Domain Strategy is extremely important when you are starting to create and online business and can give you a significant boost in traffic and brand awareness if done properly. Most companies are not even aware of the importance of deploying a domain strategy that gets them started in the right direction - it’s really strategic marketing and should be viewed as such.

Single Domain Strategy Leverages Costs

A primary component to any domain strategy is early on making the right decision about how many domains your should utilize for your business model. We highly recommend registering  just one domain and then deploying a content strategy that enables you to be more market or product-specific with interior pages on this single domain.

These interior pages or “island sites” can all be optimized for specific keywords, topics, subjects, etc. and you can easily drive PPC traffic directly to these “island sites” if need be moving forward.

And, you aren’t dealing with the headaches of multiple sites that need to be updated via Content Management Systems for each one, monitoring multiple sets of Analytics, SEO optimization for each, multiple Social Media points of presence, etc.

Your so much better off focusing your marketing resources on one domain; i.e. high quality content, topical and relevant back links, social bookmarking and social media marketing. Your building a single digital asset that will have strong Intellectual Property for your company moving forward.

Keyword Strategy for Domain Selection

Use Google’s Keyword Tool to come up with Keywords that fit your target market and that will drive traffic for you. Don’t waste time on secondary Top Level Domains (.net .whatever) -  the right domain strategy is picking a .com if your company is a for profit business.

You may have to export these keywords into an Excel document and then paste these into a Domain Registrar to see what is available - we recommend and use Moniker as our preferred registrar. Be aware, it may take time (3-5 hours in some cases) to find the right Domain that you want to build your brand around if you really want a domain name that will drive traffic and resonate with visitors.

But, if done properly, you’ll have the benefit of a keyword rich domain, which in turns provides immediate type in traffic (in some cases) and that can be optimized for natural search results easily with the right content moving forward.

Finally, think of Domain Strategy as the foundation block that you build the rest of your business around - it’s strategic and important. If you want to go for a pure branding play for your URL then go with something like Google.com or Yahoo.com - this type of domain name won’t drive any incremental traffic early on but certainly helps to define your brand quickly and in some cases memorably!