multiple domains a must?

[johnn]

Hello,

I would like to know if I own thisismydomain.com then do you think it's necessary to own

thisismydomain.net
this-is-my-domain.com
this-is-my-domain.net
what do you think?
Thanks,
John

[deejay]

Depends on a number of things I think.

How big are you/do you plan to get?

How "catchy" is the name? Are they gonna get snapped up?

How much is it going to bother you to see someone else using one of those domains for something either competing with you or that you would rather not be associated with?

How 'blackmailable' are you? - is someone gonna buy it to try and sell back to you.

How radio/telephone-friendly is the name - are people likely to mistype it?

How contentious are you? Is someone going to want one of those names just to tell the rest of the world how bad you are?

Those are the things I would think about.

I only have the .co.nz of my current names, but my next site I'll likely go for a .com and secure one or two other extensions as well.

[mack]

I always say if you are serious about your web presence buy all the top level domains. .com .net .org and maybee even a .co.uk

you will need to be very carefull though and dont just point them all at the same website.

[glengara]

Have a look at [webmasterworld.com...]
Richlowe may have your answer.

[web_india]

>> you will need to be very carefull though and dont just point them all at the same website.

mack, what's the disadvantage here ?

[mack]

if you just point all the domains at the same website google may index them all. it brings up all sorts of duplicate content isues. try and get as much unique content on each domain as possible.

[johnn]

Thanks, all

mack,
--------
You wrote:
I always say if you are serious about your web presence buy all the top level domains. .com .net .org
--------

Yes, but I think .org is for non-profit, do you think it's necessary? People usually think it's for non-profit. And then comes .biz and .us and .info ...just too many... count the ones with hyphen too :(

and if I own
www.thisismydomain.com (this site will be my site doing business)
www.thisismydomain.net
www.this-is-my-domain.com
www.this-is-my-domain.net

For the last 3 domains above, if people enter one of these 3 sites, it will redirect to www.thisismydomain.com, but you wrote, "
if you just point all the domains at the same website google may index them all", then what should I do, leave the last 3 domains alone and do nothing with them?

Thank you very much in advance,
John

(I live and do business in US only)

[pageoneresults]

> then what should I do, leave the last 3 domains alone and do nothing with them?

You can set them up as 301 redirects (Permanently Moved) if you are looking to capture the type in traffic.

If you don't set up the redirect properly and the status code ends up being 200, Google and others may end up indexing them and seeing duplicate content. Another thing to worry about is a savvy competitor who finds an incorrect redirect. All they have to do is link to that domain, wait for Google to index and viola, duplicate content. Be careful, been there done that!

[johnn]

Thank you very much, Pageoneresults.

Well, I'm a newbie so I would like to clear things out.

If I use index.html in each of the 3 unused domains, and each index.html contains:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.thisismysite.com">

and that is a no-no, don't do it! because it will give status code 200. Am I right?

So, in each unused domain that contains public_html folder,I need to have .htaccess and place this in it:
Redirect 301 / [newsite.com...]

This will give me status code 301. Is that right?

You wrote:
>>Another thing to worry about is a savvy competitor who finds an incorrect redirect...

Does that mean a competitor links to the domain that uses index.html that uses meta tag;therefore,gives status code 200?
Thank you very much,

John

[pageoneresults]

> If I use index.html in each of the 3 unused domains, and each index.html contains:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http //www thisismysite.com">

Yes, that will return a 200 status and I would strongly advise against a META refresh tag.

> I need to have .htaccess and place this in it: Redirect 301 / http //www newsite.com/

Yes, you can set up the 301 redirect in your .htaccess. I'm on a Windows based server and we do everything through IIS.

Redirecting with .htaccess [webmasterworld.com]

> Does that mean a competitor links to the domain that uses index.html that uses meta tag; therefore, gives status code 200?

Yes, that is correct.

[saurabh]

There is a better option to redirecting. If your website has a dedicated IP, point the domains to it in the DNS settings. This goes well with the search engines too.

[richlowe]

My feeling is domain names are dirt cheap ($8.95 per year). Buy everything you can think of that matches your site (hyphens, no hypens, .org, .net, .info, .com, .biz, and so on). If you are planning on getting popular or big, pick up as many derogatory names relating to yours as you can - ie, mydomainsucks.com, my-domain-sucks.com. AOL found out the hard way about this.

Also see if you can pick up some of the more common misspellings (just the .com's for these). For example, mydomane.com and mydoomain.com and mydomian.com. This is especially important if you are doing off-line advertising (magazines, paper newsletters, newspaper ads and so on).

Use 301 redirects or small one to 10 page web sites with links to your main site on each of these alternate domains (301 redirects are probably better).

Why? People type domain names. Covering you behind here can pick up some good traffic that you might otherwise lose.

Richard Lowe

[hayluke]

I agree with most of what's written here. I'm based in the UK and most companies here will register both the .co.uk and the .com version of a name if it's avaliable.

If you don't register it you don't know who will, it would be a disaster for you to get mydomain.com and for someone to register mydomain.net and put p0rn on it..