Choosing the right domain name can make a BIG difference on the amount of natural search traffic that ends up at your website or blog. Of course the best ones are often taken, so your task becomes to find a domain which has a lot of relevance to your blog or business AND will rank well with natural keyword searches. Miss spelled keywords may sound funky but unless you are a big name site like flickr, then people will find it hard to locate you, and you will certainly be missing out on a lot of traffic.
Do I choose a .com.au or a .com?
This is an interesting question and it really depends on your target audience. For example – I have made this site a .com.au domain as I am writing mainly to people in Australia. There is so much worldwide about making websites, however a lot of it is not aimed at the Australian market, so I wanted to make a guide just for people in Australia. Now as a result, when people search how to build a website in Australia, guess who they will find… where as a .com extension would put me in competition with everyone else targetting those keywords all over the world and I would be lost in the crowd.Furthermore, through social networking sites and other traffic generating strategies I can still get traffic from elsewhere in the world, however search related traffic will be a little diminished due to the domain extension.
.com domains
To buy a .com extension all you need is about $10 a year. There are several websites which allow you to purchase your domain and you will have access to that site usually within 24 hours, although most of the time I have found my site is online within a few hours. There are hundreds of sites to choose from – I use GoDaddy.com although it has more ads than commercial TV and they will try and sell you everything under the sun during your sign up process. They often send out 20-30% discounts from time to time, so you can hold your domain for about $8 a year if you pick the right time to renew. All you will need is a credit card or money in PayPal/Moneybookers to purchase. Be aware of them offering free privacy and .info domains. They may be free initially but you will have your credit card billed next year if you forget to cancel (which is most people), plus you don’t really need these at this stage.
.com.au or .net.au domains
To buy a .com.au or .net.au domain you will need an Australian Business Number (ABN). This links certain details and tax information to your domain so if you put up dodgy stuff, they know exactly who is responsible. This also gives .com.au or .net.au websites a LOT more credibility as users know there is an Australian citizen at the end of it.
I purchase all my .com.au domains through MDWebhosting.com.au which are about $17.50 per year for 2 year minimum. I have also used Intaserve.com.au which offers domains for slightly cheaper at about $14 per year for a 2 year minimum although I have found the MDWebhosting interface a lot easier to work with so have paid the premium for most of my domains and gone with them.
.info .net .org .us .mobi .biz .ca .me .ws
There are many different extensions to choose from. The most popular and one you should chose is .com. The second most popular is .net. The .org extension has started out for organisations, however can be used for anything now. The .biz started out for business websites but has become a little redundant now and anyone can use. The .me extension is for personal blogs and things, although again it can be used for anything. Basically I would try for a .com and failing that, a .net if you really want certain wording but .com is taken. You may also want to buy the .net extension in addition to the .com extension and then you can forward the domain from one to another. I.e. if the user types in www.funkydomainname.net it will automatically take you to www.funkydomainname.com. This could also be used for a business in Australia which you later expand globally – i.e. you could forward your.com.au extension to .com although most people just make a similar site which targets that market.
How do I choose my domain?
This is a tricky one. Lets say your site was about dogs. People who want information on dogs don’t jsut search ‘dogs’. They search things like dog training or dog toilet training for information on their dog. This is called a niche subject or market. If you can identify a problem and realise there is minimal good material on the web to serve that problem, then you have a golden business opportunity to offer information, an information product such as an ebook, or product i.e. a training leash or dog whistle etc.
Use Googles keyword search tool
When choosing a domain you will want to be sensitive about what people actually search for. The Google keyword tool shows you roughly how many people search for what both locally and globally. First go to the google keyword search tool by searching “google keyword tool” and selecting the first listed hit. Now type into the ‘word or phrase’ box your business or hobby interest. Say you like to play classical piano. Here we get some good ideas about what people are searching for including classical piano song, classical piano scores, classical piano midi. There is also a competition list which gives you a vibe about how many other people are competing for all this traffic.
So pick a domain title which has one or more of your keywords in the title. If you are an expert at training dogs, call it MattsDogTraining.com or DogTrainingTips.com.au or whatever you choose, make sure it has the words dogtraining in the domain. You can also pick abbreviations for domains as this is much shorter to remember. Say you wanted a site called Matt’s Dog Training Tipps. You might like to chose mdtt.com.au as this is simple short and easy to remember and type in.
Pick an expired domain
Ok so you are still having trouble thinking up a great name, or all the ones you choose are taken. If you have a bit of time up your sleeve, keep an eagle eye on ExpiredDomains.com.au and snap up domains relevant to your business as they come up. You should really choose a domain which is relevant to your ABN however otherwise according to the regulations it may be rejected by the registrars. For example if your business is organic farming, then it would be strange to register www.electricmotordrives.com.au and this may get knocked back. In practice I see many slip through either because the registrar really wants your money or in fact you may be selling electric motors for some process in your organic farming and hence this is a legitimate name use as it relates to your business.
If there is something you really want and there are likely to be several people trying to snap up the domain, have a look at http://www.ausregistry.com.au/droplist.php for a list of upcoming expired domains. I have seen domains go within seconds though so you may have to be quick depending on how good the domain is. Generally domains with 3 letters like www.v2g.com.au (hehe) will often go instantly as will single word domains. Two word domains are often very popular and three word ones are usually stay there for a while.
Generally if you are going to rely on organic search traffic, you don’t really car how long or how many dashes are in the domain, it is more important to have relevant keywords in the title. If you are starting a business however, make sure you have something which is memorable. I.e. if you see a bumper sticker or tell someone at a party, can they remember it? If yes, AND you have appropriate nice sounding keywords, AND it is available then you have found your domain.
If you have a few options then do a search for the domain name (it might have been a scam site before you purchased it, and there is plenty of negative commenting about it on the net) or there might be some big competition already. Spend some time getting the right domain and you will save yourself head ache in the future. If you want to change domains after a year. Lets say you expand your business to include another industry, then simply purchase another domain and forward the old one to the new one. You will have to build up your organic search ranking for the new site again, but all your old traffic will still come to your new site.
What do I do once I have my domain?
You will have to point your domain to whereever you decide to host that domain. Without hosting your domain, you will see nothing when you type in your domain. The way you point your domain is first update the name servers in your domain interface control panel. This will be of the form nsXX.YYYY.com where XX is a double, triple or quadruple digit number or something and YYYY is your hosting company domain name. It might also be .com.au if you are hosting in Australia.
Once you have updated this, go into your hosting control panel and add addon site and type in your domain and click add. This process is a little tricky, however I have found video and picture walkthroughs all over the net for various companies so you should be fine with a little time and patience.
If all is well, bingo, you have a domain and a site on its way. If you have set up hosting, you will now need to build a website from a template, or build a blog and upload it to your web hosting.
Good Luck!
