There are a lot of considerations when it comes to purchasing a domain — including whether a business needs more than one. Purchasing additional domains is generally a smart business decision for branding, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and legal purposes. Regardless, there are certain considerations before shopping for domains.
First is to evaluate how your business can benefit from having multiple domains and where you can search domain names. The type to consider purchasing and strategic ways to leverage multiple domains and even pitfalls should also factor your decision.
Reasons businesses purchase multiple domains
One domain may be sufficient, but not all the time. Not owning multiple domains can lose business traffic, and customers leave as your brand becomes vulnerable to the competition.
User Error
A big factor to consider purchasing multiple domains is protection against user error. It’s typical for people to misunderstand your domain name after knowing you for the first time, so you need to prioritize owning all common misspellings of your company’s name.
Poaching
Another crucial reason to acquire other domains is to keep your competition from poaching your business. Brand poaching is rampant for brands and companies of any size. A competitor with a similar name can create confusion, so having similar or related domain names will safeguard your brand.
Trademark Protection
A trademark in itself can’t instantly give you the domain name or prevent competitors from buying domain names with your trademark. Buying more than one domain will secure any trademarks you own.
There are legal options that can be used to protect your business domain, including arbitration via World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or filing civil proceedings. Discuss your options with a legal professional before taking any action.
Types of Additional Domains to Purchase
Alternative Spellings
Alternative spellings will protect against user error and brand confusion. If you have a sufficient budget or a bigger company, try capturing more alternate spellings. For example, if your primary domain is alexsteaks.com, you should consider purchasing alecsteaks.com and other common variations.
Multiple Top-Level Domains (TLDs)
It would be best if you also considered other common domain extensions. Presently, there are over 1,000 extensions available, and while you don’t need to own all, at least secure the most common ones. If your main website is a .com, search domain names for .co, .net, .org and even .guru.
For some businesses, newer alternative TLDs will be an effective way to acquire a memorable domain that closely fits your company name.
For example, instead of alexlaundry.com, you could purchase alexlaundry.care. And if your business has offices in other countries, consider multiple geographic extensions from over 100 options, such as us, .uk, or .au.
Before Purchasing Multiple Domains
Before you search domain names, consider their purpose to your business. From branding, marketing to SEO and even legal considerations, there are also multiple reasons to own several domains. The key is considering a clear plan for each one. Developing a good strategy will let you position your business to get maximum advantage from multiple domains.
