Hi all,

My name is James and I was referred to this forum by a few people on Namepros.

Basically I have been into domains, websites, SEO and Social media for the last 6 years have traded over 100 domains, built some decent websites and now I am looking at .com.au domains as I never have touched this market =)

I was looking at companies like omg.com.au and how they develop keyword rich domains, what the legal issues behind this?

Few questions

1. who is the best to register domains with for .com.au?
2. who is the best to host my site for .com.au?

I have heard some dodgy stories abotu companies and want to stay away form the shonksters.

thanks all =)

Welcome to DNTrade James.
1) To register domains, few ones to look at, and more than a few to stay clear of. Personally can recommend Domain8/Drop.com.au.

2) Hosting, Aussiehost.com are pretty good.

Hi James,

Welcome to DNtrade! 100 domains is a great milestone - well done. In answer to your questions:

1) legal issues - similar to gtlds. Trading off TMs (cybersqatting & typosquatting) in a no no. The difference here is auDA will get you without even the need for a UDRP. There are some rules regarding domain eligibility that you should read up on too. Make sure you check out the following at least http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2005-01 and http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-10/

2) Good registrars include Intaserve, Hostess and Drop.

3) for small sites you may as well host in US (Hostgator etc) for the value.

Hope that helps

David

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CocktailRecipes.com.au ★ Photographers.com.au ★ DebitCard.com.au ★ Hockey.com.au ★ Boxing.com.au ★ DomainName.com.au

Hi James
Welcome

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Joes.com.au

Hi if I was buying .com.au domains I would rather host the domains in Australia for SEO value.

I already have servers on Godaddy, Hostgator and others in the US because I target the US market on all my other domains.

Thanks for the links I will check them out, Yeah I have seen that drop.com.au site was interesting I will admit, what I need is a Aussie host but too =)

And I don't cybersquat any domain, I am here for Development and SEO, I have created over 80+ sites =)

I think the .au will always tell Google the site is Australian. Once Google makes that decision, it applies the 'local website bonus' and then it's down to the other SEO stuff for the rest of the ranking.

Ie the 'Australian-ness' of a site is a yes/no rather than a scale.

Would be veryu interested if anyone has any evidence to the contrary?

PS one thing to consider though is speed. Esp in light of Google Instant so to save page load time, local hosting could be worth considering

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CocktailRecipes.com.au ★ Photographers.com.au ★ DebitCard.com.au ★ Hockey.com.au ★ Boxing.com.au ★ DomainName.com.au

My experiences with Google and sites for Google AU are much the same, all of my sites are hosted in the US, and with the .au in the domain, it shows up in the "Pages from Australia".

On another experience, I have VLTurbo.com, which is also hosted in the US, but shows up in the "Pages from Australia" results. Google might look at where most of the traffic is coming from and classify it as an Aussie site...

I don't think it matters where you host with a .com.au domain with english content as Google knows hosting infastructure is cheaper in some countries.

Although for large .au sites I always try and host in AUS.

If the site is large and multinational on a .com domain I use culture - internationalisation (i18n) and localisation (l10n) and set the sub folder in Webmaster Tools to show up in local search results

example.com/en-US/
example.com/en-AU/
etc

ibl's and local addresses also help

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...&answer=182192

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Index > Rank > Monetise

You can also check this in Google webmaster tools to be safe:
Site configuration -> Settings -> Geographic target

But for Australian based webhosting check aussiehost.com. Certainly a noticeable speed difference using it compared with hostgator.

hi all,

I actually work a SEO and Social Media specialist for a global agency (websites and domains is my part time hobby) I know from experience that if you have a .com.au you need to hosted in Australia its a bit of a SEO 101..Just having a .com.au is not enough

Even if you use microformats and GEO meta data it is still not enough, the country where you host it is another big factor =)