How Brands Benefit From Multiple Domain Names The more domain names that you use, the more opportunities you have to tell your brand's story.
By Julia Weikel Edited by Chelsea Brown
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Good business owners cover all their bases, and that goes for domain names too. When you utilize descriptive domains for a targeted audience, you can bolster your business and amplify your digital footprint. The more domain names that you use, the more opportunities you have to tell your brand's story. Let's talk about five ways you can support your brand and your business with the strategic use of multiple domain names.
1. Create individual domains for specific purposes
Your established company website domain is your digital identity hub, but it may not be the most effective domain to link for communicating and promoting every area of your business. Large corporations often create standalone sites for many specific tasks and messages. For example, Amazon utilizes amazon.care for access to its employee health care portal. Likewise, Ikea.today offers Ikea visitors a glimpse into the company's product development, philosophy and process. The .today domain separates this content from Ikea's main website while alluding to their up-to-date happenings. When you choose domain names that are easy to remember, customers can quickly navigate to the specific site that provides the information they need.
Related: How to Choose a Descriptive Domain for Your Business
2. Protect your brand
Established businesses that already have a parent brand domain can better protect their brand identities by adding to their domain portfolios. For example, Amazon owns over 5,000 relevant keyword descriptive domains that are set as redirects to relevant pages on amazon.com or wholefoods.com. By claiming brand territory around your company name using redirects, you also help prevent cyber attacks from phishers or even parody sites that might pose as your brand.
3. Strengthen SEO to increase audience engagement
With fox.news and apple.news, descriptive domains are utilized to protect branding, but they are also used to strengthen SEO. Descriptive domains act as short and easy-to-remember calling cards for a company's identity and offerings. Descriptive domain names are more searchable, because they utilize both sides of the dot with descriptive phrases that boost traffic to your site. In the case with malaysia.travel, if the phrase "Malaysia travel" is typed into a search engine, the intuitive next click would be to Malaysia Travel's website. When claiming domains to protect your brand, choosing descriptive domains effectively guides users to the most relevant content.
4. Create a memorable promotion
Unique domains can also be used to make promotions stand out, boosting engagement with a memorable call-to-action. You can drive customer participation in your campaigns with domains that use your brand name alongside a specific domain extension like .deals, .coupons, .delivery or .discount. These types of domains are ideal for social media, billboards, and word of mouth promotion.
For example, a memorable billboard campaign for Bitcoin and NFTs came with simple messages like "make the money better," along with the URL bitcoin.guide. Another billboard said "crypto is a peaceful revolution, hidden in plain sight" with the domain m.guide/bitcoin. Passersby could glance at these memorable links and then find them later, without having to stop and write anything down.
Related: Debunking 3 Common Misconceptions Around Domains
5. Communicate a branded message
Most brands have multiple messages to share with their audience, and multiple domains provide a great way to reinforce various aspects of your brand. For example, Skims Shapewear acquired and uses the domain skims.social for their social media links. Posting this clear and descriptive link makes their social media look more polished and elevated in comparison to using short link providers with nonsensical and difficult-to-remember characters. Likewise, when T-mobile is hiring, they use tmobile.careers to advertise with prospects and recruiters. This domain is descriptive, shorter and much more memorable than https://www.t-mobile.com/careers.
Whether you are running social media campaigns for large corporations or launching the website of a startup, attention to detail elevates your business. Descriptive domain names provide an opportunity for you to be detail-oriented with brand messaging, website security, and a stronger searchability of your business. In choosing what domains your business should claim, don't be afraid to be as creative as you are strategic. The more domains you claim, the more stories your business can tell.
Related: 8 Elements to Consider When Picking Your Domain Name
