Australian organisations – so you’ve just secured your shiny new .au direct domain name. Great! Now what?
Let’s use ourselves, #Itomic, as the example.
Our primary domain name is itomic.com.au, and we’ve just officially acquired itomic.au.
Our options include:
* Do nothing. As long as we keep paying the renewals fees, the domain name is ours, and others can’t register it. Our brand is protected.
* “Park” or “alias” it over our existing website. If anyone visits the web address itomic.au, then this URL either auto-redirects to itomic.com.au, or it stays sitting on itomic.au. HINT: from an SEO perspective, it’s better to have all your domains redirecting to a single “primary” domain, than having the same website appearing/operating under multiple different domains. This is because the latter can have a diluting effect on your search engine rankings. In the interests of “less is more”, Itomic will probably move towards itomic.au as our primary domain.
* Don’t forget your email addresses! You should also add your new .au domain as an alias for your existing primary email domain, so that people can send to, for example, your-name@itomic.com.au *and* your-name@itomic.au. Also have a think about whether you want to change your default SENDING email address to use your new .au domain name.
* If you are going to make your new .au direct domain your primary/preferred domain, then review your published content, digital and hard copy, to ensure that published website/email are duly updated.
* Of course you could decide to design, build and publish a new website with your new .au direct domain name, to sit alongside your existing website. Just don’t use identical content, because of the diluting effect this might have on your search engine rankings.
None of the above is rocket science from a technical perspective.
Your IT support people and your web person/agency will be able to assist if you can’t DIY.
If in doubt, contact us today!