With auDA streamlining the set of rules for .au domain extensions in 2021 (effective 12th April 2021), we took the opportunity to explore the importance of domains and how holding more than one can benefit your business.

If you’ve been thinking a new domain is the way to go; there’s plenty of other extensions for you to consider. Holding multiple domains has always been a strong strategy to protect your brand and build trust online.

Choosing a domain name

Since the 1980s, domain names have been an essential feature for anyone wishing to launch their business online. The most popular domains in Australia are .com.au, .net.au, .com and .net. Over 95% of domains purchased this year fall under one of those four categories. These may be the most popular, but they’re far from the only domains on offer. There’s local domains like .melbourne or .sydney, general domains including .biz or .info and even emoji domains now becoming a trend.

With so many potential domains on offer, holding them all sounds expensive. But when you do the maths; it’s a very small price to pay for brand protection, better SEO rankings and building trust with your customers.

Reasons to register for multiple domains

Protect your brand reputation

Your brand name and your business reputation are one and the same. If your brand name is taken up by a website with no affiliation to your business; your reputation is on the line. It may not seem important right away when you’re a new business, but as your reputation grows there will be more people looking to profit off of your mistakes or tarnish your name. Don’t give them the chance by registering your brand name across multiple domains and keep your reputation intact from the beginning.

Avoid losing business to competitors

There are only so many unique brand names to choose from, and sometimes business’ choose similar or the same brand name. Whether intentional or not; it’s possible for these other businesses to steal your customers by using a similar domain. To prevent your customers from becoming confused, you can register multiple domain extensions so that they’re always led straight to your door.

Build trust with customers

This plays hand in hand with our first two points. The more positive experiences a customer has with your brand, the more trust you’ll be able to build with them. It only takes one poor experience to unravel this trust. If an unrelated business or a competitor has a similar domain to you, and customers don’t notice the difference, they could associate any poor experiences with your brand too. Trust is hard to build the first time, but even more difficult to rebuild a second time. Avoid a sticky situation by ensuring you hold all the relevant domains for your business name.

Builds trust with search engines

Search engines want to show users the most relevant results at all times. If you’re a local business, like a plumber in Melbourne, then a .melbourne domain could help push your site to the top. If you’re an eCommerce store with international shipping; you could hold all the country level domains to your areas of service. This way your customers should see the site that is most relevant to them in search results. There are hundreds of factors influencing your SEO rankings at any moment, with domains being only one of them. While your domain can help build trust with search engines, a complete SEO campaign will cover all the many other ranking factors.

Multiple domains but just one website

If you’re worried about the cost of hosting and running multiple websites on your different domains; there’s some good news. You only need one website which you can redirect all your existing domains to. This way you’ll be able to ensure any person looking for your business finds what they need; whether they’re searching .net, .com or even just .au.

Find all the best domains with Netregistry

For over 20 years Netregistry have been helping Australian businesses with everything they need to succeed online. We’ll help you register a domain, build your website and grow your business using tailored digital marketing solutions.