Multiple Domain Names
by Ray Cobb
The use of multiple domain names for marketing purposes is not really unusual in larger businesses. For instance a multi national company with dozens of branded products is likely to have a parent site with individual sites (and probably domain names) for each brand. This is quite reasonable as it is the easiest way for a viewer to find the information about a particular brand without being faced with an enormous menu of products on a single home page.
When I first joined Coffin Mew & Clover five years ago I realised that we could be facing the same problem with our website www.coffinmew.co.uk, so I started to investigate purchasing relevant domain names for different parts of our business. The firm, one of the larger regional firms on the south coast, has over 200 personnel and provides a wide range of legal services to businesses, organisations and individuals. As well as ‘traditional’ areas of law, the firm has several ‘niche’ areas of practice which I believed could provide the ideal opportunity to begin this branding process.
Over the last four years we have registered around 30 domain names with a view to eventually using these ‘brand’ names as individual sites for specific client needs.
In this article, I highlight two of the domain names that we use in our marketing activities – www.thisismodus.co.uk and www.insuranceregulation.co.uk - to illustrate our thinking. At present we do not register every domain name on the search engines, but we do point them at specific pages on our website (not all to the home page). As well as the two domain names mentioned above, some of the others include: www.wrongdiagnosis.co.uk, which links directly to the Clinical Negligence area and www.helpyouplan.co.uk, which links to the Wills Probate and Trusts section.
Methods of redirection
Technically this is fairly straightforward. There are two main methods - DNS redirection and HTTP redirection. DNS redirection requires the use of IP addresses rather than domain names. IP addresses only exist at site level, so a domain name (such as www.thisismodus.co.uk) could only be redirected to the IP address of www.coffinmew.co.uk. This is the most efficient method from a purely redirection point of view, since the end user gets redirected before even hitting the web server but all the redirects go to the home page, which may not be what the site owner wants.HTTP redirection, also known as web server redirection or URL forwarding, allows for redirection to specific pages. On entering the specified URL in the address bar the user is redirected to the web server, which in turn forwards the user to a specific page. This is the method we use. These redirections are set up by our Internet Service Provider directly in the configuration files for the web server. HTTP redirections can be set to temporary or permanent. By default they are temporary, known as a ‘302 redirect’.
We use a ‘302’ redirection because it will allow us to remove the redirection at some point in the future when we are in a position to run the site independently. We believe that this is also a very ‘Google friendly’ method.
The redirection can also be made permanent (a 301 redirection) where required. ‘301’ types are better if the redirection is to be made permanent, as this type should allow Google to take existing rankings to the new site. This is the method we used when we switched ISP about a year ago when we changed our .asp pages to .htm.
Recently there have been some concerns about 302 redirections being ‘hijacked’. For the more technically minded, here is a brief outline of this issue. (Less technically minded people can skip this section).
The Google 302 redirect hijacking ‘problem’
Consider a Google automated traversal of your site - a visit by a so-called ‘googlebot’ which is looking to index your page content: It visits your home page and returns a snippet from it (“the cat on the mat”) for Google to add to its database and show in any results page for people searching on those words.Now consider what can happen if Google visits another site which has a temporary redirect (302) set up on it to go to your site:
Google still gets and stores the content from your site, but may under certain circumstances store the URL of the redirecting site as the source of the content instead of your site. The exact circumstances under which Google can be fooled are unknown but have been surmised to be most common where the redirecting page is more popular (i.e. has more Google ‘Page Rank’) than the real page. In other words, the redirecting site has ‘hijacked’ your content.
This gives rise to the potential for malign hijacking where Company A (who run a large popular site) could potentially host a series of 302 redirect pages to similarly-worded pages on Company B’s site. Company A could thus hijack the search results in Google and effectively make their competitors' site invisible.
Most 302 redirects are, however, made for good reasons, such as these:
• The page is part of a web application and redirects according to a series of user choices on a form, or as a result of a logon or shopping cart system
• The main site is down and a temporary one is being used
• The site is using a “clean URL” to mask a long ugly one, e.g. “www.site.com/files/help/docs/help?user=0&page=1” is being replaced by “www.site.com/help”.
Google maintain that ‘302 hijacking’ is not a problem and cannot affect the search results for your site.
Permanent 301 redirects do not suffer from this problem as they drop the redirecting page altogether, so no ‘hijacking’ can occur. 301 redirects should only be used where the redirection is genuinely permanent, such as where the site has moved and you wish to maintain your Google rankings.
Our special sites
In using a 302 redirection (and not relying purely on search engine results) we use a mix of traditional and electronic marketing methods to ‘point’ clients at particular areas relating to E-briefs, newsletters, brochures, letterheads and business cards for our particular services.Because of the way in which our website is constructed using a single background template (we have paid particular attention to WCAG/DDA compliancy) it is set up in such a way that we couldn’t totally change the look of the whole page, but have used the page to ‘brand’ a particular service.
MODUS is our specialist training and consultancy for Registered Social Landlords. It is operated
through our Social Housing team drawing on the resources of many other lawyers in the firm,
as well as outside agencies.
At present www.thisismodus.co.uk points to a dedicated area for
MODUS. The redirect points at the MODUS ‘home’ page when the domain address is entered.
The area can be viewed as totally stand alone or as part of the overall site.
www.insuranceregulation.co.uk is used for a niche area of our practice. One of our partners, Malcolm Padgett, is a nationally recognised figure in the world of Insurance and Business regulation. He acts for the major insurers and his reputation is such that he is regularly asked to take part in major conferences. He uses this area to announce new regulations, warn of impending changes and generally inform people in the insurance world. We can monitor traffic visiting these areas very easily using our statistics program for the main website which identifies visitors to each page. Using these specific domains has been successful particularly when used in conjunction with marketing initiatives such as exhibitions, conferences and newsletters.
With so much technology now available at our fingertips, the firm has embraced the idea of new routes to market. Over the next few months we will be looking at pod-casts, community websites and other innovative ways to deliver information to market in a wide range of formats – ensuring a cohesive mix of traditional and technology based marketing initiatives.
Ray Cobb is Director of Marketing at Coffin Mew & Clover Solicitors,
www.coffinmew.co.uk.
He has twenty five years experience of designing and implementing pr and marketing strategies
for a wide range of clients including professional services, manufacturing, retail and security.
Email: raycobb@coffinmew.co.uk.
The technical content of this article has been written in conjunction with Bob Osala from the firm's ICT provider Taylor Made Computer Solutions (TMCS) of Fareham, Hampshire, www.tmcs.co.uk.
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