There are many different reasons for purchasing more than one domain names, and each reason has its own set of benefits and uses. Written quite extensively before about how to select the best domain name for your website.
It is also a good idea to secure alternate versions of your primary domain as a means to prevent competitors from trying to squeeze in on your name and branding efforts. Buying multiple domain names is a great strategy that can be used to capture additional type-in traffic you may wish to pursue, or simply to prevent your competitors from securing them.
Type-In Traffic
Many domains are purchased simply to capture type in traffic. Type-in traffic is when someone goes to the address bar of their web browser and types in keywords.com instead of performing a keyword search on a major search engine. Securing domain names with a fair amount of type-in traffic can be a great boost to sales. If you sell bean bags, your main URL might be BarrysBeanBags.com. To capture potential type-in traffic you might also secure and redirect the following:
• KidsBeanBags .com
• BeanBagChairs .com
• BeanBagFurnture .com
Misspellings
It is always a good idea to secure potential misspellings of your domain name. I recently did a radio interview and at the end of the interview I provided my domain name. Unfortunately I did not take the time to actually spell it out. Upon realizing my error, I immediately went out and bought multiple spellings of my URL to redirect to my primary site.
o PolPositionMarketing .com
o PullPositionMarketing .com
o PollPositionMarketing .com
This allowed me to capture all traffic from any listeners that may have had a different spelling of my domain in mind, which increased my visitor rate from those who listened to the broadcast substantially.
Along with misspellings you should also consider purchasing plural and/or singular versions of your domain.
YourDomainSucks .com
If you are in a highly visible industry you might want to consider getting yourdomainsucks.com. Several years ago someone put up an anti AOL website at aolsucks.com (You can see a version of this at http://web.archive.org/web/19980111060209/http://www.aolsucks.com/).
Who might do such a thing? A disgruntled x-employee, a customer who had a bad experience or even a former spouse or partner. Setting up and hosting a website is relatively easy, and often bad press travels a lot further with a little effort than good press with a lot of effort.
There are some significant set backs from trying to capture all negative versions of your domain name. You’ll have to grab all hyphenated, non-hyphenated, plural, and misspelled variations. That can be quite a bit. Take that even a step further, you also want to buy the .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us (or your country code) variations. Dont forget YourDomainSux.com or YourDomainReallySucks either.
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