Many website owners will decide that, for whatever reason, they want to buy more than one domain name. They’ll either then redirect them to their main page or even maintain a second website to try to rank twice for a keyword. Some even want to use a second site to rank their business for another keyword in another niche, in hopes that two sites will mean twice the traffic.
The truth is there are some instances where owning multiple domain names will be an advantage. When you initially search for a domain name and then choose to purchase it, your host will often offer you several names they think you should also buy to protect your brand and get traffic from other countries.
Whatever your reason for wanting multiple domain names, here is a guide to the good, bad, and the ugly of doing so.
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The Good
There are some quite good reasons you might want to have multiple domains, and not all of them are SEO or traffic related. Most SEO agencies and experts will tell you multiple domain names are always a bad idea. However, they sometimes overlook some real benefits that the practice can give you. Here are a few cases where it makes sense to have multiple domains.
Protection for Your Brand
Depending on your brand and how crowded your space is, you might want to purchase variations of your chosen domain name to protect your brand. There have been instances where people have taken a domain name, purchased a domain that sounded nearly identical, and stolen the original site’s traffic.
One prominent example is the official website for the Wallace, Idaho Chamber of Commerce. Up until recently, the official website was wallaceid.com. However, a local individual purchased wallace-id.com, a totally different site, but one that stole both rankings and traffic from the true site for the Chamber.
This is a potential reason to purchase the .net, .org, and other common extensions of your site. An example is SEOMoz.com, which redirects to the actual site, SEOMoz.org. The reason is that typing in the .com instead of the .org is a common mistake, and by purchasing and redirecting the alternate site, Moz is protecting its brand.
Redirect Link Juice
Some businesses buy sites that have been abandoned but did have links pointing to them. They then redirect the traffic that site might get to their own site. This will pass along some of the link juice (depending on how long ago the site was abandoned). However, this has the potential to backfire in a big way, as you’ll discover later in the post.
The reason this may not work is that it is somewhat deceptive: if the site you are redirecting is not relevant to your niche, users will be understandably confused.
Migrating an Old Domain
Let’s say you discovered that your domain name was, well, not the best. Like the Iowa Department on Aging, who changed the name of the department as well as their web address when they realized seniors (their demographic) did not relish typing in idoa.gov into their web browser.
In this case, the agency needed to redirect the site in case some people had old materials or still found the old site. They also wanted the metrics from the original site to transfer at least some authority to the new one.
This is definitely a legitimate and good reason to own multiple domains. The agency does not want to simply let the old site go, as someone else could grab the URL and use it for a completely different purpose. Their purpose might run contrary to the core message the agency broadcasts, something that could be really confusing to their patrons and damaging to their reputation.
International (Multi-Language Domains)
Let’s say you are doing business in Central America and the United States. You are going to need an English language site, one in Spanish, perhaps French, and possibly other languages. Since each language also represents a different culture, you can’t just copy and paste translated text.
This is a good reason to have multiple domains: you need to target the language and culture of the audience you are trying to reach, and you need to rank in search engines in those languages.
There may be other good reasons to have multiple domain names, but these are the primary ones. There are definitely some downsides though.
The Bad
The reason most SEO experts will tell you that owning multiple domains is not a great idea is that most of the time, the reasons clients give them are not the ones we discussed above. Instead, they have other reasons, or they get results that are unexpected and have a negative impact on their online marketing efforts. Here are a few.
Odd Rankings
One risk you run when taking out multiple domains is that your alternate domains will surpass your primary domains in ranking. There was one instance where a business bought several country domains, which wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. However, somehow, the co.uk ranked higher than their primary .com, even though it redirected to the main site.
“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. Well, if I am in the United States and looking for a particular product or even an answer to a question, I am much less likely to click on a .co.uk site. Most users who have done so find prices in pounds instead of dollars and insane shipping costs.
Instead, I am going to look for a .com or US-based site. If the .com for the business above is not ranking on the same page, I will choose another company that is. Your efforts to gain new business have lost traffic and potential sales simply because of a ranking anomaly.
Wasted Money
Here’s probably the number one downside to buying multiple domains, especially if you are just going to redirect them. While individual domains are inexpensive, buying a number of them and maintaining them annually does add up.
Unless you are facing a legitimate threat from your competition, who are trying to steal your traffic, this is money that could better be spent improving your current site and working on the SEO aspect.
The only time this makes sense is if you are already drawing a lot of traffic so your competition has something to steal. It’s not necessarily something you need to do right away.
No Traffic
The next point is that unless you are actually getting redirected traffic from the sites you own, they really are not doing you any good. Most of the time, a .com will draw traffic from other countries as well, provided you are working internationally. The exception is the one listed above if you need a site in other languages.
Double the SEO work
If you are not redirecting your sites, but trying to maintain two in your niche for whatever reason, you will be doing double the SEO work.
But this is not just double the SEO work. It is double the other work on your site as well, and that takes both time and money. This might be a viable way to A/B test two sites to see what kind of content and site performs best, and then dropping one or the other (or continuing to test content on the alternate site).
For most businesses, this is money and effort that could be spent on improving their current site instead.
The Ugly
Finally, there is a downright ugly side to having multiple domains. These make an SEO expert cringe and for good reason.
Duplicate Content
You do know that duplicate content is bad, right? Well, the solution many brands have for maintaining multiple sites is just to duplicate content on each site.
Not only is this bad for SEO and search engines, but it can be confusing for users. Imagine your sites are ranking closely in a keyword, and a user clicks on the first one and then the other, only to find exactly the same content. Yikes.
The short answer is simply, don’t do this.
Double Branding
Does one site serve your low-end, value-minded customers and the other site serve your high-end, quality-conscious ones? Seriously, what kind of branding does each site have? If they are identical, why do you have two instead of just the one?
Don’t waste your time. Avoid this at all costs.
When it comes to owning domain names, it is a lot like choosing medicine when you’re sick. Often, one is enough to do the job. Taking more than that can actually kill you.
If you choose to own more than one domain for a single business, do so carefully and for the right reasons. Otherwise, you’ll end up with the bad and the ugly without the benefit of the good.
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