Renew Your Domain Names
There isn’t much chance that your institution will stop using its .edu domain name, but sometimes we register special domains for a marketing campaign, admissions push or other purpose.
Often, after a campaign has completed, or your marketing materials move on to the next theme and message, those old domains are left lying around, often with residual value, search engine wise and brand recognition wise. Even though you might not be using them, it’s worth the $8 or whatever the cost is at a registrar like GoDaddy to keep them. Here’s an example.
A local cultural institution had used the same web address for years. Pretty much every tourism, educational, news and entertainment site linked to them, including my college. A year or two ago, their new marketing materials pointed people to a new domain, but they were smart and left the old one in place for all the legacy links floating around the interwebs.
Then they did the unthinkable. They didn’t renew that old domain. And guess what? It was grabbed up by someone else. I’ll give you a wild guess what kind of site grabbed it?
Yep. Porn.
On paper, it’s smart. That link has a ton of Google juice from sites with a lot authority in the eyes of Google – colleges, universities, newspapers and so on. It’s got instant page rank and existing search placements, especialy for terms like the institutions name.
In reality, it’s a pain because now I’ve got to go through and find all the links, and of course, many are on pages I don’t have access to. I’m not alone either – lots of other sites have to now go through their sites and make fixes.
The moral of the story – even if you are done with a domain name and a marketing push, renew that domain name. It’s cheap to do, is good for your institution, and saves your fellow web developers a bit of work.
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Ooooooh…that’s gotta hurt.
Thats painful. I personally run a domain registrar (blueballdomains.com) and I try to get everyone to take their domain out for 10 years because of things like this. The problem is, you have to be careful who you use as an example and also not to overly scare the customer. Domains can be purchased for 10 years for under $100 (if not, your at the wrong registrar). Don’t skimp on your name, because you WILL regret it later.
Mike,
I’d agree that your argument is flawed from the start. I’ve been meaning to write the post for a while now, but I believe that EVERYTHING you do should be on ONE DOMAIN. If you keep all this on as few domains as possible then you don’t have to worry about this problem. I won’t go into a big thing here as I just need to write the post, but what’s wrong with setting up a subdomain for a campaign?
Kyle, I’m not advocating the use of multiple domains. But – it happens out here quite a bit. I’m saying if you are going to go that route, be sure to keep managing those domains after you stop using them.
The case is strong for not using them though – branding value, better analytics, the SEO an edu domain can bring you as opposed to a .com and on and on. I think it also dimishes the value of your marketing campaign and could be confusing if you’re advertising an entirely different domain name, one that often doesn’t even have your school’s name in it
We went through that here, and I was overruled, sadly. Now, I have to watch that domain name for years in the future.
@Mike – Lol, all the key points I would make. Looks like I better get on that article ASAP because you just wrote half of it.
Have a great 4th weekend! Two weeks until eduWEB.