Choosing the right domain name

Most people starting a business online are so concerned with the products or services they want to promote that they neglect the importance of choosing the right domain name for their website. Choosing the right domain name should be your first priority in the quest for online success. Many entrepreneurs are oblivious of the role a domain name plays in their online businesses and register domains which have little or no relevance. The following tips will help you proceed along the right track.

Keep it Short
Although you can register a name with up to 63 characters, you have to keep in mind that people need to be able to remember it, and easily type it into their browser. Good domain names are short. All of the worlds three and four letter .com domains have been registered and the five letter domains are not far behind. Since the .au domain registration process is more stringent there are still plenty of short domains available. There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for but for guidance try to go below 12 letters and never exceed 20. Avoid using hyphens in your domain name as many users are accustomed to typing things like petsupplies.com.au but not pet-supplies.com.au. Although they make your domain name easier to read, they may create confusion since people will tend to leave them out and end up at your competitor's site.

Use Keywords in the Domain Name
Your keywords have an important role to play. A domain name with keywords embedded will do wonders, not only in achieving higher positioning on the search engines, but also in becoming more effective at informing a potential customer what the website sells. You should try to embed at least one of the most relevant keywords or a keyword phrase into your domain name. Whilst this is not the only method that will elevate your site in a search engine, it certainly does help. While buying a domain name for branding purposes reigns search power, if you have an opportunity to snatch a keyword rich domain name, do not hesitate to register it and use it to push the agenda of your primary domain. Also, if you plan on getting visitors from another country, make sure you use spelling that is recognised in that country. For example, the word "color" is used in the U.S. whereas the word "colour" is used in Australia. Furthermore, try to register all variations of a word such as "auslighting.com.au" and "ozlighting.com.au" to avoid competitors using it for their advantage by capturing all mistakes that can be made by users.

Dot What?
Most countries have their own domain extension, so if you are marketing your products and services primarily to users in a single country then consider using that country's top-level domain, otherwise known as a domain extension.

Generally, if you have an Australian business, you would register a .com.au domain name since people in Australia tend to have a sense of trust from a domain with the .au extension which may possibly result in more sales. Another advantage of having a .au domain extension is that Australian search engines will give preference to these domains over the traditional .com extension. If you do not plan on doing most of your business in Australia, then having a .com domain will do as it is the original, and most common, extension. In many cases, it is also a good idea to register a few domain names and have them pointed to the same website. It is very important to find a balance between building your brand and making it user and search engine friendly.

Avoid Trademarked Names
Domain names mostly represent a company's intellectual property in the form of trademarks, either registered or common law, or words and phrases associated with the company. Domain names can incorporate trademarks in a number of ways. The most common is a company name followed by a domain extension such as sony.com. A person who is not the trademark owner and registers the trademark as a domain name engages in trademark infringement. Even a domain name as innocent as sonytvsales.com would be in violation. There would be nothing worse than to spend marketing dollars on promoting your website just to lose it to another company that has protection over a particular name. There has been a 15 year running domain trademark dispute for the domain www.nissan.com where Nissan Motors is suing Nissan Computer for Trademark Infringement and Trademark Dilution. Nissan Motors has been unsuccessful in this endeavour since Nissan Computer was actually established prior to Nissan Motors, thus resulting in a costly bill with no reward. So, when choosing a domain make sure you understand the legal issues surrounding the name, and it may even be a good idea to speak with an intellectual property lawyer if in doubt.

Already Registered?
The chances are that when you start your search for the perfect domain name it may have already been registered by another party. In many cases, the domain may never have been used and was only registered because someone liked the sound of it at the time. Do not give up as there are a number of things you can do. Many tools are available all over the internet known as whois lookups which allow you to search across multiple domain registrar databases to give you registration information on domain names, including owners' email addresses and domain expiry dates. Once you have those details, you can either send an email to the owner asking them to kindly pass it on or wait for the domain to expire so you can register it.

If you still don't have any luck why not try a slogan, brand name, acronym or even a phone number. Creative names can be very effective and memorable. Some domain registrars also have a domain suggestion tool where you simply type in the key word or words that you want to be in your domain and it comes back to you with a variety of combinations of available domains using that combination. A simple search in Google for "domain suggestion tool" will give you a few of these free tools that you can use.