#BusinessEnhancementTips
03 – Big & Successful Businesses will block Multiple Domain Name Extensions! Why?
Compiled from various sources on the web
By now, everybody knows and agrees that choosing a domain is important. In fact, it’s one of the most important early decisions anybody will make for their business. Choosing the right domain can impact the visibility, the memorability and even the reputation of the business. It’s going to influence the marketing and advertising strategies for years to come. And for the right domain, you might need to shell out tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now, why would anybody want to complicate things by incorporating multiple domains into their business strategy?
Most business owners don’t really comprehend the importance of registering multiple domain name extensions. However, if you aim to create a strong brand identity for your business website, investing in multiple domain extensions is crucial. In this competitive business world, missing out on a small thing might just give your competitor the opportunity to catch up and surpass you. Thus it is important for businesses to have multiple domain extensions under their array because these domains can help them maintain their identity online while giving others fewer opportunities to register a similar domain and take advantage of their identity on the internet.
Quite often, people only remember the name of a company, but not its website. So, when they want to visit that particular business’ website, they may forget the domain extension. Therefore, it’s important to register multiple domain extensions for your primary domain name in order to secure your online identity, and prevent competitors from purchasing the other extensions of your domain.
Some common domain extensions other than .com are “.net”, “.org”, “.biz”, “.info”, or country-specific domain extensions such as “.in, .us, .nz”, etc.
When you register a country code top-level domain name, such as .US, .CA, or .CO.UK, you can design your website content in such a way that it specifically targets different groups of people based on their location.
Having multiple domain extensions for your website is definitely an advantage, and it doesn’t take much added effort either. Instead of creating a different website for each of your domain extensions, you can simply forward each of your domain extensions to your primary domain extension. So, for example, if a user visits www.yourbusiness.ca, and you have enabled domain forwarding for your .CA domain to your .COM domain, they will be redirected to www.yourbusiness.com.
WHY REGISTERING MULTIPLE DOMAIN EXTENSIONS IS SO IMPORTANT?
Usually, people remember only the company’s name and not the exact website address. In that case, they’ll simply run a search with your business name to locate your company’s website on the internet.
And most likely, they will click on the result that is listed on the top.
In case your competitor has optimized their website smartly, there are chances that their website will be on the top of the search engine list for your domain name. Even if a customer remembers your domain name, there are very few chances that they would remember the domain name extension.
Therefore, it is imperative that you secure your identity over the internet in such a way that no matter which domain extension people type while searching for your business website, it must lead them to your website. This will help you in keeping your online identity intact. Also, you’ll have an assurance that your prospect will land on your website and not on any other competitor’s website after searching for your business name online.
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD REGISTER MULTIPLE DOMAIN EXTENSIONS FOR YOUR BUSINESS WEBSITE
It is, of course, unrealistic to register all the domain name extensions, but you can think of registering a few closely related ones. Here are the most significant reasons why you should consider doing that:
- Prevent Similar Domain Registrations
Consider your business / website is doing really well, then there’s every possibility for your competitors considering to register domains similar to yours with other extensions that you haven’t registered. For e.g., if you’ve only registered the domain name – mybusinesswebsite.in, your competitors might just register mybusinesswebsite.com or mybusinesswebsite.biz (if these versions are available). Even though they might not use these domain names for hosting websites, this will stop you from registering them.
This can create a significant impact on your business. For instance, if a person assumes that your website ends with .com, but your domain name actually ends with .in, s/he will not be able to get to your website by typing mybusinesswebsite.com. Also, if you’re planning to expand your business internationally and you wish to register a new domain name for your business in, say, the UK, you won’t be able to register it if someone has already taken it. This way, you will lose out on opportunities to expand your business.
- Redirect the Other Domains
When you register multiple domain name extensions, it is not necessary for you to create a website for all of them. All you need to do is make sure that whenever somebody visits the other domains, they are redirected to your main website. In this way, even if someone accidentally types in the wrong domain extension, they’re redirected to your website. Thus, all your potential customers who were unable to get to your main website earlier will now be able to reach your website even if they type in the wrong domain name.
- Opportunities with Geolocation
The search engines typically use geolocation extensions for guiding people when they’re searching for products or services that are near to them. If someone in the United Kingdom tries to find a business in the UK, results will be displayed with websites that end with .uk or .co.uk.
If you wish to expand your business’ international reach, you will benefit by buying various domain name extensions as per geolocation for the countries that you want to target. Even if you just register these domain names with various geological extensions and don’t create websites now, you’ll be able to create new websites with those domain names later on when you wish to expand your business.
Apart from this, the other most significant advantage is that you’ll be able to create international websites in different languages. You can sell your product/service in various currencies and reach a bigger market for your products & services.
- Improve the Search Engine Rankings
As mentioned above, if your business is international and if you’re targeting multiple countries, buying various country-level TLDs such as .com, .au, .in is a good idea. This is because the domain names that have country-specific TLDs secure a better ranking in the SERP (search engine result pages) in the respective countries. This step will help you to give a boost to your organic search results & ranking.
Who wouldn’t love to be on the top of the rankings?
- Stop Others From Encashing On Your Domain Name
If your business website is doing really well, your competitors or other people might just try to take advantage of your efforts by registering your domain name similar to yours with different extensions. If this happens, your website’s traffic might go to their website, and your users may end up at the wrong domain name extension. So, it is better to register such similar domain names and not let anyone take advantage of your efforts.
Oh! Everybody loves to piggybank on other’s success. Would you like to give them a chance to do it?
For all your domain name registration requirements, please free to reach out to us on info@risingfortunes.in