Business Website Advice

Using more than one domain name? Do it wrong and get penalized. Do it right and be rewarded.  Tread carefully.

Two people in one week asked me about using more than one domain name for their website.   Shows clients are concerned about ranking (good news) and know it can be helpful to buy more than one domain BUT they don’t realize there are big penalties to using second domain names (or more) in the wrong way. 
 

Potential penalties for using more than 1 URL for same site if done wrong.

1. Your website can get banned by Search Engines. Yes bad juju.
2. The designer gets bad cred from having a site banned.
3. Squandered link juice. Read below. 

The penalty is for doing it in the wrong way…looking like duplicate sites using different domains, in hopes to get high ranking for one or more.  A great goal, but wrong method.

Short Answer on Right Way

1. Only use one domain name as the default URL.
2. Redirect all others with a permanent 301 redirect, not a 302 temporary to the default URL (usually with help of your designer via where ever you bought your domain name).
3. Do not squander the ‘link juice’ (ranking power) of an inbound link (eg from directory listings) across more than one URL.

You want all your inbound links coming into the same URL.  1 URL with 10 inbound links from 10 directions indicates a more powerful site than 10 URLs with 1 inbound link each.

Risk Management - the best right thinking for owning multiple domains.  Each is used as a 301 redirect.

1. You don’t want a new competitor to buy a domain name close to yours which your customers accidentally use .You want ‘elbow room’ around your domain especially if your domain is commonly misspelled.
2. You  may want both .com and .co.nz    but defaulting to one. You might print the local .co.nz one on your business cards to keep your local fans from thinking you are too big (too international and thus too expensive).
3. You don’t want to become a very popular online site drawing ‘squatters’  in too close to your domain name in hopes of leaching some customers unknowingly. Yes this has happened but don’t get paranoid.

For more detail you can read an SEO article that addresses penalties around multiples used incorrectly but uses a poor example.

More sophisticated Internet Marketing
Multiple domains is sometimes used in more complicated target marketing campaigns.  I have yet to come across a micro business owners who is that energetic in their marketing. 

A great compromise is using a separate file name in targeted ads. The file name is the part after the slash in the domain.  Keep it simple since people have to type it it.  You are not relyingon search engines here. You are testing the effectiveness of print ads. 

You can track the ad’s effectiveness by checking the Entry Page category on your hosting Activity Report for the month or 6 weeks following the ad.  For example use  www.mycompany.co.nz /winter-special     Works a charm and doesn’t tread too closely on incorrectly used multiple domains.

I hope that helped those wondering why some owners buy more than one domain and the pros and cons.

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