When many business owners think of setting up a new website, they only consider purchasing one domain. In some cases, this is fine and suits its purpose. For instance, if you’re a sole proprietor—like a freelance writer or self-employed roofer—who offers only one basic product or service, then one domain is often enough.
But in other cases, it may be more beneficial to have multiple domains.In fact, here are five solid reasons why two or more domains may be more advantageous for your business, helping you grow it to higher levels.
5 Solid Reasons Why You Should Buy Multiple Domain Names for your Business
To Capture Customers Who Misspell Your Name
If you have a business name that is often misspelled, purchasing the domain name with the incorrect spelling can help you connect with your prospective customers who make that mistake when searching for you.For example, if your business name is “Phacts” yet someone spells it phonetically as “Facts,” then you could purchase both phacts.com and facts.com so your target audience can find you either way.
You don’t even have to create a whole new website for the misspelled site either. Instead, simply link it to the domain with the correct spelling so that it automatically directs them there.
To Improve Your Rank in Other Geographic Locations
If you do business in multiple countries, using a separate domain name for each location can help you rank higher in that particular region. For instance, if you sell widgets in both Australia and the U.K., you might want both a widget.com/au and a widget.com/uk site. Why is this important?
For starters, higher search result ranking translates into more clicks on your website, solely because more people now realize you exist. And for those individuals who already knew about your business but aren’t already loyal customers, showing up higher in the search result list helps serve as a reminder that you’re there and ready for their business.
To Better Separate Different Brands or Product Lines
Companies who have multiple product lines or brands often give each their own domain name. Unilever is one, with individual sites for many of its brands, some of which include Dove, Knorr, and Lipton. This helps them keep each brand separate and on its own so it can be tailored to its own target audience.
Using different domains for different brands or product lines also makes it easier for consumers. Essentially, it allows them to go straight to the site that interests them most without having to search for a particular brand on the company’s main website, only to be redirected to a new page anyway.
To Keep Track of the Analytics Easier
Some businesses use different domain names to better track website traffic data for each site to see which one is drawing in the highest number of visitors. This is helpful if you’re doing A/B testing to benchmark different sites to see which has the most appeal, but it’s also advantageous if you’re offering different sales or marketing tactics and want to identify which one is bringing more visitors to your site.
Though some sites come with a built-in ability to check analytics regarding traffic and visitor demographics, another option is to use Google Analytics. To use it, all you have to do is sign up, add the tracking code to your website, and it will provide data such as which geographic locations your web visitors are from, what time of day your site sees the most traffic, and whether its visitors arrived directly or through a link.
To Better Target Different Audiences
Businesses that have multiple target audiences—like those that offer products for millennials and other products for baby boomers, or those that provide services for both low-income and high-income clients—can benefit from creating a separate domain for each one. This enables them to target the content on each site specifically to the audience they’re trying to capture without negatively impacting the other audiences.
A prime example of this would be a medical device company that delivers products and services to physicians as well as directly to patients. The information that each category of individuals would seek about those products and services would likely be different as doctors might be more interested in testing or how a product works whereas patients would want to know what type of benefits it provides. Plus, the medical device company would probably use different wording and terminology when creating content directed toward medical professionals compared to content designed to educate consumers, which they could easily do if each was on its own domain.
Tips for Buying Multiple Domains
If you’re convinced that one or more of these benefits applies to your company, then it may be time to expand your online presence by purchasing more domains. However, before just going out there and buying multiple domain names, there are a few things you can do to make the process easier.
For example, make a comprehensive list of all of the domain names you want and check to make sure they’re available for purchase. You can do this easily through most any online domain availability checker. Also, if possible,buy your domain names all at the same time. This gives you a cost savings as many domain registrars offer price discounts when you purchase in bulk.
LCN.com offers a discount for buying domains in bulk
Sometimes one domain name is enough. Other times, you can get further ahead if you have multiple domains. These are five times when the latter may make more sense.