what’s in a (domain) name? plenty

not knowing what you’re doing can cost you plenty.

by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms

domain names are cheap compared to other marketing costs. they average $15 to $20 per year per domain. but if you register many domains, they can begin to add up. and if you switch domains, you could end up costing yourself far more than $15 in lost revenues if you don’t know what you are doing.

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here are my thoughts and what’s possible with domain names, especially as they relate to search engine optimization at the macro level.

don’t overdo it.

if available, you will definitely want to get a couple of domain names just so no one else gets them:

• your company name or something similar
• your own name
• any trademark or brand names you own the rights to

the best top-level domain to get is .com if your company is a business. get .ca if you are in canada. get .org only if you have a nonprofit. get .net only if you are an internet service provider. get .cpa if you can afford it. i haven’t really seen any benefits to the .cpa top-level domains as of this writing, but they are still very new.

godaddy and other domain registrars will try to upsell you on getting all of the top-level domains – .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .biz, etc. don’t fall for it. it is not necessary and is a waste of money.

respect your elder domain names.

age is the most important factor with domain names. try not to switch domains simply because you thought of something cute to rename your business. you will lose valuable “seo juice” if you throw out an old domain name and replace it with a new one, unless you work with someone who knows how to help you inherit the juice of the old domain during the transition.

here’s the key.

you can only optimize one domain name per website. period. so, if you think there will be an seo benefit to getting five domains and pointing them to the same site, you would be wrong. the alternative is having multiple websites – one for each domain with different content and design – which can be costly unless there is a good reason.

here’s how more than one domain name works.

let’s say you have two domain names, yourcompany.com and yourname.com, but you only want to maintain one website.

there are two ways to get additional domains to point to the same website: forwarding and alias. with forwarding, all you have to do is go into your domain registrar account and point your additional domain to the primary one. you can do this yourself without your webmaster’s help as long as the domain is in your control. however, there may be limitations with using email or other applications at this domain if that is desired.

a second way to point your additional domain to your website is to set up an alias. in this case, your webmaster needs to get involved by setting up an alias or a “www=www” in the control panel section of the website hosting account. then, the dns (domain name system) record needs to be changed in the domain registrar account to point to the server hosting the website. the last step is to make sure the site shows secure via the ssl certificate.

posted on february 16, 2023