, you may wish to purchase it – just so they can’t. Not exactly playing nicely, but if you can redirect any traffic going to this domain name and have them arrive at your website instead, it might win you a few customers.
Competitive defence
On the flip-side, you can collect every suffix going in paranoia of having competitors buy them instead of you. This is where is can get expensive, as more and more suffixes are released, your annual bill could get out of control. Think about the main ones and don’t get too hung up on having every single one.
There are so many – .com, .net, .co.nz, .nz, .net.nz, .kiwi, .kiwi.nz, .company… where do you draw the line?
The “what if I need it” collection
Some people are just hoarders when it comes to domain names. Anything closely related to their business, or some future business plan. If you are happy paying the annual fees for these, go ahead, but do you really need them?
Speculative investments
Some people invest in property or shares, others in art – some invest in domain names that they hope someone else will want one day. Yes, some of them do sell for big $$$ if you get it right.
Keyword domains for increased SEO
Some people collect a great list of domain names with keywords for their industry and redirect them to their website in the hope of increased Google ranking for those keywords.
While it is true that domains with keywords in them can help with SEO – this is only so for your primary domain name. Having a bunch of other domain names all auto-forwarding to your website isn’t going to achieve you anything. These domain names are not associated with any content, and therefore have no substance for a Google search.
So what kind of domain owner are you? Is your annual investment giving you the ROI it should, or could you shed a few?
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