What kind of domain name should a business acquire?

The business name (of course) - The simplest thing to do is to simply get name of your business as a domain name. If you cannot get .COM version, check for .NET, .ORG, .BIZ or .INFO versions. This is domain name that would typically be used for marketing and branding purposes.

Hyphenated business name - You can also get hyphenated business name, if name is two or more words long. You should only get this if (a) name is not available in it's unhyphenated version or (b) you bought non-hyphenated version as well. It's not a good idea to get only hyphenated version, as this is not something customers normally type in URLs. It is, however, a good idea to purchase hyphenated version in addition to non-hyphenated version as sometimes people do type in hyphens.

Keyword domain names - Another option is to purchase domain names which are keywords which match search engine keywords. For example, if your site sells candy, you could get domain name candy-chocolate-lollipops.com, candychocolatelollipops.com or something like that. Some search engines do use keywords within domain names to boost ratings of a site. Some companies like these types of domain names - personally, I feel they are a little tacky and unprofessional.

Product Names - One possible strategy is to purchase domain names for each different product or product classification that you want. You could then set up separate, distinct sites for each of these.

Product Lines - If you company sells distinctly difference product lines, you might want to create different sites for each of them. In this case, you will want different domain names for each one.

Business Units - I've seen some companies which purchase a domain name for each of their different business units.

Other Reasons

There are other reasons to purchase a domain name.

Keeping others from getting name - Sometimes it's important to purchase a domain name just so someone else will not get it. In this case you might want to purchase "yourcompanysucks.com" and variations of same (AOL found out hard way about importance of this some years ago).

Search Engine Optimization - I've heard that some people purchase a lot of different keyword-style domain names with objective of linking them all together. This serves to convince search engines link Google that keywords in domain names should appear higher in listings. This is a gray area, as it may be considered search engine spamming.

If you use this method, be sure it's honest and sincere. Do NOT do this to spam search engines (in fact, to be perfectly safe, set your metatags to stop robots from indexing those pages). These are not intended for search engines - these pages are intended for focused marketing campaigns.

Regional content - If your site has regional content, you might purchase specific domain names to focus on that content. For example, if you had a stamp collection site, you could purchase "my-stamps.to" for Tonga related stamps, "my-stamps.us" for United States stamps and so on. You could also keep it simpler and purchase "my-tonga-stamps.com" for your general site, "my-english-stamps.com" for your English stamps and so on. These should also use 301 redirects to keep specific domain names from being indexed.

Uses for .NAME TLD - You might even consider purchase .name TLD for your senior managers. Put up simple web sites about them, with links to your main site. These SHOULD be indexed in search engines, as you want people to find them if they are looking for information about your personnel.

Don't forget email - Remember you can get email on each and every one of domains that your purchase. In fact, this is a great reason to purchase additional domain names - people can send you email by different means. So be sure to set up email for each and every domain to go to a general, "catch-all" account. It's a good idea, though, to heavily spam-filter this account as it can collect a huge amount of junk.

Subdomains - This is a great way to get much of benefit of above listed techniques without purchasing additional domain names. It does require a little more control of your DNS entries, however, as most ISPs and web hosts will not be willing to do these kinds of things for you.

In this case, you could define "housekeeping.com" as primary domain, then "cleaning.housekeeping.com", "sewing.housekeeping.com" and "cooking.housekeeping.com" as subdomains. You should continue to use 301 redirects to keep search engines from indexing these pages.

Renewals - Don't forget to renew all of these domains each year. At least examine each one when renewal time comes and consciously decide whether or not you need domain. Don't let them expire without your knowledge. Someone else may then benefit from your hard work.

Other people's mistakes - Sometimes you might find that domain you want is not available. In this case, take a look at WHOIS record and see when it expires. Set up a reminder for 30 days from this date and every week or so thereafter. On those days, try and purchase domain. Quite often, (especially these days) you may be surprised to find domain has become available.

Other TLD systems - Companies such as new.net are offering many more pseudo-TLDs such as .SHOP and .XXX to general public. I would avoid these new systems like plague. These are at best bad ideas and at worst scams. They are attempts to supercede official internet standard TLD system by companies with questionable motivations. They all require browser plug-ins or other customizations to work, and some of them come piggy-backed with spyware and other malicious applications.

These alternate TLDs do not get indexed in search engines, and they may conflict with future TLDs added in official domain name structure (and thus become useless). On top of that, they are extremely expensive.

In my opinion, it is critical that internet domain name structure remain under control of a central governing body. While this body (currently ICANN) is not operating as desired by majority, it's still much better being under one umbrella than splintering this all over place.

Straight TCP/IP address - I am always surprised to come across a site which is listed in search engines, ezines and other promotions as a straight TCP/IP address. This is not only tacky and a sign of a spammer, it's not very intelligent as well. If you do this and move your site (changing it's IP), you will lose all of traffic that you have so painfully gained.

Conclusions - The point is that owning more than one domain has many uses, although it is no longer of much value from a search engine optimization viewpoint. Instead, you can use other domain names to fulfill other types of marketing and to attract people from specific markets to your site.