Protect Your Brand with Domain Names

Article by Pierre Zarokian.

If you do not already own many different variations of the domain name for your brand, including versions with dashes and different popular TLD’s (i.e. .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc.), then you need to at least register some of them right away. There are now hundreds of TLD’s available, so how do you know what to get?

The most popular of course is “.com,” with second and 3rd most popular being “.net” and “.org.”  However, if you are in a profession where certain new TLD’s have been launched for your industry then consider getting them. For example, if you are an attorney, then get : .attorney, .law and .legal.

There are also TLD’s for “.sucks” and “.reviews” which you may consider getting. My recommendation is also to grab you .com domain name with the addition of words such as “sucks” and “reviews” at the end. The purpose of this would be to prevent someone else from getting them and launching a site with negative content about you.  But in addition, anyone searching for your brand with these types of words may see these rank higher, so you can get some positive content on them.

It is well known that keywords in domain names are ranking factors within major search engines, so having these types of domains and launching sites on them are good methods to combat a negative reputation.

Additionally, launching sub-domain websites on some popular blog platforms would also be beneficial, as these may rank easily due to the power of the root domain. For example, you can launch “yourname.wordpress.com” or “yourname.tumblr.com.”

However, please note that simply launching a duplicate of your main site on extra domains would not be beneficial, as Google normally will filter out duplicate content with their Duplicate Content filter. To properly do this, you would need each of these extra sites to have unique content about your brand, and then engage in SEO and link building practices.