The Simple Way to Build a Digital Identity With Multiple Domain Names
Establishing your digital identity is no small feat. You’re creating the brand, the content, and the communication channels to connect with your audience and inspire them to buy.
Your website is the hub of your digital identity. It’s where your audience goes for key content including your brand story and basic information about how and why they should engage with you. And your website domain serves as the foundation.
Domains that work for websites don’t necessarily work everywhere else
Even though your domain might be great for your website, it may not be the most effective domain for every form of communication. Today’s marketing strategies include a fast-growing array of channels spanning physical, digital, and audio touch points — everything from mobile apps to social media, podcasts, product review sites, paid search, and advertising campaigns. A single domain is no longer a one-size-fits-all representation of your brand.
For example, a campaign URL may be fine as a place to host the landing page on your established site, but may be too long and clunky when viewed in a mobile app. Or it may be hard to read or remember when it’s spoken aloud on a podcast or radio ad. And it might look terrible in print or on a billboard.
You’re already adapting your content and your message to a wide variety of channels and platforms, but using the same website domain and subpages everywhere means you’re probably missing the mark with some segments of your audience. So how do you adapt a domain?
Using domains as redirects
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to adapt your domains according to how and where they’re being used: registering multiple domains that use specific, targeted words on both the left and the right of the dot. Beyond the options of .com, .net, .org, and .biz, you can use keyword, targeted top-level domains (TLDs) like .live, .solutions, .photography, .studio, or .global. While the majority of Fortune 50 companies are doing this, it’s a strategy that’s affordable and easy to implement, so it works for companies of all sizes.
Let’s look at some examples of how you can use multiple domains to support your brand and your business.
Drive promotion participation
Use unique domains as part of your broader campaign strategy to make promotions stand out and boost engagement with different audience segments.
Get ranked in organic search with domains
Major brands are finding smart ways to capture organic search to drive customers to specific parts of their website using TrueName domains as 301 redirects. This means targeted and specific domains can rank in search while the user experience is to be redirected to a product or service page.
The Argentine IT consultancy Practia created aptly-named redirects for SEO. While their main URL is practia.global, they use practia.solutions to showcase customer solutions, practia.tech to spotlight the technologies they use, practia.management to tout their project management prowess, and practia.careers to help them attract the best candidates in the industry.
Amplify specific products, services, and initiatives with unique domains
Regardless of the size of your business, you have a variety of important messages to communicate, and using multiple domain names can help you spread the word both inside and outside of your company.
Many companies use specific TLDs to invite more engagement and communicate a message with the URL itself. T-Mobile is rapidly hiring for thousands of roles and uses tmobile.careers to make direct contact with prospects and recruiters. Amazon launched amazon.care to improve healthcare access for employees, and ikea.today offers people a glimpse into their product development philosophy and process. Finally, slack.engineering is a channel Slack started on Medium to spark conversations around software engineering practices.
Secure TrueName domains
Now that you’re brimming with creative ideas for using multiple domains as redirects, here are five simple steps to explore, choose, and register domains that are a perfect fit for your brand.
- Determine where you’d like to use targeted domains as redirects to specific pages on your established website.
- Search using your business name or description. For example, “pet grooming services” or “Jane Doe Photography” or “Phoenix real estate”
- Select the domains that fit your specific channels and scenarios you came up with in step 1.
- Make it official. Register your new TrueName domains with just a few clicks at a domain registrar.
- Set up your new domain names as 301 redirects to those specific pages on your established site, or for a standalone site.
Stop missing opportunities to connect with your audience in specific ways. Using the right domain at the right time, in the right place, and with the right audience, you’ll bolster your business and amplify your brand’s digital footprint.
New domains are selling fast and there’s fierce competition for some of the most in-demand keyword domains. Secure your top picks now before one of your competitors does.
Find out more at TrueName Domains
