Why should a company own multiply domains?

Most often is to cover traffic leak (like typos or similar names to their brand/niche)

Large businesses often have multiple websites for different ranges of products/services. Or for market segmentation purposes. Not to mention the use of ccTLDs for localized versions of their websites.

Some local businesses also own several domains to prevent their competitors to get them

Also, future projects...

One of the more major reasons is vanity/branding. Every car company wants car.com, every department store wants shop.com, every insurance company wants insurance.com, etc.

Another reason is advertising/marketing. For example: A coffee shop doing a "Free Coffee" promo, could acquire/rent "FreeCoffee.com". It's not a long term thing, but a lot of companies do it.

because of different types of clients/products/services

First of all thanks for the comments you guys are fire!

So just to get it right, lets take an example. Im a local liqour store in east boston (part of boston).

I would acquire domains like liqourstore.com and EastBostonAlcohol in order to:
Establish my brand
Have better anchor text when people link to me
Be able to develope a special product or a marketing campign
Rank better for certien keywords
Prevent all those goods from my competition

Right so far?

One more question is assuming i wouldnt develope the domain, will i able to enjoy those benefits by a simple 301 redirect?

From a SEO standpoint, a redirect from domain liqourstore.com (mispelled) to EastBostonAlcohol is unlikely to let you rank for the keyword 'liqour store' (nor liquor store either) because the keywords are too different.

Generally speaking, a 301 redirect is supposed to benefit from the SEO-strength of the redirecting domain. If the redirecting domain (liqourstore.com in this example) has no seo-strength prior to redirecting, the redirect won't help ranking.

On the contrary, let's say you own the domain SmallCityPlumber.com. You are likely to easily rank for SmallCity plumber, plumber in smallcity, Plumber small city, smallcity plumbing ... If you buy all related domains, you prevent your competitors to easily rank for many keywords.

1- Typos of their main
2 - More traffic using Exact matches for relevant products
3 - Stealing traffic from smaller competitions' typos where they wont file for UDRPs

Kate said:

Large businesses often have multiple websites for different ranges of products/services. Or for market segmentation purposes.

Click to expand...

also, domain registrations are cheap, compared to other expenses that businesses occur.

so they could buy some domain names and never use them.


or they use a dumb hand-reg like "product75tv.com" for television ads, just to measure responses to that commercial.

those reasons alone are why many outbound solicitations go unanswered.

imo....

Because they buy them from you.

biggie said:

so they could buy some domain names and never use them.

Click to expand...

Indeed, they may also buy domains just to put them out of reach of their competitors

Ok so wait a second,
If some domains redorect to a different one it still counts for serp, right?

Like in the example of the plumber.
Say i own PlumberInSmallCity.com SmallCityPlumber.com and smallCitysPlumber.com and my main domain is MyNamePlumbing.com

Will the domains help rank better for the small city? And how is it done on the technical side?
Thanks guys

ShayPizdetz said:

Like in the example of the plumber.
Say i own PlumberInSmallCity.com SmallCityPlumber.com and smallCitysPlumber.com and my main domain is MyNamePlumbing.com
Will the domains help rank better for the small city? And how is it done on the technical side?

Click to expand...

The short answer is NO, it won't help UNLESS the site PlumberInSmallCity.com was a real site with content, backlinks ... prior to the 301 redirect. Buying a new domain and simply redirecting it to an other domain provides no SEO benefit. It only prevents a competitor to use it.

Now, if you buy PlumberInSmallCity.com and develop a site, a link to MyNamePlumbing.com will help ranking.

ShayPizdetz said:

First of all thanks for the comments you guys are fire!

So just to get it right, lets take an example. Im a local liqour store in east boston (part of boston).

I would acquire domains like liqourstore.com and EastBostonAlcohol in order to:
Establish my brand
Have better anchor text when people link to me
Be able to develope a special product or a marketing campign
Rank better for certien keywords
Prevent all those goods from my competition

Right so far?

One more question is assuming i wouldnt develope the domain, will i able to enjoy those benefits by a simple 301 redirect?

Click to expand...

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What is the liquor stores USP besides just BEING there...I like 24hourliquorstore.com or liquorstoredelivery.com

In short companies own multiple domains for wider reach/audience.

Kate said:

Large businesses often have multiple websites for different ranges of products/services. Or for market segmentation purposes. Not to mention the use of ccTLDs for localized versions of their websites.

Click to expand...

I agree, and they must have big team to manage multiple websites

Owning multiple domain names can have many benefits to a company. For instance owning multiple extensions of there company name helps protect. one other thing is companies that sell products can snag that exact match keyword dot com of the product they sell. They make a website on it if there smart and sell there products saves them in the long run. They get not only that domains potential type in traffic but they can rank on page one potentially in the search engines. This means if you are already there can save on that advertising budget long term as that is one keyword you wont have to worry about bidding for.

Way TOO MANY companies use their name as the URL. I can't think of anything worse. The corporate name is great for their CPA, not to brand. Can you imagine the John Smith Company?? You can use additional domains for multiple products/services, a newsletter, a blog, and APP.