A crucial part of every website is the domain name. This is the address in the bar at the top of your search engine that looks something like this:
blog.jetdigital.com.au
It’s one of the first things that people see, and a good domain name will reflect positively on your business. But even more importantly, it can make you rank better on Google. Hence the importance of choosing a good domain name. It’s a decision that’s hard to make, but far harder to change.
That’s why we made this brief guide. It’s for Australian small businesses to learn what domain name they should choose, to serve as a strong cornerstone for their online presence.
.com or .com.au or other. Which domain extension should I choose?
We almost always suggest .au domains for our customers. It’s because these domains are better at showing up on Google searches within Australia. Also, Australians are more likely to visit a .au domain because they trust Australian businesses, and they can benefit from the convenience and cheaper postage.
.net.au extensions are completely fine, and they are sometimes cheaper than .com.au, except they do sometimes cause confusion when people assume that you will have a .com extension.
Then there is .org which infers that you are nonprofit. And there are others like .edu that are actually reserved for special uses. Also, there are an explosion of new domain extensions that started being released in 2014 like .horse. These are rather experimental options at this early stage.
Domain names
Ok, now the rest of the article is dedicated to the part of your domain where you have the most choice—the domain name. The domain name is this part (indicated in bold):
jetdigital.com.au
The first guideline to choosing a domain name is–
Short and sweet
Short domain names are easy to remember, easy to type, attractive, and they look professional.
If your business name is Jan’s Car Wash and Cafe, you’re located in Campbelltown and one of your main services is Car Detailing, then the temptation is to make your domain name like this:
janscarwashandcafecardetailingcampbelltown.com.au
Wow, too long! That looks a bit too much like this: jklsdfjlsdjfalskdjsdljfsldjflksdjlasdvdsfj.com.au
You would need to sacrifice some descriptiveness for the sake of brevity, but this gives you many options:
janescarwashcampbelltown.com.au
janescarwashcafe.com.au
cardetailingcampbelltown.com.au
carwashcafecampbelltown.com.au
janescarwash.com.au
But which option to choose? They are all good, but let’s learn some other aspects of a good domain name.
Important keywords
‘Keywords’ are words that describe significant things about your business, and Google uses these to know when to display your website on relevant searches. Your most important keywords would be something like:
Jan’s Car Wash and Cafe
Car Wash
Cafe
Campbelltown
Car Detailing
You would want your domain name to be comprised of some selection of these keywords. This will aid your rankings on Google.
Be wary of embarrassing word overlaps
When words are strung together with no indication of where one ends and the next begins, some embarrassing misinterpretations can occur.
Can you see what is wrong with this domain name?
allsizesexchange.com.au
hmmm
Characters to avoid in domain names
Your domain name should be made of just lowercase characters (and numbers if you want). This avoids confusion with people or with Google. Therefore, avoid using:
- Uppercase characters
- Dashes
- Underscores
- Spaces
- Foreign language characters
- Emojis and the like
This domain name uses the right characters:
b2bconnect.com.au
Choosing a domain is a very important and permanent decision that mustn’t be taken lightly. That’s why when we make our Jetsites, we select five of the best domains, and then let you choose from these five. After reading this, you are in good stead to make this choice, especially because have a feel for what’s right for your particular business. For a cutting-edge website with a well-chosen domain, consider a Jetsite.