Some interesting and far reaching developments are afoot in the complex, slightly curious world of Internet domain names. For more than a decade, we’ve all become used to domain names that end in letters such as .com, .co.uk, .net or in our own case .biz.
However, the Internet addressing system appears to be on the brink of its most radical overhaul since the inception of the World Wide Web of which, more later. From a B2B marketing standpoint, the jury is still out on exactly what kind of opportunity the proposed opening up of the Internet to create hundreds more name endings will represent.
Regardless of how things pan out over the next 12 months, this would appear an opportune time to address the topic of domain names generally. Issues such as what makes a compelling domain name, the consequences of changing domain and the relationship between domain name and brand are increasingly being addressed at boardroom level. B2B Marketing spoke to a number of SEO experts and marketers to try and answer some of these pressing questions.
Generic top level domains
Before going into such issues, however, it’s worth looking at some rather interesting goings on that have been taking place in California, USA, in recent months. There resides a body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In an era when the Internet’s influence and power grows by the day, this decidedly low-key, not-for-profit organisation is in a position of huge strategic importance, given that its core role is overseeing the Internet’s domain naming system.
Presently there are 21 generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). These are the familiar extensions that come after the dot such as .co.uk, .com, .net, .org and so on. Recently, however, ICANN has submitted proposals to introduce 200-800 new domain name extensions with the aim of introducing more ‘innovation, choice and openness to the Internet’. These extensions could include pretty much anything a company might want and has, on the face of it, huge marketing possibilities.
So what’s the thinking behind this potentially monumental change, and what if anything should marketing folk be doing to prepare for it? If you look in the dotcomspace as an example, it can be hard these days to register anything that is a new name, which is why you get these convoluted expressions, says Paul Levins, ICANN’S executive officer and vice president corporate affairs. This expansion of the generic domain space is an effort to provide the most open platform possible.
Levins points to significant interest from a number of consortiums to register new gTLDs.
Geographic names might include .nyc, .berlin, .London and so forth as cities look to promote themselves in a more localised way. Community names might include .eco, .green or .science to provide specific portals representing certain interests. And then there are the branding and marketing opportunities for businesses.
Imagine the power of having your brand at the top level of the Internet eg. (insert your brand here), says Levins.
No cheap feat
There is another side to this story. Applying for a new domain will cost an estimated £130,000, with an additional £50,000-a-year fee to keep the domain registered in the DNS root zone. An extensive consultation process has been carried out by ICANN with big businesses, governments, the public and other stakeholders. This has ultimately led to the timetable for applications for new gTLDs being put back to the end of 2009, at the earliest.
Protecting your brand
And not everybody is happy. Charlie Abrahams is vice president and general manager at Mark Monitor, which works with many major bluechips, helping to protect them against brand abuse on the web. The risk of opening up domain names in the way ICANN has proposed, he suggests, is that many brands will feel compelled to start thinking defensively about registering a whole set of new names for their brand.
This is hardly the most enticing of prospects for brands that have spent years building web portals around the original gTLDs. Indeed, this opening up of the risk of domain fraud has been one of the main criticisms levelled at ICANN’s proposals.
However, Abrahams believes that with these risks also come opportunities.
If, as a brand, you could pull it off and over a period of time convince clients to recognise that .[your name] was the genuine place to reach you, then you could potentially have a 100 per cent secure piece of Internet and a lower cost, he says.
But what about the aforementioned fraud issues? In answering this question, it is worth considering another important point Abrahams makes, namely that such a high percentage of domain name registrations presently are where brands are acting defensively.
He suggests the money spent on these defensive registrations might be better spent on proactive monitoring and protecting their brands or trademarks online.
With the right level of protection Abrahams believes that the big winners may be those brands who go for it and make the transition. For a company that is marketing savvy, there could be the opportunity to do lots of clever stuff on the Internet, creating communities and personal spaces for clients.
Others aren’t so sure, and on an anecdotal level there appears to be a certain amount of caution about ICANN’s plans, with many brands adopting a wait-and-see approach. Duncan Parry, Steak Digital’s deputy managing director, suggests that some of the newer domain name endings don’t have a lot of consumer recognition and trust.
Illustrating his point, Parry says the .travel domain name was launched a few years ago, adding, I can’t think of any company that uses .travel.
Much of the reservation expressed by B2B marketers centres on the issue of change. Put simply, changing domain names is time consuming, expensive and not for the faint hearted.
Speaking generally about changing domains, Lisa Ditlefsen, a director at Verve Search says, If your domain is older than five years I would just say don’t do it. It is too important from an SEO and branding point of view. If you have a big site this is going to cost you a lot of money, not just to transfer the domain, but also to buy the new domain and redirect all the old pages to new pages. Ditlefsen suggests such a task is a monumental undertaking, chiefly for technical reasons.
Shifting away from ICANN’s far-reaching proposals and looking more generally at domain names and the associated marketing issues that go with them, some B2B marketers suggest there are numerous, easier to implement, tactical initiatives that brands could think about vis-à-vis their website.
SEO is not the only issue
Before addressing a couple of these, it is worth considering the unavoidable issue of SEO and the relationship between this and domain names. Adam Bunn, senior SEO consultant with Greenlight, says, The domain name is one factor search engines look at out of many.
Asked about the importance of the domain name itself, Bunn says, While it can be useful to match your domain to search demand in competitive arenas, certainly it is not so important that SEO is the only consideration when buying a domain name. This is particularly true with B2B where there is (generally) not much search volume, so if you try and match a domain name to search demand the gains will be small. There is also not a great deal of competition, so ranks are easier to come by even if your domain has nothing to do with the search term.
It is also worth mentioning in the context of SEO that a number of people have questioned whether proposed new gTLDs by ICANN would be ‘trusted’ by search engines.
Richard Sunderland, managing director of Heavenly, also suggests the domain name itself is not overly important. He says, Having a more distinctive name would make it far more likely to secure a URL and trademark for your brand than having something generic. Meanwhile, SEO is more important than what your brand is called.
More practical steps that brands can carry out in relation to their domain include the increasingly popular use of mobile domain names.
Andrew Stout, managing director at digital agency Dolphin, argues that, all organisations should be looking to register a mobile domain name and ensure their websites are mobile compatible.
Stout also suggests that microsites are another invaluable tool for those who want to get more mileage out of their existing domain.
He proposes that microsites have a personalised domain name to allow a campaign to be tracked more accurately.
Finally, a note of caution if going down the microsite route, make sure you don’t leave it languishing in cyberspace when you’ve finished with it.
I have seen businesses launch campaign sites that last a few weeks or months and leave them up, says Parry.
They have content on about products or brands that they have spent time and money on which is out of date. The best thing to do is either re-direct the site so that the email traffic is linked to go to your main site, or keep it up to date.
