The Benefits of Purchasing Multiple Domain Names as a Small Business

Building an online presence starts with a great domain name that complements your business name. Only registering a single domain or failing to diversify beyond domain names ending in .com might leave some advantages behind.

Purchasing multiple domains can provide brand insurance, secure more customers, and even break into new markets as a business. Here’s why you might consider going beyond one domain as a business owner.

Why should a business buy multiple domain names?

Domain names are your address on the internet, on which you’ll build a business website that serves as a digital storefront, a catalog of your services and products, and a means of contacting you. Business domains should be memorable, snappy, and relate directly to your business, since they’ll be used to find you on the internet and shared when someone recommends your company to friends and colleagues.

That said, there are many smart ways to do more than the bare minimum of simply registering your business name as a domain name. Securing domains with different top-level domains (TLDs), which is the part of a URL that follows the last period (like .com, .net, or .pizza), is a start, but the creativity doesn’t have to stop there.

Prevent cybersquatting

Cybersquatting is an illegal form of domain abuse where someone registers a domain with the intent to extort money or gather sensitive payment details from unaware visitors. For example, if you’re a drywall contractor and name your business Dave’s Dryest Walls, an opportunistic bad-faith actor monitoring the state public business filings database could register the domain davesdryestwalls.com, believing that you’ll pay them whatever fee they want in order to get the domain from them.

As your business grows, buying the domain names that act as the lowest hanging fruit for these types of opportunists can prevent a lot of future headaches. Protecting your brand name with a trademark is also smart, as it might give you ammo in a fight over domain names that are confusingly similar to your brand.

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Catch common typos

Sometimes, missing a customer isn’t the result of a malicious competitor, but rather a simple missed (or added) character when someone is heading to your business website. Many large businesses have ensured a typo won’t send potential customers wayward. Here are a few examples, plus the common misspellings they’ve captured:

• Google – gogle.com
• Amazon – amazonn.com
• Facebook – facebok.com.

Try to experiment for yourself. Type your domain name quickly, as if you’re in a rush. Try to do so with one hand on a standard keyboard or on a mobile device. If you catch yourself making small errors, chances are your potential clients might do the same, and capturing those domains could help prevent lost traffic.

Support new products

Sometimes, domains can be used to separate standout services or products, and provide them space to flourish. If you offer two products that are entirely different and unrelated, it may make sense to register separate domains for them, even if you’ll be redirecting these URLs to the same website.

Microsoft, for example, registered azure.com for its suite of cloud-based computing products. Another way to use domains in a similar way would be to provide separate spaces for each of your business’s DBAs, or doing business as names. Oftentimes, a DBA will have a unique branding and marketing strategy, and you can use a separate website to support that brand.

Marketing campaign tracking

Buying specific domains to support marketing efforts can be a powerful way to take advantage of a unique domain name. Not only can these domains be tied to a specific marketing campaign, but the separation from your primary website makes tracking the campaign’s effectiveness very easy, since you can measure traffic going towards a single URL.

Take, for example, Domino’s pavingforpizza.com website. This site is solely dedicated to their Paving for Pizza campaign, where they drummed up extra hype for their business while serving a cause that most people can get behind: fixing roads in desperate need of repair, and preventing pizza catastrophes during delivery.

Get creative and maybe you, too, can stick it to the man (or whoever is in charge of repairing potholes in your city) while supporting your brand.

Multiple domain names could mean big business gains

Securing multiple domains for your business can save hundreds of dollars by eliminating recovery costs from cybersquatters, and help you gain even more traffic by avoiding losing customers to typos or near-misses when someone is visiting your website. In short, owning more relevant domain real estate as a small business can protect your revenue today and widen your reach in the future.