Multiple Domains - When to Use Them

I was recently asked about using multiple website domain names that point to the same website.  The person I spoke with said that they had been told that using a name, like MaryJones.com was not as effective with search engines as something that described their business, such as ElderLaw.com.

If you're trying to build your personal brand, the MaryJones.com URL is the way to go.  You can still optimize it for search engines and pay-per-click and be found both ways.  This may be a problem if your name is hard to spell.  (EG: FredWiesznewski.com) But, maybe you think people will remember your service better at the next trade show, chamber function or on a local billboard if you go the ElderLaw route.

We've worked with a number of public speakers and most of them use their name as their website address - they are almost always building their personal brand.  But, if they prefer to be known as the Green Industry Speaker, then GreenIndustrySpeaker.com may be the way to go.

It is possible to have several domains point to one site, but have the URL appear as what was typed in.  We built a site for Kunkel Team Realtors and you can get there by typing in KunkelTeamRealtors.com.  But the actual site URL is NapervillePlainfieldRealEstate.com, which is very keyword-rich for their market.  That URL is only found through search engines.  Tom & Kelley Kunkel use the KunkelTeamRealtors.com URL in all other marketing from yard signs and magazine ads  to business cards and email addresses.  When people type that into their browser, that is the address they see.

Al Lautenslager, who co-wrote the bestselling book "Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days," was doing a lot of radio/TV/newspaper interviews and had followup and ordering information on his Market-For-Profits.com website.  He could easily have put up a niche site to support the book, but felt that many people would mis-spell "guerrilla."  And saying "market dash for dash profits dot com" on the air was a mouthful, so he registered the domain gm30.com.

Sometimes you will want to use a different URL to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign or to credit a joint venture partner for traffic to your site.  You can use applications called "ad trackers" that document the number of times a certain URL is typed and the viewer forwarded to a landing page.  You can assign different URLs to different campaigns, such as "LowCostWidgets.com" to a print ad you're running and "CheapWidgets.com" to a joint venture partner who is promoting your products to properly give credit and pay commissions.  Then, use "Widgets4Less.com" for a direct mail campaign.  You'll get useful metrics for all your initiatives.

Savvy Internet marketers will also split-test different URLs to see which draws the most traffic.

I know a guy who has about 36 URLs registered that are related to his industry.  That's probably overkill, but he'll be ready for ad tracking, joint venturing, split testing, split personality - you name it!

-- Kurt Scholle, the Website-ROI-Guy