Should You Buy All of Your Domain Name Extensions?

I wanted to discuss something that I see very often I my clients accounts, when I go into their hosting accounts. And it’s a question that comes up pretty often from my website design clients so I figured why not have a video discussing it. It has to do with buying domain name extensions.

Should You Buy All of Your Domain Name Extensions?

So a lot of my clients will ask me how many domains should I get. Should I buy all the domain extensions for my brand name. Domain extension is your .com, .net, .biz, .org, etc. Those are all called domain extensions. And the answer to that question is you should only buy as many domains as you need. This question comes up often, and I want to share why people typically do this. So, the reason why I’m even doing this video is that I was in a client’s account the other day and he’s moving to my hosting with a website that I developed for him. So, I logged into his account to see what things I needed to move from their server to mine and I saw 20 or so domains. So, I asked, what’s going on with all these domains, they don’t seem to be pointing to any websites. He said I bought them because I don’t want anybody else buying my brand name and then trying to utilize it. And it’s a valid point, a valid concern. But for a small business owner to be spending $200-300 a year on domain name extensions that he doesn’t need, that money over the past 10 years, that two or three grand could have been much better suited going into advertising or SEO or copy writing on his website. Or content marketing. You know when it comes to how many domains you should have; I say you should only have as many domains as you need.

Now if you’re a bigger brand right, now it makes sense for like Nike to own Mike.com, or something like that right. Because it’s a drop in the bucket for them. So, they can capitalize off a misspelling and they can utilize that. Probably the money is not so important for them, but for small business, businesses that I work, every dollar counts. So, you want to make sure you’re getting a great return on your investment. And buying 20 or 30 domains that you’re never going to use is just not going to really, you know, I don’t think it’s necessarily protecting you from much and it’s also not benefiting you in anyway.

And the other thing to consider is, now you have your website and your website has you know probably dozens of back links from local citation sites right. Which if you don’t get in touch, I could help you with that. Citations are basically links from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 other directory sites that will link to your website. That helps your SEO wise and it establishes your brand and your name address phone number being out on all those other sites. So, you have your brand established, your website established on those sites. You also have your website established on social media. So, you have Facebook, Yelp, you have also again sites like Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, you have all these sites also pointing to your site as well. So that just takes your .com and puts it out there whereas all those other versions of the domain, have no value. They’re not even on the map. What I mean is that they’re just completely worthless.

So, you know you have your have citations pointing to your website you have social media pointing to your website and then you also have review sites. You have your reviews on your social media and that’s probably all linked back to your site. And, your reviews on your Google Business listing, your reviews on Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Facebook Etc. By having all those reviews pointing back to your website, it just builds the credibility of your website. That’s why you can safely say you know what, I’m confident. I don’t need 10 different variations of my brand name in different extensions because if anybody searches for my brand name. I’ve established my website as the home for that brand name. So, people are going to find it.

The only thing I would say is make sure you keep your primary domain. One of my friends he let his domain expire and someone else capitalized on all the SEO from it. This person took his expired domain and put his own content on it. When you searched for his brand, and we just did a new website a couple months ago, a few months ago, and when you search for this guy’s brand name, this other website shows up. The guy is trying to make money, capitalizing off someone else’s brand name. He’s utilizing this guy’s brand name and his persona and is capitalizing off it now. This is another example why you shouldn’t let your primary domain expire.

But I’ll tell you one thing if it does happen, which in this case it did happen. Initially when we launched the new website, the website was on page 5 on Google. SEO wise, we did very little to be honest with you. We kind of just set the site up and I did some core stuff. But now a few months later he’s already on page 1 of Google for his brand name. And that’s without work. And the reason why I’m pointing that out is because eventually the SEO of the other person who took advantage of his expired domain, it’s starting to wear off. Because now when someone searches for this guy’s brand name now, and now that this guy’s social media is pointing to this new domain, and he’s podcasts and shows, and he’s talking about this new domain. So now the search engines are recognizing that the old domain is not the home of that brand anymore. Now it’s this website. So he’s slowly coming back up and you know if we did if we did a little bit of work I’m positive we would have knocked we would have got back that first spot within probably you know a month or so. But the point I’m trying to make is that even if you lose your main domain, you can still establish that credibility and win back that credibility.

There’s all sorts of sneaky stuff you could do with other expired domains to help your website get better, but the point of this video is, you don’t need 15-20 different domains that you’re not ever going to use. I buy vanity URLs. I just bought a .com for a free Facebook ads course that I’m releasing. And the reason why I bought this .com is because it’s $15 and it’s much easier to remember than where the course is actually living. OK the courses living on my website, it’s on a subdomain. And it’s a very long URL because it’s a subdomain of my website. So, I didn’t want to have to tell people go to you know blah blah blah dot ATDNY.com. I just wanted to tell them go to blank.com and it’s four words.

So that’s when you can use the domains for quick temporary things or as an easy-to-remember URL. But you don’t need 50 or 20 of them. So, the answer to the question of how many domain extensions should I buy is, only as many as you need. Hopefully that’s useful to you guys. if you want some more tips please visit my website www.atdny.com. I got a ton of videos on there; I got a ton of free digital marketing strategy checklist for you to download and I hope this video was useful to you. If it was, please like, comment, and share wherever you’re seeing it. Otherwise visit my website if you need more tips. Thanks for your time and stay safe.