Registrars often advise you to register multiple domain names; let’s not be coy, they are running a business. But, before you dismiss out of hand, consider that they are not going to want to ruin a good reputation by persuading customers to spend money without proven good reason.
EuroDNS is a market leading domain name registrar specialized in international domain extensions. We support our customers with a growing range of services and advice to assist with registering domain names; when EuroDNS recommend buying multiple versions of domain names, it’s with good reason.
Publicity is good, invisibility is bad
“Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!” P.T. Barnum
For any online business to succeed visibility is key so it is vital to achieve as much publicity as possible; your website should be submitted to all possible search engines and directories. Search engines, generally, rank each business according to the percentage of times keywords appear, so if your website contains said keywords, it will rank higher when searches are made.
But, please do not be tempted to submit your website more than once; it will not increase your appearance in the results; generally search engines store a website’s page content within one domain name. Search engines will judge this to be black hat SEO (see below) and penalize accordingly.
Open more doors and you’ll get more visitors
You run a gardening business with a .COM site called thebestgardeners.com, to increase the number of times your site features in the search engine’s results, consider registering other related domain names, such as thebestroses.com, killallweeds.com, perfecttulips.com. Your one website is now listed with four domain names, increasing the number of doors through which visitors may enter.
If your business sells trademarked products along with services, register the products’ domain names and redirect to your main website; this is a must to protect your brand names and deter competitors from stealing your customers.
Register your domain name with multiple extensions
If your website has a .COM extension it would be advisable, if applicable, to register .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, .INFO, this will prevent competitors taking advantage of your brand name and redirecting your traffic to their site.
This is also the time to register the .XXX variant of your domain name to prevent misuse by another registrant. Obviously, if your business is porn, you probably have it registered already, but for others, having their brand name attached to a .XXX extension could cause irreparable damage to their reputation resulting in a loss of business; it brings a whole new meaning to thebestgardeners.xxx.
Making your senior managers work
If your CEO is well known within your specific industry, his reputation respected and his opinion listened too, use him as a marketing tool. Create a simple website for each manager; register their name as the domain name, i.e. johnsmith.com, then link to your main site. The site can be submitted to search engines on its own merit and will be ranked accordingly; again, increasing traffic to your business website.
Face it, not everyone can spell
It should be remembered that nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes; to err is human, etc., etc. With this in mind it makes sense that when registering your domain name you also register common misspellings or typos of your name, then redirect to your main site. Do you really want to lose customers just because they can’t spell, or are not proficient typists; thebestgardners.com is an easy mistake to make. Don’t let your business pay the price.
Whilst taking this into account it is also worth considering singular or plural versions of your company/brand names.
Targeting a specific country
If your business is going to expand and promote in other countries it is always better to have the relevant ccTLD; users feel more comfortable engaging with a website local to their country. Registering a ccTLD demonstrates loyalty to the specific country, and the more local links you have, the better.
It is important when targeting a particular country, your content is specific and the language is appropriate. Accurate translation is essential, as is ensuring all titles, meta tags and descriptions, and keywords are country specific. This will also mean there is no danger of posting duplicated content and incurring the wrath of the search engines. For more information on the benefits of ccTLDs, please visit the EuroDNS news section.
Good guys wear white hats
White hat SEO follows the rules, producing good results that are sustainable, without deception. While more effort is required, the wearer of the white hat always wins, take a look at the Lone Ranger if you don’t believe me.
Black hat SEO improves search engine ranking by nefarious means. Whilst an initial improvement may be apparent, the search engine will quickly recognize the crime and temporarily or permanently ban the site from the index.
As we recommended, it is advisable to purchase variants of your domain name as protection for your brand; but we don’t advise you, however, to register multiple domains and have them displaying the same content. Search engines are not that stupid; they will detect, detest, and destroy. It may be an innocent action but search engines will not recognize your good intentions, they will see your black hat and duplicated content, then shoot to kill.
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state, “Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”
URL redirection or forwarding, will allow your main website to be visible under the various URL addresses. Employing a permanent 301 redirect means that visitors and search engine spiders will not see any content under the alternative domain names registered, only the main site URL. Effectively you will be catching visitors from various domain names but, without the danger of being penalized by Google.
EuroDNS, protect and serve
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Registering multiple domain names will drive traffic to your website by giving your customers more ways to find you; it will also protect your brand and online identity in the highly competitive world of the Internet.
EuroDNS offer numerous services to aid with domain name registration, including:
Free domain forwarding – point all your domain names to one location, without ‘cloak and dagger’
.
Multiple profile management – one company with worldwide branches; managing different domains easily by setting up an unlimited amount of profiles.
Expert knowledge – the team can suggest additional domain names and extensions it would be advisable to register, in order to protect your business/brand.
Multilingual email/phone support – receive a personalized service and a tailored solution.
For more detailed information, please visit the EuroDNS website or speak directly with one of our domain experts at sales@eurodns.com.
About EuroDNS
EuroDNS is a domain name registrar specialized in international domain extensions. Based in Luxembourg with branch offices in Europe, the USA and Asia with AsiaDNS, EuroDNS serves a large variety of clients ranging from SMEs to some of the world’s largest Domain Investors and offers dedicated naming solutions to Trademark holders. By strongly participating in leading industry forums including ICANN and the International Trademark Association, EuroDNS seeks to promote e-Commerce and wider Internet adoption.
EuroDNS is a market leading domain name registrar specialized in international domain extensions. We support our customers with a growing range of services and advice to assist with registering domain names; when EuroDNS recommend buying multiple versions of domain names, it’s with good reason.
Publicity is good, invisibility is bad
“Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!” P.T. Barnum
For any online business to succeed visibility is key so it is vital to achieve as much publicity as possible; your website should be submitted to all possible search engines and directories. Search engines, generally, rank each business according to the percentage of times keywords appear, so if your website contains said keywords, it will rank higher when searches are made.
But, please do not be tempted to submit your website more than once; it will not increase your appearance in the results; generally search engines store a website’s page content within one domain name. Search engines will judge this to be black hat SEO (see below) and penalize accordingly.
Open more doors and you’ll get more visitors
You run a gardening business with a .COM site called thebestgardeners.com, to increase the number of times your site features in the search engine’s results, consider registering other related domain names, such as thebestroses.com, killallweeds.com, perfecttulips.com. Your one website is now listed with four domain names, increasing the number of doors through which visitors may enter.
If your business sells trademarked products along with services, register the products’ domain names and redirect to your main website; this is a must to protect your brand names and deter competitors from stealing your customers.
Register your domain name with multiple extensions
If your website has a .COM extension it would be advisable, if applicable, to register .NET, .ORG, .BIZ, .INFO, this will prevent competitors taking advantage of your brand name and redirecting your traffic to their site.
This is also the time to register the .XXX variant of your domain name to prevent misuse by another registrant. Obviously, if your business is porn, you probably have it registered already, but for others, having their brand name attached to a .XXX extension could cause irreparable damage to their reputation resulting in a loss of business; it brings a whole new meaning to thebestgardeners.xxx.
Making your senior managers work
If your CEO is well known within your specific industry, his reputation respected and his opinion listened too, use him as a marketing tool. Create a simple website for each manager; register their name as the domain name, i.e. johnsmith.com, then link to your main site. The site can be submitted to search engines on its own merit and will be ranked accordingly; again, increasing traffic to your business website.
Face it, not everyone can spell
It should be remembered that nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes; to err is human, etc., etc. With this in mind it makes sense that when registering your domain name you also register common misspellings or typos of your name, then redirect to your main site. Do you really want to lose customers just because they can’t spell, or are not proficient typists; thebestgardners.com is an easy mistake to make. Don’t let your business pay the price.
Whilst taking this into account it is also worth considering singular or plural versions of your company/brand names.
Targeting a specific country
If your business is going to expand and promote in other countries it is always better to have the relevant ccTLD; users feel more comfortable engaging with a website local to their country. Registering a ccTLD demonstrates loyalty to the specific country, and the more local links you have, the better.
It is important when targeting a particular country, your content is specific and the language is appropriate. Accurate translation is essential, as is ensuring all titles, meta tags and descriptions, and keywords are country specific. This will also mean there is no danger of posting duplicated content and incurring the wrath of the search engines. For more information on the benefits of ccTLDs, please visit the EuroDNS news section.
Good guys wear white hats
White hat SEO follows the rules, producing good results that are sustainable, without deception. While more effort is required, the wearer of the white hat always wins, take a look at the Lone Ranger if you don’t believe me.
Black hat SEO improves search engine ranking by nefarious means. Whilst an initial improvement may be apparent, the search engine will quickly recognize the crime and temporarily or permanently ban the site from the index.
As we recommended, it is advisable to purchase variants of your domain name as protection for your brand; but we don’t advise you, however, to register multiple domains and have them displaying the same content. Search engines are not that stupid; they will detect, detest, and destroy. It may be an innocent action but search engines will not recognize your good intentions, they will see your black hat and duplicated content, then shoot to kill.
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state, “Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”
URL redirection or forwarding, will allow your main website to be visible under the various URL addresses. Employing a permanent 301 redirect means that visitors and search engine spiders will not see any content under the alternative domain names registered, only the main site URL. Effectively you will be catching visitors from various domain names but, without the danger of being penalized by Google.
EuroDNS, protect and serve
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Registering multiple domain names will drive traffic to your website by giving your customers more ways to find you; it will also protect your brand and online identity in the highly competitive world of the Internet.
EuroDNS offer numerous services to aid with domain name registration, including:
Free domain forwarding – point all your domain names to one location, without ‘cloak and dagger’
.
Multiple profile management – one company with worldwide branches; managing different domains easily by setting up an unlimited amount of profiles.
Expert knowledge – the team can suggest additional domain names and extensions it would be advisable to register, in order to protect your business/brand.
Multilingual email/phone support – receive a personalized service and a tailored solution.
For more detailed information, please visit the EuroDNS website or speak directly with one of our domain experts at sales@eurodns.com.
About EuroDNS
EuroDNS is a domain name registrar specialized in international domain extensions. Based in Luxembourg with branch offices in Europe, the USA and Asia with AsiaDNS, EuroDNS serves a large variety of clients ranging from SMEs to some of the world’s largest Domain Investors and offers dedicated naming solutions to Trademark holders. By strongly participating in leading industry forums including ICANN and the International Trademark Association, EuroDNS seeks to promote e-Commerce and wider Internet adoption.