Updated: 08/12/2022

Published: 13/11/2019

By Editorial Team

How to choose a domain name for your Australian website

There are many factors when it comes to choosing a good domain name. The most important is choosing a .com.au or an org.au domain

 

Brand awareness

Google favours brand awareness in search rankings, this means that the domain name should be the same as your business name or brand name. 

Avoid using the american .com domain name for an Australian business

As we are located in Australia it should end with .com.au as it will help users automatically associate the website as Australian. Com domain names are associated with American websites.

Domain age

The domain age (How long the domain name has been registered for) does not matter to Google, but multiple domains with the same content will impact negatively.

What if the domain you want is already registered by someone else?

Depending on your budget you can always contact the existing registered owner of the domain name and ask them if they are willing to sell it. From my experience, the sale would not be cheap.

Avoid using net.au domain name

If the domain name, for example, microbite.com.au is taken, I would avoid trying to register microbite.net.au in its place, mainly because most internet users would first click the website microbite.com.au instead of microbite.net.au.

I would prefer using an adjective with the domain name and if the adjective is a keyword then it is a bonus. For example, for microbite.com.au, I would register microbitewebsites.com.au

If microbitewebsites.com.au is not available I would then consider microbite.net.au.

If none of the domain names is available I would seriously consider changing the business name to something that has a domain name available.

Avoid hyphens in domain names

Even though Microbite-Websites.com.au is easier to read than MicrobiteWebsites.com.au, it is actually harder to spell and remember. For those reasons, I would avoid using hyphens.

Avoid multiple domain names

I wouldn’t register multiple domain names for the one business, for example

  • Microbite.com.au
  • MicrobiteWebsites.com.au
  • Microbite.net.au
  • Microbite.com
  • Microbite.net

Instead, I would register the best-fit domain name Microbite.com.au and only focus on that.

When to use acronyms

Most 2 and 3 letter premium .com.au domain names are already taken. If you do find a premium .com.au that fits your business name I would take it as it is a very valuable asset.

Apart from that, the only time I would consider an acronym is if you have a long business name and want to keep it for email use only. For example, info@vlbn.com.au would be a lot easier to say over the phone than info@verylongbusinessname.com.au, I would also set up a 301 moved permanently redirect from vlbn.com.au to verylongbusinessname.com.au which would be the main website.