If you’re a brand trying to make your mark online, your options for an Australian domain name for your website are set to expand – but why does it matter?
In a nutshell, the more people who see your site translates to being the more potential customers you could have at your disposal. The number of visitors your website manages to generate also indicates the number of opportunities that your business has at giving an impression, generating qualified leads, sharing your brand and building relationships.
As most online traders know, the customer’s journey to your website can start in a number of different ways, with the most generally being through paid advertising such as Google Ads, organic SEO through the Google search engine results, referrals through backlinks, and even social media.
However, getting the right type of traction online is also about protecting your digital assets against competitors, which is why the changes linked to new Australian domain name choices are worth paying attention to.
What The Australian Domain Changes Mean For E-Commerce
So – what’s in a name? For the unfamiliar, a domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the internet. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes, and can have a much bigger impact than many people would initially think.
On a global scale, the Domain Name System (DNS) is the phonebook of cyberspace. In this system’s hierarchy, a top-level domain (TLD) represents the first stop after the root zone, or everything that follows the final dot of a domain name. If we use Google.com as an example, then the phrase ‘Google’ is the domain name or root zone, and the ‘.com’ is the TLD at work.
Over the course of the past ten years, ‘.com’ has long been viewed as the only option for businesses who want to be taken seriously online. However, the supply of ‘.com’ domains have been dwindling for quite some time, leading to the rise of newer TLDs that are much more specific, particularly when it comes to countries of origin.
While the Land Down Under has long held ‘.com.au’ as the national TLD of choice, there’s a new kid on the block when it comes to identifying an Australian domain name – ‘.au’. If Google were an Australian based company, they would soon have the choice to use Google.com.au and Google.au – securing precious online real estate and protecting their enterprise from competitors seeking to trade off the back of their name.
The introduction of this new Australian domain name is the result of significant public consultation conducted between 2015 and 2019, and will bring Australia in line with many other country code Top Level Domains including the United Kingdom (.uk), Canada (.ca), the USA (.us) and New Zealand (.nz). However, there is a catch, as this new Australian domain name is much more exclusive than many realise.
From March 24 2022, anyone with a local connection to Australia, including businesses, associations and individuals, is eligible to register a ‘.au’ direct name through an auDA accredited registrar. In addition to providing more opportunities for shorter and more memorable internet addresses, one of the key intentions of the new Australian domain name rollout is to ensure the new domain names are only held by local Australians. As a means to provide increased transparency online, the ‘.au’ domain is only available to Australian citizens, permanent residents or registered Australian organisations.
To provide brands and businesses with a reasonable amount of time to adjust to the new Australian domain name changes, there is also a priority process in place for businesses to register their equivalent domain name which will last for six months, or until 20 September 2022. Until such date, businesses can apply for Priority Status to register the exact match of their existing domain name to ensure fair access, and to avoid any issues linked to intellectual property, copyright or trademark infringements.
Although having the right Australian domain name is an important component of portraying the right message online to new and existing customers, it’s certainly not the be all and end all. If your website is lacking high quality content – or the fuel in the tank required to win the online race – it might be time to consider outsourcing.
The Key To Good Marketing Is Great Content
Producing quality, consistent and on brand content takes time, effort, experience and resources, but avoiding these responsibilities altogether may actually be doing your brand a disservice. Thankfully, investing in a solid content marketing strategy has actually never been easier.
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
