Choosing the right domain name for your business is one of the most important decisions you will have to make when taking your business online.
Your domain name is similar to that of a street address or telephone number. It directs potential customers to your business via your website, giving them information about your business, services that you are providing and products you are selling. Ensuring your domain name accurately represents your business, service, or product, will give you a better chance for future sales through the internet.
Here are some important consideration when choosing your Domain Name.
1. Your domain name will usually serve 2 main purposes. Your businesses website address and your businesses email address, so choose a domain name with this in mind.
2. There is no advantage in using more than one domain names for your website. In fact pointing multiple domain names at your website, may give the impression to search engines, that your website contains duplicate content. Duplicate content is harmful to your websites page ranking and can get your website dropped from search engine listings altogether. Also, it´s much better to focus all your website marketing on just one domain name.
3. Ideally your domain name should be rich in "keywords". Keywords are how potential customers will find you when they search for your type of product or service when using a search engine, like google.com, yahoo.com or live.com.
4. If your customers are mainly in Australia and it´s important for your business to be seen as being local, then choose a ".com.au" top level domain. However, you may find that a ".com", or ".net" may be more appropriate if you sell internationally.
5. Choose a domain name that can be easily remembered. The "www." is not part of the domain name. Domain names are not case sensitive and can only use letters, numbers, and dashes. Spaces and symbols are not allowed. You can use up to 67 characters (including the ".com.au" at the end, but excluding the "http://www"), however Netscape browsers will reject anything over 59 characters and Yahoo directory editors can reject sites with over 54.
6. Make sure that any domain names you choose do not conflict with existing trademarks.
