How many print ads will you have between today and the end of December? Will you be able to track the effectiveness of those print ads?
Every week, because I'm the domain manager for hundreds of domain names, I receive several random domain name solicitations.
There are many companies out there that are trying to make a living by convincing website owners to buy additional domain names because they propose it will be good for Google's search results.
For example, since my office is in Totowa, and since I own the domain name perosijewelers.com, I once received an offer to buy the domain name totowaengagementrings.com. The solicitation specifically said that the exact phrase "Totowa engagement rings" would help with my Google ranking.
To be clear, this technique is NOT VALID ANYMORE. In fact, Google is more likely to squash your ranking when you use an exact phrase as your domain name.
Searches for "Totowa engagement rings" simply won't lead people to that domain name.
ON THE OTHER HAND...
I do suggest planning for, and scooping up various domain names that you can then use in offline marketing.
The domain "totowaengagementrings.com" could be used in print ads if you are willing to track the people who go to that website.
Let's say that I did actually own a jewelry store, and that my normal domain name was perosijewelers.com. Over the next 5 weeks I could run a newspaper ad that has the domain totowaengagementrings.com instead of my normal perosijewelers.com.
That alternative domain name would then redirect to www.perosijewelers.com/totowa where I could clearly track the number of visitors. That tracking would clearly measure how good my newspaper ads are.
So, bottom line is that those alternative domain names are good for offline advertising, but bad for online advertising. I do recommend that you buy a dozen or more alternative domains and use them in different offline ads.
Even though this is a last minute idea, registering domain names and setting up this type of tracking is something your website programmer could accomplish in 1 day. You still have time to use this technique for this year's holiday print ads.
