When organising their online presence, many people can forget about the management of their domain name. Though the design and content of your website and web presence are crucial elements of any online marketing plan; there are some facets of domain management that are widely ignored and yet immensely important.
Some essential pieces of advice include:
- Choose a communicable domain name – try to avoid anything that requires spelling or explanation to be understood.
- Consider using a keyword in the domain name – potential clients may not know to search for your brand or company name, and will just search for the product type e.g. “wedding invitations”.
- Diarise the renewal date for your domain name – if you forget to renew, the hosting of your site may lapse leaving your page blank, effectively rendering your site useless. One strategy is to register long term where possible.
- Ensure any updated documents are uploaded to the same address for consistency – for instance if you update your company profile (previously found at http//www.yourdomain.com/companyprofile.pdf) make sure the new version is uploaded with the exact same title to the same location.
- Begin to consider IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) integration for your site – the internet currently predominately uses IPv4 to allocate internet addresses, which carries four billion separate address and is predicted to run out of available addresses sometime next year. IPv6 was devised in 1996 and can provide 340 trillion trillion trillion separate addresses. One of the issues with the IPv6 rollout however, is that any updated hardware with an IPv6 address will not be able to access a website that only has IPv4 connectivity. As handheld devices and desktop computers are increasingly using IPv6 connectivity, this may be something for you to check with your web designer.
To find out more about online presence management, email [email protected] or call Deborah on 0411 139 881.