By Michael Dorausch, D.C.
Depending on goals with your chiropractic websites, you can do a 301 or 302 redirect. What? That was from a conversation I had yesterday with a chiropractor in Southern California regarding a situation where he owns more than one chiropractic website but is only hosting one of them. He had thoughts on what to do with his second chiropractic website.
I’ve had this question from chiropractors before and in answering, I blogged about chiropractic domain names in 2002, and again several times throughout the years. Eight years later the question still comes up as to what should be done with the chiropractors other website, or websites.
Chiropractic Nutrition Domain Screenshot
The article titled Chiropractic Domain Practices – 301 Redirects specifically gets into what one can do when the situation comes up. For those planning to do so, there’s also a link for an excellent resource on how to properly implement a 301 redirect.
There are a lot more chiropractic websites and domains on the Internet than there was in 2002, and even though it seems everybody’s gotten focused on Facebook and Twitter, owning a chiropractic website still has its value. While the two of us were talking about redirection of domain names, the topic of registering a good chiropractic domain also came up. Contrary to what anybody may be saying, all the good names are not necessarily gone. In the case of promoting chiropractic specifically, a “good” domain may not always be essential. Take for example this chiropractic.com chiropractic website. On first glance, I didn’t notice the A, and I’ve found it’s not that uncommon.
Take the thinking in which a domain that doesn’t include the word chiropractic would not rank well for chiropractic searches and I’ll point out to you that the term exists nowhere in the planetc1.com domain. The c1 was short for the first cervical vertebrae, or atlas, but there is no way a search engine was going to put together [planet + 1st cervical vertebrae] and figure that equals chiropractic.
It’s likely you already have a chiropractic domain with the name of your practice or the location of your practice, and maybe you have one sitting around that describes you as an affordable chiropractor or answers the questions such as what does a chiropractor do?
I like affordable, as it’s not limited to location. When it comes to a domain like “what does a chiropractor do” there are numerous potentials. It’s a long domain and it’s not the easiest to spell (due to the multiple words all being crunched together) but it sets an example for opportunities where websites can answer questions like how much does a chiropractor make?
What about using the shortened version of chiropractic? In my experience, only those familiar with the industry of chiropractic know that Chiro is short for Chiropractic. I like the shortened domains but the average consumer may have a difficult time understanding what the term actually means. Now if your domain is specifically geared towards chiropractors, like in the case of chiropractic coaching (chirocoach.com) then that may work out just peachy.
If you own more than one chiropractic domain (even if you only own one domain) be on the lookout for questionable domain name expiration notices. I’ve seen them come in all shapes and sizes, by mail, by fax, and by e-mail. In nearly 100% of cases I can recall, the information regarding renewals was questionable, meaning the information wasn’t coming from where I purchased the domain. It was a case where some entity was trying to get my money and have me transfer my domain elsewhere, typically at a greatly inflated cost.
I almost forgot to mention other TLD’s (top-level domains) besides dot com chiropractic websites. If you can’t get a dot com registered, there are times when a .net or .org or .info will suffice. Take the case of 4chiropractic, it’s a .net domain and it also has a number in it. Not the highest on the value chart but the number 4 is commonly used to replace the word “for” so it’s okay to be creative and say I’m all 4 chiropractic.
Other TLD domains for the field of chiropractic are available in the hundreds of thousands, when you think about the combinations of words and phrases that could be used with ending domain letters. That being said I’m not crazy about domains like chiropracticnewjersey.info more because of the extension rather than the name of the domain. Maybe things will change in the future, but as of 2010 I’d still value my domains in the order of .com, .org, .net. After that it’s a crapshoot of .us, .biz, .me, and a growing multitude of others.
Hope this was helpful, happy times with your chiropractic website!
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