Securing Multiple Domains
August 28, 2008 – 10:51 pm
Domain names are a hot commodity these days. For some, selecting a domain name is a thorough process that takes a bit of research and time to complete. While it’s extremely important to select one that fits your business best, you can take things a step further by securing variations of your primary domain in advance. Many individuals do this to secure company names and trademarks.
Registering multiple domains is another great way to enhance your presence online. Each of these domains act as individual websites and can be used to generate high-volumes of traffic. They give you the advantage of cross-branding your products and exploring many different avenues. Purchasing multiple domains is also a sound strategy to keep the competition from nabbing up your ideas.
Different people have their own reasons for hosting multiple domains. Each are unique and carry there own set of benefits. Here are a few examples:
Type-in Traffic
Some website owners purchase multiple domain names for the sole purpose of generating type-in traffic. This refers to a web surfer who uses the address bar of their browser and types in keyword-based URLs instead of conducting a search in a search engine. Securing domains that are likely to generate a high-volume of type-in traffic is a good way to increase the number of visitors coming to your site. For instance, if you are hosting cosmetic products, the primary domain for our site may be something like mymakeup.com. In order to capture potential type-in traffic, you may want to secure names like teenmakeup.com, makeupsource.com, makeupoutlet.com and so forth.
Misspellings
Others will secure multiple domain names to prevent the potential loss of visitors that misspell their URL. Misspelling is a common part of human error that could keep visitors away from your site. To prevent this from occurring, you might want to secure what may be the most common misspellings of your domain. If your primary domain is demolitiondogs.com, it may easily be misspelled as demoilition.dogs.com, demolitiondog.com or demelotion.com.
Redirects
When deciding to purchase multiple domains, it’s crucial that each one is set up properly. Improper structure is something that could lead to content duplication penalties with a search engine and hinder the ability to rank well.  If you plan to use multiple domains to practice search engine optimization, setting up a 301 permanent redirect is the best way to go. This instructs a search engine that the domain it is attempting to access has been permanently moved to a different location, in this case, your primary domain. The good thing about this is that visitors are automatically transferred to your main site when typing in the redirecting URL.
In order to properly configure a redirect, it is best to confer with your current provider. Different web servers generally require different forms of implementation.
It’s important to use every available resource in your marketing venture. Even if you only receive one new visitor from a type-in per month, that’s positive traffic that could lead to a sale. If any of the above mentioned schemes may possibly generate more traffic for you, give them a shot. Multiple domains translates to multiple benefits for your business.
