A political campaign’s domain name is the ultimate expression of online branding. As a candidate, you should try to choose a clean, succinct domain that is adaptable for print and potentially reusable for future campaigns.
With this in mind, we don’t recommend using the year or office sought in the name. In fact, the candidate’s name or variant (johnsmith.com or votejohnsmith.com) is often the best choice for a political domain name.
While choosing a good political domain name is important for campaign branding, there are a few things that all candidates should know about domains and how they work.
You don’t own your political campaign domain name
That’s right. Even though you’ve bought and paid for a domain name, you don’t actually own it. Instead, you are renting the name from the registrar company for as many years as you pay for it. If you stop paying your domain registration fees, anyone else can step in, register the name, and point it to another website.
Tips for choosing the best domain for your political campaign
- A .com extension is standard, even for political websites. It’s what people type in automatically, by habit.
- If you want to use a .org domain extension, make sure you get the .com version and redirect it.
- Avoid using a year or elected position because times change and so do your political aspirations.
- Don’t make the name too long. It should be easy to type and easy to read.
- How does the name read? Some letter combinations can make words or cause it to be difficult to say.
- Can the name be matched to your social media profiles? Consistency is best for voter branding.
You can also pick political TLD extensions like .republican or .democrat can be useful for specific purposes. They are best used for targeting specific voters, and are often redirected to another name, like a .com.
Note: Don’t confuse your domain name with website hosting. The two are separate. You can host a website anywhere. A registered domain name simply points to the specific server where your site is hosted.
Watch out for misspellings and potential typos
Typosquatting is big business. Early in the 2020 presidential campaign, Digital Shadows detected over 550 typo-squats for the 34 presidential candidate and election-related domains. Most of the time, the domains were simply parked and not hosting any content.
Cybersquatting is when someone registers a domain that infringes on another’s intellectual property, name or trademark. Some squatters attempt to sell names back to rightful owners for a profit. However, most political cybersquatters use fake domains to deceive voters online.
If your name is hard to spell, consider getting additional domain names to cover potential misspellings. These variations might be a nicknames, initials or a shortened version of the name. Some candidates may have many domain names that cover all of their possible misspellings. Most of the time, you won’t need to go that far.
When you have multiple domains, you don’t need a separate site for each of them. You can alias, or direct, the names to a single site.
Register campaign slogan and promotion names
Consider registering your campaign slogan or important candidate catch phrases, especially if you promote them heavily. If you are not careful, an opponent or a PAC can snatch them up and use the potential traffic for their own use.
In 2019, the Donald Trump campaign bought the domain name ‘todosconbiden.com‘ after the Joe Biden team promoted the Spanish phrase, “Todos Con Biden” to start their Latino voter outreach. When people visited the site, it showed a picture of Biden, with a message that said, “Oops, Joe forgot about Latinos. Joe is all talk.” Then a Trump campaign ‘paid for’ message appeared, and visitors a were redirected to the “Latinos For Trump” official site.
If the Registrant is not you, then you don’t control your domain
We always tell potential clients that we register their domain in their name, not ours. For whatever reason, that surprises a lot of people. It could be because it never occurred to them that when it comes to political domain names, the Registrant is important.
Actually, the registrant is critical.
If you are not listed as the Registrant of your domain, then you do not have control over the name. This can be problem with services that allow you to ‘instantly’ register your domain through them. This is how some services ‘lock’ you in; they register the domain name for you as Registrar. But then if you want to leave their service, they won’t let you transfer the domain to another host.
In the end, you have to abandon your original name because it was registered under the service – and they maintain control over it.
Many website owners are surprised to find out they don’t own their domain name when they attempt to change it or leave their hosting service. This is a trick that unscrupulous webmasters often play to keep clients from leaving.
The lesson: Be sure that YOUR domain name is registered with YOU listed as the Registrant owner. With an Online Candidate website, the client is always listed the Registrant. It’s the client’s domain, and they should have the final control over it.
Secure your domain before printing brochures and signs
Be sure to register your political domain name BEFORE any print material or campaign signs are ordered. It can be very embarrassing to advertise a website that does not exist! To solve the problem, we’ve had clients who have had to print stickers to place on brochures to cover up the wrong information.
Even if you do not have a website ready to go, you can put up a ‘coming soon’ message on the home page.
If you want to get your website and domain at the same time, we include domain name registration with our website packages. Again, we always register the names with the client as Registrant.
Register your domain name before you print any political brochures or signs.
You may start getting spam and unsolicited offers
When you register a domain name, the contact and registrant information listed for your domain name is made public. This is per the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls domain registration.
The problem is that your public information very quickly attracts spammers and phone solicitors offering to sell you bogus domain listing and other web services. Nobody likes that. And nobody likes having their personal contact information being public.
Domain privacy can help keep the spam away
This is a way to stop this, however. When you purchase Domain Privacy (or ID Protect) services with your domain, the Whois database lists a generic name, mailing address, and phone number instead of your personal information. That means the information related to who owns the domain is hidden. You still have full control over your domain, but no will be able to tell who controls your domain. This can be handy in any situation, but particularly for political campaigns.
Note: We offer a Domain Privacy option as part of our registration services.
But the fun doesn’t end with registration. When you domain is about to expire and your contact information is still public, you may end up getting a lot of notices from companies you may not recognize.
If an expiration notice is not from your original registrar company, especially if it is via snail mail, ignore it. Some unscrupulous companies try to get you to renew with their own company at a much higher renewal price than you would otherwise pay.
Tip: Keep a record of your domain information, and mark your calendar for your renewal date.
Starting over can set you back
Letting your campaign website go dark after an election means that all those links, search engine rankings, social media links and potential website traffic that you created in the run-up to your election will then have nowhere to go. If you campaign during the next election cycle with a new domain name and site, you would be essentially starting from scratch. All the effort you invested building up your previous site would be wasted.
If you let your domain name lapse, someone else may snatch it up. This can be another individual or even a domain brokerage company. They’ll be glad to sell the name back to you for a good amount of money – maybe. You may also find that your old domain name points to a website that you have no control over.
Unless you are sure that you will never want to use your political domain again, then consider paying the nominal fee to keep it in your control.
- FREE DOWNLOAD: Political Domains and Hosting – What You Need To Know
- Alternate Domain Names for Campaign Websites
- Political Domain Squatting
Online Candidate websites includes a FREE .com domain name. We have four affordable website packages, including custom design and our $29 monthly option.
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