Pick a profitable domain name
By Sam PascuaWhat’s in a Name?
Shakespeare once wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” It may have been true for Romeo and Juliet, but in the fiercely competitive world of online businesses, having the right name can make or break your business.
Selecting a domain name is one of the most important tasks facing people who are creating a new online business. It must be descriptive, memorable, catchy, and available. If the name and extension you want have already been bought by someone else, you will need to offer to buy it or settle for something else. Read along as we offer guidance for exploring your options.
Choosing a Domain Name
Ideally, your domain name should match the name of your business and be descriptive, letting visitors know precisely what they’ll find on your site. If your name includes the keywords and phrases that people type while searching for your products or services, you’re more likely to attract the right type of website traffic.
Having a highly descriptive domain name can also yield better search engine rankings. Google and other search engines place a high value on the descriptiveness of domain names.
Your domain name must also be memorable. People may first hear about your website on the radio, see it on television, read it in a newspaper, or talk about it with their friends. Your domain name has to be catchy enough that they will remember it the next time they sit down at a computer. In general, shorter domain names are easier to remember than longer ones. Try not to use numbers or punctuation like hyphens that people tend to forget more easily.
Choosing a Domain Extension
Geography plays an important role in selecting a domain name extension. If you primarily serve a local market, your domain name extension should reflect that. If your customers are mostly Australian, then a .com.au extension is probably your best choice. If, instead, your Australian-based business has a global customer base, then .com might make more sense. However, if the fact that you’re based in Australia is an important selling point, then .com.au might be your best choice even for international visitors.
In most cases, there is no single domain name extension that is perfect for a business’s needs. Most experts recommend purchasing multiple domain name extensions to cover all the possibilities, or at least as many as you can afford. We recommend that Australian businesses purchase the .com and .com.au extensions, making sure that they direct visitors to the same website. If your budget can afford it, also consider purchasing the .net and .info extensions. Visitors are less likely to visit those sites, but if you’re the owner, you can prevent other companies from developing similar websites that directly compete with yours by using the same domain name with a different extension. Buying multiple domain names is a good way to protect your brand as your business begins to catch competitors’ attention.
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