Domain Name Registration

What is a Domain Name?

Domain name registration is a bit of a thrill.  It’s like paddling madly on the boogie board of success…it’s the start of something big!  Domain name registration is the first step to having your own website – and here you are, so get kicking!

Domain name, URL name, AU domain, .Com domains, Aus domains, website address, the www bit... They’ve been called lot of things over the years but they all mean roughly the same thing, your website’s name. 

Choosing Your Domain Name

You’ll probably find that all the obvious ones are gone, so if you had your heart set on www.shopping.com – you might need to adjust your expectations, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get something memorable. 

Here are a few pointers for you:

• Choose easy spellings because hard spellings are hard to remember
   
• Where possible choose the au domain version.  Search engines will likely give Aus Domains preference and an .au domain requires an .au business name – so you will only compete with genuine businesses, not link farms and other spam sites.  Of course, for international traders, .com domains are best.
   
• Simplicity rules.  Domain names that contain five words are hard to remember and even harder to type.  Choose a two or maximum three word domain name.
   
• Include keywords where possible.  Knowing your keywords is the key to SEO success. 
  If you can create your URL from your keywords, that’s great, if not, you’ll need to work a little bit harder on SEO.
   
• Register and park (divert to your homepage) .net, .org, .biz and .com domain names too.  They’re cheap and could save you from domain name fraud or dirty competitor tricks down the line.  How’d you like the .com version of your domain name to be used by you competitor to steal your clients?  It’s surprisingly common!
   
• Hyphens or nothing Search engines prefer hyphens to any other form of spacing such as underscores etc  People prefer nothing.  It’s hard to remember hyphen/underscore/something silly so stick to hyphens or nothing at all.
   
• The/My/Your/A versions.  You had your heart set on www.bellybuttonfluff.com.au  but it’s already taken…you could choose www.mybellybuttonfluff.com.au but remember that you’ll always risk sending buyers of your belly button fluff to your competitor.  A logo and copy that emphasises that the belly button fluff is MINE can help.
   
• Do it now!!!!!  Believe it or not, there are people sitting at their desks right now trying to come up with your domain name.  Once they have it, they’ll register it and then offer to sell it to you for a lot more than we want!  Our domain name registration is a BARGAIN!