Today’s blog post focuses on the power of local, including how your business's online presence plays a key role in consumer perception of your brand. We look at how a domain name influences visibility, the benefits of choosing a domain name that end in .au, how businesses and consumers are supported with .au and local search optimisation.

How a domain name influences visibility

People begin their searches in search engines like Google, but Google doesn’t prioritise Facebook or other social media platforms—it shows results for websites with domain names. To have visibility, you need to have your own website and domain name.

The benefits of choosing a domain name that ends in .au

For Australian businesses, domain names ending in .au are designed to get you the best results. There are a number of clear benefits that come with choosing a .au domain name for your Australian business, as we highlighted in this blog post back in 2018:

It tells your customers that you are an Australian business (commercial .au domain names require an ABN/ACN for registrations).
It signifies recognition and trust (people are familiar with the .au brand through seeing it advertised frequently within the local market).
It may improve your Google ranking (a domain name ending in .au helps Google understand where your business is located and assists with ranking relevant customer queries).

Local search optimisation

As defined by the team at Search Engine Journal in this Guide to Local SEO, local SEO is “a branch of SEO that focuses on optimizing a website to be found in local search results”.

They have published this comprehensive article which highlights local search statistics as they relate to location. Some interesting figures include:

• Nearly 1 in 3 mobile searches are related to location;
• 76% of people who search on their smartphone for something nearby will visit the business within a day; and
• 90% of consumers have used the internet to find a local business in the past year.

By having a domain name that ends in .au you are letting search engines know you are an Australian business, providing a higher ranking for your website in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and helping customers realise that you are local (and possibly just around the corner!).

Supporting businesses and consumers

Our colleagues at .au Domain Administration (auDA) offer tips for businesses who moved online during COVID-19 in this blog post. They advise these businesses to keep contact details up to date to continue to receive important information, include a reminder that domain names are due for renewal every one to five years and explain that the type of domain name a business has matters to their customers. This last point goes on to explain that “now more than ever, Australians are looking to buy local when shopping online” and when a business uses a domain name ending in .au people are easily able to identify a business’s origin

As a business owner, you should understand how simple decisions such as choosing the right domain name and taking local search into account can influence your online visibility greatly, and ultimately help bring in more customers. If you are yet to launch your business online, we strongly recommend considering how your brand’s visibility will benefit from investing in the power of local, and get in touch with a registrar for more information on setting up your .au domain name today.