What is a domain name?

Video Transcript

So what is a domain name? Well and example of a domain name is bobbuilder.com.au. It's actually just a little bit of intellectual property and it's something that you can own now which in the future is going to be a sign post to your email and website addresses.

So down the track you can approach and ISP or a specialist web hosting company like Netregistry and ask to get things activated like an email address.

sales@bobbuilders.com.au

or get a website at

www.bobbuilders.com.au

But importantly right now the first thing to do is to register the domain name that's most relevant to your business as soon as possible and before somebody else does. Thousands of domain names get registered every day and it won't be long before yours is taken.

So which one do you want to choose? Well there are many different types of domain name. You've probably seen a lot of them, telstra.com.au, it ends .com.au, then you've got abc, it has abc.net.au and then you've got companies like BHP Billiton that trade under phpbilliton.com.

Which name is right for you actually just a vanity issue. You've got to ask yourself what kind of market you want to serve. I mean are you looking to represent yourself as a commercial Australian business, in which case you might want to register yourbusinessname.com.au or are you looking to serve the New Zealand markets, in which case you want to make sure you own yourbusiness.co.nz. Or actually maybe you're being a little bit like BHP, you want to be a large international business and you want to represent yourself as yourbusiness.com.

Which ever method you choose you can, or which ever ending you choose you can go to Netregistry's website and check if those names are available. We've got a free search engine there that allows you to check if these names are available and how much they are. They're relatively cheap and you can register all the names you think are going to be important to your future.

And it is important to register every domain name that you think is important to your future because anyone else can come along at a later date and register one of the ones you left behind. and that leaves you exposed because if yourbusiness.com.au is your website address the last thing you want to be seeing above you in the search results is a competitor trading under the same name ending .net.au

Alternatively if you find the domain name that you're looking for isn't available you can go to a market place Netfleet at www.netfleet.com.au and they advertise all the domain names that people are selling. So theres some great generic names in there, some great industry categories and there's generally names for every sort of business if you're looking for a premium name thats already taken.

So summing up, the most important thing you need to do is to act now and act today. Domain names are being registered in thousands everyday and it isn't long before the name that is most ideal for your business is going to be taken.

So go to Netregistry's website - www.netregistry.com.au and start searching for domain names that best suit your business and register.