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domain names

Your website’s domain name is a vital tool in your company’s marketing kit. After all, it is one of the ways you advertise your business (albeit in a small way) but more importantly it’s one of the ways your customers are going to find you on the search engines.

As you are probably aware, search engines operate by using an ‘algorithm’ which looks at different websites and categorises them according to what it finds. A search engine ‘algorithm’ may look at your domain name, key phrases, titles and meta tags on your website when it decides how it is going to categorise your website.

So for example, if your site is a garden centre, try and make sure that the words “garden centre” appear in your domain name. This is an extra clue for the search engines that your site should be listed with other garden centres or in fact above them!

That’s one of the reasons why choosing the right domain name can be so important.

You will need to think creatively about the domain name you choose, because you may find that many of the most obvious names, as they relate to your business, have already been taken by someone else. The world wide web has been around for a many years now and the most popular domain names have often been taken.

However, new extensions for domain names are becoming available all the time, (extensions are the bits at the end of the domain names such as .co.nz or .com, for example).

Keep up to date with any new extensions as you may get the opportunity to register the ideal domain name which encapsulates your business. You will need to be proactive about this, as other businesses will be trying to do the same thing.

There are a number of simple rules to keep in mind when deciding on which domain names might be suitable for your company’s website.

Be sure to keep it simple. One or two words is best, for example gardening or garden centre, furniture or furniture design etc. Don’t be tempted to cram in as much information as possible. Making your domain name too long will mean it is too difficult to remember and too easy to spell wrongly.

Don’t be tempted to use quirky spellings, misspellings or abbreviations. You may know what you mean, but chances are your clients and potential clients may have a very hard time finding you. And they will almost certainly have trouble remembering the next time they want to visit your site.

It is also a good idea to have a second domain name which is “aliased” with the first. So, you can have the main one as something search engine focused (like the topic of your business) and the second might be your business's name which is used for marketing.

The cost of registering a domain name is $35.95 plus GST for the first year and $29.95 plus GST per annum thereafter. Domain names are registered at this price through a subsidiary of the company we often use for hosting (Digiweb).

Oryx would be happy to provide any assistance you need in selecting and registering domain names. If you'd rather send us an email for more information you could complete our enquiry form and we'll contact you.