If you own a domain name, you need to look after it. As we move to increased digital adoption both through and after the pandemic years your domain names have become increasingly important and valuable. Your domain name is your business – It can reflect the marketing focus for your entire business.
Consider for a moment all the places your domain name is used. It’s on your business cards, your brochures, your website, your adverts on Facebook, or billboards, and most importantly your email. There is also a deeper layer as well that many fail to truly appreciate.
Your domain name and website may have been around for years. Your website will have built up so many external relationships and links over the years you have been in business. All the business activities that you have had with your business since you started. You have spent years building up your digital presence – and many other websites may have liked the content you have produced over the years and have linked to your website as a result.
Your domain name is the digital beating heart of your business. Imagine therefore what would happen if you lost your domain name because you forgot to renew on time.
There are three key things that could happen if you forget to renew your domain name
1. Someone else could register it.
If you do not renew your domain name, almost anyone else is free to register it. There is an entire industry of people queuing up to “cyber squat” domain names – just waiting for them to expire. If there’s a business or competitor that has their eye on your domain, they could scoop it up as soon as it becomes available. Once they have re-registered it in their name, there is little that can be done to stop them from using it for their own website or setting up a redirect to their own site. That means all of your website’s traffic may go to them instead of you, and you may have to start from scratch to build up your online presence again.
2. Your email will stop working.
If you have email addresses that use your domain name (e.g., info@example.com), those addresses will stop working as soon as your registration expires. Just think how many people in your organisation will be affected. If you lose your domain name, you’ll need to switch to a new email address, a major inconvenience for both you and your clients. Not to mention, you could lose all of the emails that were sent to that address after your registration lapsed but before you switched to a new address.
3. Your website could disappear.
As soon as your registration expires, your website will not be visible on the internet. Anyone who tries to visit your site will see an error page. And just like with email, you could lose all of the content on your site (like blog posts and images). If you’ve built up a significant online presence, how much time would it take you to rebuild everything from scratch?
Domain name lapses are more common than you might think—but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. If you let your domain registration lapse, someone else could swoop in and register it, which would allow them to control your website’s traffic and create all sorts of problems for you and your business.
Help is here!
In order to help you with automated reminders for renewal, Manage My Renewals helps you manage your renewals efficiently and effectively by automatically sending you multiple reminders about your subscriptions, vehicle renewals, insurance, and other business renewals. Get your free 30-day trial today
