I frequently receive questions regarding domain names and how many you should have and what you should do with them.

Rule #1 - Users Come First

Let's start with the basics. First and foremost, you should be thinking of what will provide the absolute best user experience. Having said that, your domain name should reflect your company name. All other things equal, it's what sets you apart from your competition. It should also be easy to remember and easy to spell.

Primary, Secondary, Virtual, Redirects?????

Let's start with a little plain English talk. I make references to your "primary" domain name and "virtuals" and temporary or permanent redirects.

Your primary domain name is what I use to refer to what you would put on your business card. Mine is www.dewebworks.com. We'll talk later about choosing the right one.

Virtual domain names are all of the other domain names that you own that point at your website in one form or another. These can get you in trouble, and we'll talk more about them later as well.

A temporary redirect is a signal that is sent out telling users (and search engines) "the address you have typed in is valid, but is not here. It's over there. It might be back, but we don't know right now."

A permanent redirect tells users (and search engines) "the address you have typed in has permanently moved to another location. You should forget this link you typed in or followed ever existed and only look at the new one from now on."  This is used primarily when you are CHANGING domain names.

Parking a domain name means that you purchase it, but it does not go to your website. For those of you who feel that you need every domain that your competitor might see as useful - this is what you want to do with the extra names. If The Smith Boys are your competitors, you don't want to have www.the-smith-boys.com pointing at your website.

Choosing a GREAT Primary Domain Name

You get one chance to have a primary domain name. You'll learn further down why it's a bad strategy to have multiple domain names attached to a single website. A great domain name is one that people will remember and tell their friends. Start with your company name and try to come as close to that as possible. Many names are already taken, so you might have to get creative.

General rules about the name:

• No hyphens (-) people will always forget the hyphen and they'll be on someone else's site.
• Get the "dot com". If your .com is not available, and you think you'll grab the .net or .org instead, your visitors will still type in the .com. The different domain types were made for a reason:
  • .com - commercial
  • .net - network use
  • .org - organizations (non profits, etc)
• Don't make it too long. They use to have a 26 character limit. They increased it. Really? Really?? If you can't say it in 5-15 characters, keep searching because your visitors are lazy and don't want to type that much.

Many people feel that having keyword phrases as part of their domain name will gain them higher rankings with the search engine gods. For the most part - myth. If all it took to get the #1 spot is a domain name that was chocked full of keyword phrases, we'd be known as www.bestwebdesigncompanyintexas.com or maybe www.texassearchenginemarketingfirm.com. Here's MY opinion on keywords in the domain name. If you know how to do keyword research (using the tools, etc) or you do PPC advertising, you know that trends change. Today, the best keyword phrase for me might be "professional web design". Next month it might be "best website designers". If I place my stock in the keyword phrase and choose a domain name accordingly, I've put all my eggs in one basket and I'm chasing my customers instead of them chasing me. I'll have to admit I'm lazy and I'd rather them chase me. Without going into too much detail about how search engines work and the principles of SEO, just know that choosing a keyword phrase for a domain name is not always a good decision. When you see highly ranked sites and their domain name is a keyword phrase - you can bet it's not the domain name that won them that spot. It was genuine hard work, mixed in with a little bit of luck.

Keep it simple!

Multiple Domain Names - One Web Site

So, you have your website active and a company has told you that having 15 more domain names will help your ranking. Sad day . So, what do you do with the extra domains? Depends. If you have a domain that is easy to misspell, it's generally a good idea to go ahead and buy up the common misspellings as well. If you have a domain that might get confused, like www.mysitetexas.com, go ahead and buy www.mysitetx.com to go with it.

Bottom line, make your primary domain name do all of the work. Take every other domain that you have and either park them (meaning just register it and DON'T let it point to your website) or setup a permanent redirect for them. This means that when someone types in www.mysitetx.com it should immediately show www.mysitetexas.com in the address bar.

Why is it a bad idea to have a dozen domain names all going to the same website? Search engines want to deliver the BEST possible experience to the user. Search engines have a huge database of websites called an index. They routinely scrub this index and flush out duplicate content (along with other things). If you do a search for widgets, and the first 5 listings are all pointing to the same widget site, you'd get frustrated and search for something else. You've also just had your first negative experience with that company. Do you really want for your customers to feel like you duped them into visiting your site? I thought not... see rule #1 from above. Search engines frown deeply upon this. When they determine that you have multiple domains (single website) for the purpose of search optimization, you'll get kicked. You'll beg forgiveness, they'll let you back. You're not the brightest bulb in the box, so you do it again. Now you get banned. Great! Now you can stop worrying about which domain works the best, because they won't allow any of them anymore.

Multiple Domain Names - Multiple Web Sites

When you have more than one domain name, you should have a good reason for it. Our company has multiple websites and multiple domain names. Our main website, www.dewebworks.com, has 2 domain names, www.pageconcepts.com and www.dewebworks.com. We carry both because we recently bought the company and changed the name. I still want people who have been using the pageconcepts.com domain name for years to continue to find our website.

If you are trying to get better placement in search with multiple domains, then have multiple web sites to go with them and follow the rules from above. It's my opinion that your time could be better spent optimizing one site and filling it with rich content then trying to keep up with 6 sites, but that's just me. If you have 6 domains and they're all great names, at least make a page for each one (this usually incurs more hosting fees because each one is usually considered a separate account). Companies like ours offers a hosting discount for these "satellite sites" if you have your primary site with us since they are typically smaller and don't need email hosting to go with them.