GUIDELINES FOR DOMAIN NAMES
Get the Name First: As soon as you come up with a perfect name, it is highly recommended that you register it as soon as possible.Even if you’re not ready to use it, you still should grab it while it’s available, particularly if it’s a catchy name and pertains to a particular product or service. Chances are, someone else may come up with it too.
Relevance: Make sure it’s relevant to your product or service. There is no point registering coolcars.com.au, if you sell motorbikes. You might get visitors, but not your target customers.
Try and Keep it Short: It’s near impossible to register very short words with a .com or .com.au extension these days, but keeping it shorter will help people to remember it better than a long domain name.
Avoid Hyphens in Your Name: People have difficulty remembering websites with dashes or hyphens, and if they do remember, chances are they will get it in the wrong place. Remember you want to make it easy, not harder for your target audience to remember you and find you.
Use the Plural Form: If you’re selling mountain bikes, go with “mountainbikes.com” instead of “mountainbike.com” as it seems more natural.
Spelling: Use words that are easy to spell. Similarly, don’t use words that are spelled differently in some countries. For example, “color” and “colour”.
Locality Considerations: If you’re marketing your products and services primarily to users in a single country then seriously consider using that country’s top-level domain. For example, if you’re retailing products primarily to Australians then choose to end your domain with “.au”. This will help to identify your site as a local one. On the other hand, if you’re marketing your products or services globally, use “.com” as your top-level domain.
Legal Considerations: Ensure that there is no trademark or other legal problems with the domain name you choose. Also, avoid domain names that are too similar to others. Not only do you want your brand to be distinct from that of your competitors, but you want avoid any legal issues.
Site Preservation: People will often use the TLD extension of a site in order to ride on the coattails of the success of someone else. Instead of .com, someone could use your site’s name using a .net. If an unsuspecting visitor uses the .net extension instead of your .com, the other website owner could steal your traffic. This is why many people will purchase various extensions and have them redirected to the primary website. For example, “google.net” is automatically redirected to “google.com” when someone types it into their browser. Many website owners don’t put enough thought into protecting their sites from such extension hijacking. If you can afford to do so, buying your domains with those various TLDs can help protect your site from those looking to cash in on your success.
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