There has been much speculation over the last few years on the growing importance of domain name portfolio management in relation to an enterprises success. When you cut through all the noise, what is the actual value of new gTLD’s for businesses?
The Benefits:
1. SEO
Domain names are an essential competent to a business’s online visibility or in other words, it’s SEO. Everyday vast amounts of data and information are added to the great information reservoir that is the worldwide web. In order to optimise search results, Google and other search engines need to consistently develop innovative parameters to qualify web content. Increasingly, search engines are using the duration or longevity of a domain name registration to identify best suited content as generally, invalid websites have short, temporary domain registrations. Therefore, proactive monitoring and renewal of your existing domain name portfolio is crucial to your brand’s SEO.
Enhance your Market Share
In contrast to large marketing budgets, the low cost of branding using gTLD’s will ultimately benefit your brand’s bottom line. The new gTLD program should be embraced by marketing professionals as it allows for the segmentation of your customer base. The new gTLD program allows for marketeers to create targeted, personalised campaigns. Optimising your domain name portfolio therefore is a winning recipe in terms of ROI.
Community Hubs
Expanding your domain name portfolio also allows brand’s to further enhance their relationship with their target markets through creating community TLD’s, for example .eco, .sport, .kids. Community hubs or online communities are increasingly trending in the digital space and present great potential value to scaling businesses. Customer loyalty and trust is fostered when brand’s synchronise with their customers’ beliefs and perspectives. Developing your domain name portfolio to facilitate new community TLD’s will further enhance this dynamic and ultimately benefit your brand identity.
Web Traffic
Every day, thousands of prospective customers or clients may be redirected away from your website. Typo-squatters deliberately purchase domain names that are similar to your brand’s domain name with the hope that a certain number of Internet users will mis-spell or incorrectly type the name of a website (or actually it’s URL) when surfing the web.
The online antidote to removing the threat of web traffic diversions, is simply to register as many variations of your domain name and link it back to your website. By registering such misspellings, you stop third parties leveraging your brands identity and also potentially gain new customers.
Grow Your Market Share with IDN’s
With ICANN’S release of new domain names over the past few years, the potential for opportunistic domain squatters to harness your brands identity for their benefit is increased. Defensive registrations of new domains will combat this threat. Consider registering a multitude of domain name extensions in the global marketplace. This includes IDN’s or internationalised domain names (Domain names presented in the native alphabet/script)
This will guarantee that your domain names and digital assets are safeguarded. It also will serve to maximise your brands visibility. Ensure you register all your marks with the Trademark ClearingHouse to avoid potential trademark infringement.
Acquiring professional assistance in managing your domain name portfolio should be viewed as an investment in the success of your brand. Consulting with domain name portfolio specialists’ is strongly recommended in light of increases in ‘predatory pricing’ in sunrise registration periods.
In some case pricing in sunrise periods has escalated to extreme highly inflated prices (for instance, over 50 times what the general availability price is). Brand owners would be advised to consult with experts in the field of domain name registration and brokerage who will liaise directly with the registries in question.
dotNice – Experts in Digital Brand Protection.
