How to choose a domain name

When choosing a domain, one of the first things to consider is what you want to achieve from your domain name; place this into two categories: branding or product promoting.

To help decide on a domain name we have broken down domain choice to 4 important tips.

Tips to remember when choosing a domain name:

• 1. Choose a domain name for branding or to promote products and services
• 2. Use all the available extensions (TLD) at your disposal to make a choice.
• 3. Make it easy to remember with little explanation.
• 4. Avoid the chance of typo's

Let's look at these 4 important tips in more depth.

For the first category branding, this is an obvious and essential choice for businesses that already have a reasonably good customer base and have not yet registered a domain containing their business name. Of course, you don't have to use your business name when choosing a domain name, and when you make your domain choice, there are other things to consider. But it's incredible how many companies only use Facebook and other social media to communicate with their clients and Gmail for their business email. On that note, you can see our to turn your Gmail account into something more professional by clicking here.

Having a domain name containing your business helps people find you easily on search engines like Google and Bing. Just typing in your name will almost load you at the top of search results, making it easy for searchers to contact you.

Product and service promotion is another way of helping to decide on what domain to register. Registering a domain for product and services promotion should be taken into serious consideration when deciding on a domain name. Choosing a domain name with keywords to help promote your product and services is one of the first steps in helping your website have any chance to do well in Google and Bing search results. Also, in your choice, you could include the TLD (the domain name extension). For example; if you are a plumber that supplies a 24 hr service and you want to rank high for "24 hr plumbing", you would be looking at domain names like:

• 24hrplumbing.com.au
• plumbing24-7.com.au
• 24hrservice.plumbing

All the above domains will contribute to how you rank on both Google and Bing.

Below is a sample of how a domain name can help catch a searches attention

Chose a domain name that is easy to remember and does not need explaining; consider things when selecting your domain name. For example, you don't want a domain that is not too long, which can create type errors and confusion when giving your domain name over the phone.

Choosing a domain name that is location prominent can be helpful but is not essential when people see a domain name with the .au extension that lets them know it's an Australian business.

Prospect customers in Australia searching for products or services on Google or Bing, the search results will often bring up .com.au domains. Seeing .com.au lets the searcher see from a visual aspect that the results are Australian businesses. Search engines did not place them there because of the .com.au extension; they happen to be there because that's just the most popular registered domain extension for Australian businesses.

You can choose any domain extension (TLD) that suits you and what you are trying to achieve. If a local audience is what you want, setting up Google business and local directories will take care of that. So don't just think you need to choose local-based extensions.

Remember, you can always register more than one domain name. Choose a domain name that contains your business name and point that to your promotional/marketing domain.