This chapter will cover:
- Whether you need multiple websites/domains
- The risks and benefits of having one main domain
It’s common for a brand to expand its products/services beyond what it was originally set up to do.
This is usually a great business move, but sometimes it can lead to the proliferation of websites, for example:
- samanthasmithcakes.com.au originally, but then this can lead to
- samanthasmithpastries.com.au and then when she becomes a YouTube celebrity even
- samanthasmithmerch.com.au.
Why would someone have separate domains?
| Reason | The reality |
|---|---|
| Direct traffic: maybe people would find it easy to type the variants into their browser directly? | But if you think about it, the reverse is true, once you start thinking about variations your domain names get longer and harder to remember/type. Furthermore, this leads to brand dilution which would make your brand less memorable. For the example above, is it clear to everyone that the 3 websites belong to the same Samantha Smith? |
| Exact domain match: for example wouldn’t having ‘cakes’ in your domain name make it easier to rank for searches for cakes and same for ‘pastries’ and so on? | While this may have been a factor once upon a time, it’s not really a ranking signal. It’s been known since at least 2015 that your domain name doesn’t give you some magic ranking signal – and why would search engines give weight to something so easy to game? |
| Linking reasons: maybe I can interlink all of my domains together to increase my rankings? | This was always against search engine guidelines but it also hasn’t worked for well over a decade. Leave it be.Also it’s very hard to interlink multiple domains so that real users find it easy to navigate between them. As we’ll see, it’s hard enough creating a good navigation structure; once it needs to cover multiple domains it becomes much harder. |
| Logistics reasons: if the different domains are doing different things you might be hosting them on different platforms, each of them suited to what the website is. For Samantha the cakes website could be on WordPress if it’s brochure-like but maybe the merch store is on Shopify since it takes actual payments. | This is understandable but we still don’t recommend it. It might be harder to set up a website that does the core things you would like it to do but it’s not impossible. Plus it will pay off in the long-run. Also, splitting your brands means you end up paying multiple hosting providers and having to worry about maintenance and security of multiple domains, which adds time and headaches. |
When should you have separate domains?
The main reason to actually have multiple domains is if you have separate brand identities and names and ideally if these are also targeting different markets. Then a separation makes sense (in fact having them together might make the specific products and services less sticky.
Quick TipFactor in your future by asking yourself this question:
If I had to predict what new products/services I’ll be offering in 2-3 years, what would I guess?
This will help you forward-plan how many brands/websites you will need and minimise future changes.
If I had to predict what new products/services I’ll be offering in 2-3 years, what would I guess?
This will help you forward-plan how many brands/websites you will need and minimise future changes.
If you own multiple domains, fill out this table:
