Get the most out of your domain name

The easiest and cheapest way, by far, of protecting a trademark on the internet is registering every possible extension of your brand before someone else does i.e. .com, .net, .com.au, and .net.au domains at a minimum. 

The .au domain is the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) for Australia. Domain name registrations are available in the .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .asn.au, and .id.au.

  • .com.au domain and .net.au domain are for Australian business with commercial purposes.
  • .org.au domain is the domain extension for non-commercial organisations.
  • .asn.au domain is the designated domain for Associations.
  • .id.au domain is the designated domain space for an Australian citizen or Resident.

Or you can choose from

  • .com - the most popular registration with more than 78 million domain name registrations.
  • .net - the second most popular registration undertaken. It has more than 12 million registrations.
  • .org - the international domain name for organisations. According to ICANN, the .org space was originally intended for "organisations that do not fit elsewhere". It is essentially an unrestricted space, and it is run by The Public Internet Registry or PIR.
  • .biz - often interpreted as a domain name used for business. The Domain Registry functions are carried out by NeuLevel.
  • .info domain name is thought of ideally for information based websites. The .info is an unrestricted space with Domain Registry functions carried out by Afilias.
  • .mobi - for mobiles devices. It has specific conditions attached for use with mobile devices, including adherence to W3 standards.

How to get the most out of your domain name.

Keywords

Keywords are the names of the products or services you offer on your website. Keyword research the products you'll be selling on your site and reference those products with the terms that you think people are searching for. Once you have a list of initial target words you'd like to try, first visit the Google Adwords Keyword tool. Select the market you want to research and choose from a list of data to display, including, keyword search volume, cost and ad position estimates, search volume trends, and possible negative keywords. Once you have a list, save it as a text file.

Generic Terms

Think of generic search terms when you think of a name for your site.
Open a text editor. Try any and all possible combinations of names that you think people would be typing into a search engine if they wanted your business. Then once you have what you think is the definitive list, we'd cross reference that list with the Google Adwords Tool and see which business comes out on top.

Local Users

To target locals, try and use some local combinations in your name choices. Perhaps consider the larger suburbs you want to target.

Google

Use the Google Suggest Tool to see more opportunities and see what people are typing into Google or getting linked to in the search engine results by Google. 

Descriptive Terms

Use terms that you know people are searching for by spending time looking at the different types of word combinations for the your business.

Outside The Square

Consider having an online shop on your new website which sells products that you use in your business. This increases your chances of being found by having those keywords pointing at your main website address by using url redirection.

Market Trends

You can research keyword type-in trends using Google trends or the forecast tool from Microsoft labs. These tools will help you see opportunities occurring at different times of the year for specific product groups. 

Affiliates

Think about ways you can make money by affiliating with a non-internet based business in a related field. Check the Microsoft forecast tool results and Google Trends results and see for yourself what turns up in your industry sector.

WordTracker

WordTracker has a free keyword tool that is well worth trying out for domain type-in ideas. It also has a paid service and a latest keywords mailout which is GOLD.

Protect Your Name

If a name is good in one extension, chances are it will have some benefit in others also. Many people think that a Trademark will protect their brand on the internet. They are only partially correct. A Trademark offers some protection, but not without considerable cost in trying to get a name back through the ICANN dispute process. The easiest and cheapest way of protecting a trademark on the internet is by registering every possible extension of your brand before someone else does. 

Hyphens
A hyphenated domain name is more likely to be available and many people say it appears in the search engine result pages just as well if not better than a non-hyphenated domain name. It is said that some search engines score a match with your domain name, interchanging hyphens with spaces in words searched. So a search for "top of the class" on search engine X will be seen as a closer match to "top-of-the-class.com.au" rather than with "topoftheclass.com.au".