A Creative Way to Improve Digital Marketing

Many businesses are constantly seeking creative ways to improve their website and digital marketing presence in order to secure better search engine rankings. One approach businesses have used is to own multiple domain names for their website. Owning multiple domain names can provide a benefit for SEO, presenting both advantages and drawbacks that must be considered. 

Potential Benefits of Multiple Domain Names

Purchasing and renewing multiple domain names for your website does have some advantages. With the price of domain names being fairly low, $25/year through Full Scope Creative, it can be a very affordable additional marketing and brand security step to take. The benefits of registering more than one domain name include:

Brand Protection

One of the main reasons some businesses register additional domain names each year is to protect their business name and brand. By owning domains that are variations of your main domain (such as different extensions such as .com, .net, and .org), you can ensure and protect your brand from competitors or cybersquatters. Competitors to a small business may secure domain names that are close to a used domain name with the hopes of pulling traffic to their website. Cybersquatters might look to register those variations with the attempt of confusing consumers or bargaining with the main site owner.

For example, the primary or main domain name for Full Scope Creative is fullscopecreative.com. Not wanting competitors or cybersquatters to get too close to our name and grand, we also have registered fullscopecreative.biz, fullscopecreative.net, fullscopecreative.org, and others. This strategy ensures that users who mistakenly type in the wrong extension (.net instead of .com, for example) still end up on our website, maintaining brand consistency and user experience. This approach also helps keep competitors from registering domain names that are close to our primary domain name and redirecting traffic intended for our site.

Keyword-Specific Domains

Another benefit of using multiple domains for a website, is the ability to include the keywords of the business within the domain name. Keyword-rich domains can slightly help with SEO if used correctly. For instance, for our primary domain, fullscopecreative.com, adding domain names such greenbaywebsites.com or seogreenbay.com, these keyword-focused domains can enhance our online visibility.

Before spending money on new domain names, you should know that simply owning these domain names does not automatically boost your SEO. The use of keyword-specific domains requires a well-thought-out strategy, including proper redirects and content management. Simply having the domain name does little, if anything, for overall search ranking. Having the additional domain names does provide the option though for extra SEO activities. 

Geographic Targeting

If your business targets different geographic locations, having domain names specific to those areas can be advantagous. For example, if Full Scope Creative were to focus on sales in the UK or Australia, using fullscopecreative.co.uk and fullscopecreative.com.au can help with local SEO in those specific regions. With these domain names, the content on the sites can then bue customized to cater to local audiences, and then helping to improve the relevance and rankings in regional search results.

Potential Drawbacks of Multiple Domain Names

The advantages of having additional domain names doesn’t come without possible drawbacks. Even though each domain name doesn’t cost much each year, the financial setback can be costly to a business.

Duplicate Content

One of the biggest risks that come with using multiple domains is the issue of duplicate content. If the same content (wording and images and design) is used on multiple domains, the top search engines will likely struggle to determine which domain name to index. This confusion can lead to duplicate content penalties, which can have a significantly negative impact on a websites  SEO rankings.

To reduce this risk, it is important to point the additional domain names (.net, .biz, .org, for example) to the main domain name and website. As mentioned earlier, we own many different domain names, such as fullscopecreative.net and greenbaywebsites.com, but rather than having separate websites for each domain name, each points back to fullscopecreative.com.

Diluted Backlinks

Backlinks are a critical (and maybe most important) component of SEO. Backlinks provide a signal to search engines on the credibility and authority of a website. Having multiple domains can spread the given backlinks thin. Having that happen can thus dilute the impact of the possibly expensive and exhausting link-building efforts. Instead, all backlinks and effort should be focused on one singular primary domain. 

To address this issue, focus on building backlinks to your primary domain and use 301 redirects from your secondary domains to ensure that any link equity directed at those domains is passed on to your main website.

Management Complexity

If the benefits and drawbacks are measured and having multiple domain names is the approach your business is taking, there are some management complexities to consider. Managing additional domains requires additional effort and resources. Along with the extra cost for each domain registration and renewal, there are potential technical issues and more time spent on maintenance and updates. For small businesses with limited resources, this added complexity can turn into a burden.

To help with this, be sure to register all domain names through one registra. Ideally, set all domain names to auto-renew and include privacy protection on each. It can be helpful as well to line up the renewal dates for each to occur at the same time. 

Implement carefully to avoid negative impact

While there are many situations where multiple domain names can provide SEO benefits, this strategy must be implemented carefully to avoid potential negative impacts. The key is to focus on consolidating your SEO efforts around a primary domain while using additional domains strategically to support your overall branding and marketing goals. By following best practices, you can maximize the benefits of multiple domain names and improve your overall SEO performance. However, it is essential to evaluate whether the added complexity and costs of managing multiple domains align with your business objectives and resources.support, press ⌘+Option+Z To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press ⌘slash