As a business owner in Australia, you may already be aware of the new top-level-domain known as .au direct. Released back in late March, the .au direct allows you to choose a domain name with only the country code.

Now, there’s no need to select between .com.au or .net.au if you are registering for a new domain name.

 

What used to be:

youronlinebusiness.com.au

Can now look like this:

youronlinebusiness.au

 

Pretty neat huh?

 

Aside from clear perks of the shorter .au domain name, we also found other less-than-obvious benefits this newcomer can have on your online business. We’ve gone above and beyond, tested it out and included some surprising results below.

 

Make Your .AU Work for Your Business

We never had a doubt about securing our .au domain name.

As one of the leading providers of digital services across Australia, we are keenly aware of the benefits the .au domain name has. In fact, we recommend all domain name owners to register for their .au equivalent domain as soon as possible if they haven’t already.

That said, if you are looking to achieve success online through a .au, as with most functions in the digital world, you will need to engage the help of experts in the industry. We consulted and engaged our in-house experts and together with their efforts, we saw more potential in a .au domain name than we initially thought.

 

A .AU Strengthens Your Cyber Security

Shortly after the release of the .au direct domain, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) begun cautioning domain name owners, especially business owners, to register their .au equivalents immediately.

As more people have embraced the use of digital devices for both work and play, data created, stored and shared across networks are targeted by crooks for their illicit activities every day.

If cybercriminals succeed in landing their hand on your .au equivalent, they can use it to gain access to your transactions and data. When that happens, the costs to your business, your customers and your brand may sometimes be irreversible.

This is also one of the many reasons why we secured webcentral.au the moment it was released. Learn more about the extent of damage which can be inflicted on your business and brand when cybercriminals squat on your domain.

 

Setup Your SEO for .AU

With webcentral.au safely in our hands, we started noticing some online traffic originating from the new domain. At this point, we knew we had to act immediately.

This meant optimising our domain for webcentral.au.

We brainstormed together with our website and search engine optimisation (SEO) teams. Together a strategy was created to propel webcentral.au forward.

 

The Case Study – webcentral.au

As an Aussie-owned business supporting small and medium businesses operating across the country, we understand our customers are looking at similar statistics for their websites and online business as we are.

A few months after moving to webcentral.au, we saw clear improvements to more than one vital online statistic.

We are convinced by the data – a move to .au can benefit your Australian business.

 

30% Increase in Google’s Page 1 Rankings

We already had an elaborate SEO strategy in place while still on webcentral.com.au. Back then, the results were decent on Google, with 115 of our key search terms landing on Google’s page 1.

At the start of our switch to webcentral.au, this new domain did not receive a lot of love from Google. While this was expected and in line with what we understand about SEO, the traffic coming through from this new domain cannot be ignored.

Our SEO experts immediately started work on a new SEO strategy focusing on webcentral.au only. Even as SEO implementation is notoriously slow to take effect, we saw promising data after just three months of work.

What we saw was an increase in the total number of crucial search terms coming up on Google’s page 1, up to 153 with webcentral.au. That is an increase of over 30% and a reassurance to everyone in our team that we are heading in the right direction.

 

Almost 15% More New Website Users

 Along with the data, we also saw a jump in website users by 14.15%. This means our potential customers are comfortable clicking on our brand even with a relatively new top-level domain name.

 

Ecommerce Conversion Rate Grew By Nearly 41%

If you have an ecommerce website, you will be pleased to hear that we experienced a whopping 40.28% increase in ecommerce conversion rate during the same period. We successfully converted potential customers to customers after taking the right steps with our new .au domain.

 

32% Jump in Transactions

As a result of a surge in our ecommerce conversion rate through webcentral.au, we increased our online transactions by 31.9% compared to when we were still on a .com.au. This shows that with the necessary steps in place, a .au can lead a business to online success.

 

Experience the Benefits of a .AU

As a business owner, your .au equivalent domain offers many benefits and needs to be a part of both your short and long-term business strategy.

These benefits include:

• Stronger cyber security for your business
• Protecting your customer base from cybercriminals
• A shorter, more concise domain
• Shows your Australian presence
• A catchy branding that rolls off the tongue
• Possible ownership of your ideal domain

 

With the right steps, you could also be boosting your SEO strategy while increasing your business’ online presence, reaping benefits beyond statistics like brand exposure or click-through rates.

 

Furthermore, registering for your .au can be done in less than 5 minutes!

Feel free to get in touch with our team of domain consultants at 1300 638 734 now or have a read over at our .au frequently asked questions section.