As we’re regularly receiving enquiries from clients about calls or emails that they’ve received from third parties, we thought it might be timely to update you on some more top tips to keep control of your domain names.
We recently became aware of a scam involving cold-callers approaching our customers with “premium” domains that included keywords relevant to their business. It’s not the first time we’ve heard of this but the sums of money mentioned were extremely concerning.
The first thing to realise here is that these domains are unlikely to be of any more value than any other domains, and may well have either been registered just before the cold call takes place, or even likelier only at the point the customer is duped into placing the order.
If they are new domains or have recently been transferred, there will be a lock on the domains so you won’t be able to move them to your regular domain vendor for a period of up to 60 days, depending on registry. Getting control of the domains is therefore much more difficult.
Secondly, the value of content on your website is much more important than buying exact match domains featuring keywords that seem superficially relevant to your business. Pointing multiple keyword-stuffed domains to a website with poor quality content isn’t going to help your Google ranking. Writing better quality content will. Therefore buying such domains, especially at significant cost, is a waste of money.
Multiple domains are not a shortcut to success – it’s not hard to use Google to find numerous articles from SEO experts that make it absolutely clear that multiple domains are mostly bad for SEO. Sure, you might want to buy variations of a domain as a defensive move to prevent competitors infringing a trademark or brand name but there will come a point where you can’t cover all versions without incurring serious expense in renewals and serious time in keeping track.
Our advice in the event that you’re cold called and offered what seem like attractive domains would be to request some time to do research. See if the claims stack up, check if you could get the domains for less money elsewhere, and then if you’re able to actively choose your own domain vendor, you can keep close control of the domains into the bargain.
Whether you use Web Age or another accredited registrar, always make sure you can check the credentials of the company who will hold domain registrations on your behalf. We are Nominet tag holders so we’re fully responsible for registering domains for our customers in the .uk registry, and we work with OpenSRS, one of the largest accredited registrars in the world, for most other registries, so you can be assured you are only dealing with authorised registrars.
Be proactive and use our domain name checker tool on the Web Age clients area to search for domains and keep yourself safe from these scams. There’s no need to pay large fees – if you’re interested in a domain, check it out first and order it at the regular rate if it’s available. We can also source premium domains at a fair price, so contact us now if you would like to know more.