Is purchasing a .au domain worthwhile?

We’ve been getting a lot of clients asking us lately if they should purchase the .au equivalent of their .com.au domain names. Is it worth the money? Does it add any benefit to the business? Does it protect my brand? We answer all this and more below.

If you’ve got an online presence, the gold standard of domain names in Australia has always been to try and register your business name as a .com.au domain name. Now we have a new domain extension entering the market with .au domains available for registration, but is it worth purchasing this domain if you’ve already got the .com.au?

Let’s explore some reasons why you might want to consider purchasing this extension in addition to your .com.au domain.

Protect your brand

The number one reason why you may want to consider purchasing a .au domain is to protect your brand. Often, there are different businesses in different states that have the same trading name (take business calling themselves ‘Absolute business name’ or ‘AAA business name’ or ‘business name Industries’ for example).

If your business name is a generic term (that isn’t trademarked) like ‘Sydney Fencing’ or ‘Queensland Engineering’ there’s a very good chance that another business can easily snap up the .au domain name, even if you have the .com.au equivalent.

For search engine optimisation (SEO)

Unless you’ve managed to snap up a wonderfully keyword rich .au domain name like webdesign.au, pestcontrol.au, cafe.au or plumber.au for example, it’s unlikely that simply purchasing the .au equivilant of your already existing .com.au domain name is going to have much benefit from an SEO perspective.

The verdict

From a branding perspective, it makes sense to protect your business and register the .au equivalent of your domain as you can pick it up for a few bucks a year. Given the low cost of entry and ease of registering, our advice is to snap up your .au domain name before someone else does.