Converting traffic into sales works best when you have a strong domain name that everyone can remember. However, there will always be people typing the wrong extension or misspelling something. What happens next can make a big difference. Either they end up with an error status code and don’t reach your site, or they get redirected. Domain redirections can provide a smooth transfer without affecting your traffic and rankings. You just need the right codes on the proper secondary domains.
How Do Domain Redirects Work?
The basic premise of a domain redirect is you program secondary domains to direct traffic to your primary website. That primary site is where visitors will find the information they were looking for, learn about products, and make their final purchase. The redirects essentially act as a herding tool, rounding up everyone who didn’t make it to your site the right way. Ideally, the redirect will be so smooth that visitors won’t realize their initial mistake. The important thing is that everyone who wants your services or advice gets it efficiently.
Your IT team can handle this fairly easily by setting up the correct status codes on secondary pages. Status codes are vital for maintaining your website and informing visitors. The 404 – Not Found and 403 – Forbidden Codes are the ones we all hate to see because they stop us dead in our tracks. A link or typed URL didn’t work, and we can’t go any further. However, some codes are more positive, such as 301 redirects on those secondary domains. These transfer the traffic to the correct location while also passing on all the ranking. You can do this with the new domain name as well as any old versions of a website that may still get traffic.
Can Domain Redirects Affect SEO?
Setting up these domain redirects can have a positive influence on your SEO. There is the potential for increased traffic to your primary domain as visitors get funneled in the right direction. It’s much better to have everyone engaging with content and making sales on one primary site. You’ll build your reputation and show Google you deserve to be on the front page of those organic search results. Low-key secondary sites with a slow stream of traffic will get lost in the crowd. So, developing them into redirection sites makes sense. With that said, you do need to be careful to implement your redirection strategy properly.
The wrong types of redirects and ineffective redirect chains could cause you to lose traffic and experience a dent in your rankings instead. You also don’t want to create too many on-page links to other sites on one landing page. This mistake can affect the loading time, and visitors may end up clicking off the secondary domain before entering a primary one. As long as you manage these redirections effectively and take time to review them regularly, you should be fine. Google won’t penalize you for it, and you could end up making gains. However, it’s still far more advantageous to focus on other SEO tools and not rely on redirection for traffic generation too much.
Don’t neglect the on-site SEO on your primary domain because you’re too focused on secondary domains. By all means, purchase as many as you can via an effective online domain name search engine. Just let those secondary sites operate in the background and enhance your main website. Make sure all your links and navigational tools work, enhance the loading time and mobile optimization, and use enough keywords to get noticed.
Purchasing Multiple Domain Names For Your Company
The best way to take advantage of domain redirects is to set up a series of secondary domains. With the correct implementation and effective redirection codes, you can take advantage of other people’s mistakes rather than suffer because of them. For example, visitors may type the wrong domain extension when looking for your website. Visitors in other regions may put the wrong regional extension, such as .ca or .co.uk instead of .com. Or, customers may wrongly believe you’re a .net or .org website. You can buy up these alternative versions before someone else gets hold of them and use them as redirection tools. Just make sure you don’t try to operate a primary website from an incorrect extension. That can make you look unprofessional.
Another option for redirection is domain names with alternative wording or misspellings. Again, you are working with the idea that people will make mistakes. Perhaps you’re a dessert company, but enough people misspell that and place you in a desert instead. Instead of leaving those people with an error message and nowhere to go, have a “desert” domain name that redirects them.
There are additional benefits to these secondary domain names. What starts as an attempt to buy up all this valuable virtual real estate can end with a series of helpful marketing tools. Regional domain extensions could provide services and support for foreign markets down the line. It might be years before you’re ready to expand. However, these additional sites for e-commerce stores and product listings could be the perfect stepping stone.
Alternative names related to product and service lines also offer tools for online promotions and marketing. You can separate your strategies between departments and create engaging landing pages for each option. As long as you still have effective links to your primary site and a cohesive approach, it can pay off.
Finding Suitable Domain Names Online
These secondary domains for redirects can pay off if you and your team use them wisely. At best, these alternative sites will increase traffic to your primary domain and capitalize on other people’s mistakes. At worst, they can sit there doing very little until the day you need to expand your promotional tools or regional services. So, go and see what domain names are available via a domain name search engine and purchase as many as you can. It might sound extreme when there are better SEO strategies right now, but it could work in your favor.
