One of my client’s was approached recently by a provider with the concept of registering several domains, which are based on high traffic keywords within his market. My client was interested enough to ask me what I thought.

The examples shown by the vendor all ranked very well for the keywords in the domain names, so I’m not surprised by the interest. It’s hard to give an absolute answer about the value or lack of it with this sort of strategy. But as a general concept I’m not in favour of the approach. Here are some questions I would need answers for before I was comfortable with the approach:

• what will google make of it?
• how will you measure the value?
• what will it cost? and
• what will you gain?

What will Google make of it?

One of Google’s strong recommendations is to approach these decisions with the perspective of the customer (the searcher / the visitor to the web site). If it adds value to them it is worthwhile doing it. I’m yet to hear of a reason for multiple domain names that adds value to the customer. Finding multiple listings in the search results, with different domain names but identical content is of no value to them.

How will you measure the value?

Talk about a chicken and egg dilemma. You can’t measure until you implement and you won’t know if it’s worth the effort until you measure. If you take a punt and implement, you still don’t have a simple way to identify the traffic related to specific domains. Whatever happens you will never know if it was related or a coincidence.

What will it cost?

If you do some research a competitive price to register a .com.au domain is around $30 for 2 years. Anything above that needs to be justified.

What will you gain?

If you are prepared to create unique and relevant content to support the additional domain names then you establish credibility for it and may be able to grow traffic there. But if you are only interested in parking the domain over existing content, then at best you fragment any strength you have in your web presence. This is a no effort, no reward situation.

It has to be said, if you are prepared to put any effort into developing a secondary domain, why not put the effort into growing your one and only current domain and try to increase it’s reputation and position in search results.

This may not be a “you get what you pay for” scenario, but more “you get what you deserve”.

PS: Some may be asking why the hammer photo? I found the photo on Flickr. It has this text, written by the photographer (Velo Steve), and I thought it relevant …

I have two arms, but I have found that it almost never pays to use two hammers at once. Unlike clamps, you can have too many hammers, expecially when five of them are the same weight and size…

Related articles:

• Don’t get ripped off when buying hosting or domain names! (midboh.com.au)
• Complementary domain names - help or hinder? (blog.midboh.com.au)
• There’s gold in those domain names - but for whom? (blog.midboh.com.au)
• Keyword domain names just lost value (blog.midboh.com.au)