The first thing that savvy business owners do when they’re looking to create a new business is to see if a website is available. After all, without an online presence, it’s impossible to do so many things that are crucial to businesses today: sell online, advertise on social media, accept bookings, or share contact details and opening hours.
If you search for your business’s availability for a .com.au website, it’s likely that you will be unpleasantly surprised—many website names are unavailable, already snapped up. That’s why more and more small business owners are turning to .melbourne domains for their business. With a .melbourne web address, business owners in Melbourne can own a website name that’s available and more meaningful than the traditional .com.au. Here’s how else using a .melbourne domain name helps business owners.
Location-based domains like .melbourne matter
Think of how common the .com.au domain name is in Australia. Even though .com might be available, businesses owned or operating in the country prefer using .com.au because it indicates where their business is located. People feel more comfortable when they’re searching, knowing that the results they’re getting are for an Australian-based business, rather than going to a website and realising it’s for a business overseas. Bigger companies might even use .com.au to target their Australian customer base, rather than a wider audience. A good example of this is Amazon. If you head to Amazon.com, it’s the U.S. site. For folks wanting to shop Amazon in Australia, the address is Amazon.com.au.
Using a local domain name drills into this mentality even more. Instead of knowing only that a business is in Australia, choosing a .melbourne web address lets people know exactly where your business is located. It’s not “anywhere” in Australia, it’s right in their city.
Organisations use other types of domain names to instantly have a more meaningful web address, too. For instance, not-for-profits might choose a .foundation for their URL, while e-commerce stores might pick .shop to let people know what they can do on the site.
Rank higher in SEO with .melbourne
If you’re Googling a service or business name, it’s likely that you add “melbourne” at the end of the search phrase to ensure the results you get are local. With a .melbourne domain, that’s added right into your address.
When someone searches for your business or for whatever your business provides, having the location right in your address makes it likelier that someone will click on it, which helps boost your place in SEO results. You don’t run the risk of getting a lot of traffic from customers in New South Wales, for instance. Instead, the people who land on your page will have explicitly been looking for something local—you!
Get better branding
Too often, business owners are stuck with long, unwieldy web addresses because their first (and second and third…) choices have already been taken with .com.au. This makes for difficult branding and name recognition. A long address makes it less likely that someone will remember your business name, makes it harder to design something beautiful, and really restricts where and how you advertise.
Using a .melbourne, on the other hand, provides several advantages. Because it’s a newer domain name, it’s more likely that the name you’re after is available; no settling for a subpar name. It also tells people right where you’re located, so you don’t have to waste time explaining where you’re located. Finally, it’s fresh and exciting. It tells people you’re a vibrant business in one of the world’s best cities.
So if you’re starting a business soon, search for the .melbourne domain name of your dreams.