Before you purchase your domain name please give some thought to the following:
1) It is common practice to use your site name as your domain name. If your site is known as Netforge then use netforge.net.au as an example
2) Generic names – if you can select a generic domain name then that is fantastic. food.com.au for example, however it is likely that they are already gone. Finding a generic domain name on your particular niche may also be helpful eg. healthyfood.com.au
3) Hyphenated Names – I do not recommend the use of hyphenated names, particularly when it is a name close to your competetors. It is too easy to forget the hyphen and you may end up sending your hard earned traffic to your competitors site.
4) If the .com or .com.au extension is not available then consider the alternative TLD ( Top level domain types) such as .net or .biz.
If your domain name has already been registered then approach the owner and ask if they’ll sell it to you. They may accept as little as 0. the worst that can happen is they say no.
5) Plurals. Often a domain name will be taken in the singular choice of the word but available in the plural. This comes down to personal choice but beware you do not end up sending traffic to a competitor.
6) Short or Long domains – Short domain names are preffered because they are more memorable to people. Longer names are beneficial to search engines like google who look for keywords in your domain title
7) I am often asked which TLD to pick - .com, .com.au , .net etc No domain name type is given preference by the search engines but please consider that some search engines such as Google, have local searches e.g www.google.com.au which do allow searching of local sites.
Some customers also get re-assurance when they see a local TLD because they know they are dealing with a local company.
My advice is to register all of them!
Variations – If your prefered domain name is not available then it may be worthwhile trying a prefix. (domains.com) eg mydomains.com or suffix (domains.com) eg domains4u.com etc
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