Top 10 Reasons You Should Own Related Domain Names

The worldwide web is an increasingly competitive global marketplace and the number of ways a potential client/visitor can get lost on their way to your website is on the rise. This document details the 10 top reasons why you should own domain names related to your primary domain and the associated dangers of not owning them.

1. Improve the client experience:
   When a client remembers the address of your website and types it in exact the client experience is seamless. However, if you do not forward or own a related domain name the client can become frustrated which potentially leads to them visiting or searching for a competitor’s site.
2. Avoid unnecessary PPC payouts:
   If you do not own variations of your name or the same name in other extensions a potential visitor can land on a pay-per-click ad site which your organisation’s ads could appear on costing you money, or even worse competitor’s ads could appear which if clicked on take the visitor to their site.
3. Prevent affiliate abuse:
   If you do not own domains related to your product or services and you operate an affiliate scheme you could end making large unnecessary payouts. This is something supermarket giants Tesco almost fell foul to when domains such as tescodiet.com and tescodvd.co.uk were registered and used to generate revenue through a 3rd party affiliate scheme. This almost cost Tesco a staggering £25000+!
4. Eliminate cybersquatting:
   Cybersquatting is when a domain of a popular website address is registered with the intent to sell it to the rightful owner – often at a very inflated price. Recovery of the domain can be attempted via arbitration which can be time consuming and expensive. The best way to protect against this is to make sure you have relevant domains registered to you.
5. Thwart the efforts of typosquatters:
   Typosquatting is when a domain that is a spelling variation on a popular website address is registered. Taking points 2 and 3 above this could be to make pay-per-click advertising revenue and also could be used in an attempt to extort money from the owners of similar names.
6. Prevent phishing attempts on your visitors:
   If someone owns a variation on your name they could direct visitors who mistype the name to another website and use web forms to collect personal information on people who thought they were at your website.
7. Use campaign specific URLs:
   Domain names related to specific campaigns can be used on an ad hoc or seasonal basis to be more relevant and memorable than you main website address.
8. Brand protection:
   There are a large number of companies that do not protect the domain related to their brand name. An example of this is search engine king Google who’s Adsense service is a pay-per-click advertising industry leader but when they launched they did not own the domain adsense.com – they domain belonged to an advertising company and was registered years before.
9. Don’t lose out to speculators:
   Some people register generic sounding domain names in the hopes that they will be of value to someone at a later date. If you cannot prove the domain was registered in bad faith there may be nothing you can do but wait for it to expire and register it then (if the current owner does ever let it expire). The amount you could pay varies enormously but note that BBC in the UK paid US$375,000 for BBC.com in 1999.
10. Protect against traffic hijacking:
    Competitors or individuals owning a domain name related to your business are capable of redirecting the traffic to their website. Although in most instances this is illegal, you have to know they are doing it first recovering the domain through arbitration or the courts can be very expensive. Also, if the verdict is not in your favour it is unlikely you will ever acquire the domain from the registrant. When was the last time you checked for this?

So the important question to ask is "What domains should I consider registering?"

Different extensions Acronyms Industry related Word reversals

Typos Trade marks Country related With/without prefix

Plural/non plural Slogans/strap lines With/without hyphens With/without suffix

Domain Protector offer a free purpose built report, searching for all domain names that may be of interest to you and giving suggestions as to what domains you should consider registering and why. This information is generated using custom built technology and is available to view online within minutes. To obtain your free report now, please click here.

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