Countless times people have come to me saying:
"Michael, I’ve had this great idea! I’ve bought up loads of domain names that all include words relevant to my product and now they all point to my main website. I can’t wait for the floods of traffic to come pouring in!"
Well good luck with that.
The main flaw to this approach is that despite what many people believe - there is not a massive amount of traffic to be had from people trying to guess domain names. Now obviously there are exceptions to this - like if you happen to buy up domain names like coke.com, nike.com or msn.com. But that’s never going to happen is it?
You may get some people who try to guess a website by typing in a certain domain name but the fact still remains that if you don’t have a website behind the domain name all it becomes is a forwarding entity. Without a real website behind it, it will never get listed in the search engines and never be found on the Internet unless people type it straight into their browser.
So What Can You Do With Extra Domain Names?
Well, first off, it can sometimes be a good idea to protect your intellectual property and buy the various extensions of your domain name. The most popular ones are .COM, .NET and the extension for your country. As thousands of domains are bought up every day you will need to move quickly.
A great use for additional domain names is to use them in your offline marketing campaigns. Assuming you have the right traffic tracking mechanisms in place you could use a specific domain name in a certain ad campaign and then monitor its effectiveness by measuring how many people get forwarded to your website from that domain.
If you manage to buy a domain name that is more meaningful, shorter and easier to remember than that of your main website then you may decide to adopt it as your main site address in all your communications.
Some Final Domain Name Pointers
Choose .COM wherever you can. People will always guess .COM before anything else but the tricky part comes in finding .COM names that are still available! Avoid hyphens if possible. The shorter your domain name can be - the better. Where possible try to secure a domain name that includes a word or two that are relevant to your product - this can give you a slight edge in some search engines.
