Why register a domain name with your toll free number?

[Tim Colling]

At one of my clients, the CEO instructed my counterpart (their Chief Strategy Officer) to register a domain name with their toll-free number, like this:

8001234567.com

...except that their toll-free number is different from those numbers.

They don't especially promote themselves nor brand themselves with that toll-free number, it's just the number for their inbound call center.

Is anyone aware of a valid SEO or other online marketing reason for doing that?

 

[Cherie Dickey]

That's a new one...

The only reason I can think of is to make sure they show up when someone searches for the phone number (wouldn't be effective, but he might be thinking it would be), or to protect the brand and prevent someone else from using that domain.

 

[Greg Schueler]

There would be zero SEO benefit of just registering the domain. Google doesn't index or show search results for registered domains. They would need to build a site (or a landing page) with the number on it to get it indexed. (But if the number is on their main site, then they probably already show up for a search of that number).

It could be used for marketing purposes if they wanted to use it in advertising and just redirect it to their site. But I would guess better results advertising their actual branded domain name.

 

[Conor Treacy]

There was an article I read last week about a company in China that didn't own their own brand name for their website, and instead, they purchased the phone number. Maybe they read the same article?

This company's domain name is a ten digit domain! - Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

A Chinese company uses its phone number as its domain name. I enjoy reading venture capital news. I also study some of the startups highlighted in the news to find out what domains these future business leaders are using and also what domains they may need to acquire. Seeing from the perspective...

domainnamewire.com

The only reason why I would consider registering it would be as @Cherie Dickey mentioned, and the protection of the brand.

I'd bet you'd still need to SEO it in some manner to get it to show in search results though.

 

[Tim Colling]

Thank you, everyone. Basically you are all saying what I thought as well: there's no SEO benefit.

 

[denis76682]

That's a new one...

The only reason I can think of is to make sure they show up when someone searches for the phone number (wouldn't be effective, but he might be thinking it would be), or to protect the brand and prevent someone else from using that domain.

This is true