Maximise your .nz domain

So, you’ve purchased your domain! That’s great news, but have you thought about what comes next? You might be getting ready to create your website, or it may already be finished, but taking a few moments now to consider how to get the most out of your efforts going forward will be a huge help further down the line.

Getting the most from your online presence

Below you’ll find areas that you can work on to get the most out of being online. All of the points require regular updating, so this isn’t a ‘do it once and forget about it’ deal. But with the right planning, you can make creating your website a little easier, as well as ensuring that your ongoing efforts are reaping all the rewards you want them to.

From digital marketing to managing your domain, we’ve got the information to get you started.

Digital marketing

Let’s start with the big one; digital marketing. No matter what your web presence may be for, getting this part right will be a big boost. It’s how to get more visitors to your website, grow your audience and grow your brand.

Think of your web presence like a tree; the domain name acts like the ground, your place in the digital world and your website is the trunk. The branches are the channels where you reach out to your audience while the leaves are your interactions.

Each branch grows as you put more effort into them, and all bring different results. The most common are:

Content

Consider content as the lifeblood of digital marketing. Google, and all the search engines, use content to decide what websites to show for different queries people look for online. The more relevant and accurate the information, the more likely your website is to feature higher in the list. This can mean updating pages as well as regularly creating new content but also means you can figure out what your audience are looking for and cater your content to those topics, giving you a better chance of being seen. Make your content do as much of the work as possible and your web presence will benefit from it.

Social media

A big part of everyday life currently revolves around social media, and with so many platforms to choose from, it’s very easy for brands to ruin themselves without careful thought. You must identify your audience and what platforms they’re likely to use rather than trying to blanket them all, and if you do use multiple platforms, ensuring the content is unique for each. The topic may be the same but the language should be different. Also consider how to interact and respond to your audience with care, and decide what your goals are for each platform.

SEO

As mentioned briefly above, search engines show websites based on their relevance and accuracy to a query. Knowing this, and knowing what your audience is looking for, can help you beat the competition and get to the top of the list. Rules around this have tightened over the years, no longer focusing on the number of keywords used or mentioned on a page (although keyword use is still important) but instead on the value of the content to the user, as the search result algorithms evolve, this will continue. This is why your digital marketing strategy must be all-encompassing.

Paid advertising

There are pros and cons to all aspects of digital marketing, and paid advertising is no different. Using Google, Bing or another search engine, you can pay for the chance for your website to show at the top of the page for certain words and terms. The problem is for smaller businesses, it’s unlikely you’ll beat bigger companies who put a lot more money into the system, even if you’re more relevant to the user. The same goes true on Facebook and social media platforms, too, where you have the same option. Also note, once the money stops that placement disappears, so it’s an ongoing investment but it does have plenty of benefits!

While there are other areas within digital marketing, the four above are the most prominent and should be the first steps in the field. Once you’re used to those, there are other avenues to explore and further strengthen your brand and web presence. The goal of this activity is to bring people to your digital and real world locations, helping you achieve your wider goals.

Website performance

There are a number of factors that can affect your website’s performance, from the design to the hosting. Whatever your website is supposed to do, make sure you have the right look and technical support sorted so that users have a seamless experience from start to finish.

Website speed is an important consideration here, especially on mobile devices as this is what a growing number of audiences are using. Do you have a lot of complicated elements that slow loading times down? While you can’t predict the type, and reliability, of the Internet your users will have, needless elements that slow things down will have a negative impact on your website, both from a user point of view as well as the search engines.

High-resolution image and video elements that are in prominent places will also have an effect, and if they get in the way of what users are looking to do, this will show up very quickly. The same goes for pop-ups; be very careful how these are used, if at all, as many users find them more of a hindrance than a help.

Build your authority

What is authority? That really depends on who you ask but there are various aspects to consider when dealing with authority.

Brand authority

How well your brand is known in your industry. This could be as an expert on certain topics or products, for providing quality service or products compared to the competition⁠—or much more. It’s important to identify what your aim is and then you can work to improve it further. Content is an important part of this, as described above.

Digital authority

You might be surprised to know but each domain and website also has an authority score. There are plenty of tools out there to check it but the way to increase this score is wildly different than brand authority. It relies on other websites linking to you because you are a leader in the industry, whether that’s content, products or services. Rules on this have toughened in recent years and these links must be from reputable sources and have relevance to your audience, otherwise the search engines will lower your score—or you might not show up on the search engines at all!

You might want to work on one of these areas before the others or side-by-side, but whichever option you choose, don’t completely neglect the other—they’re linked a lot closer than you might think.

Manage your .nz domain

It’s really important to manage your domain name carefully. This is mostly down to the renewal period, as you must make sure to renew your domain before it runs out so no one else can register it. If that happens, it is much harder to resolve, and in some cases, due to the regulations around it, there is nothing to be done. That means all your hard work disappears and you have to start again with a different domain.

Some registrars will offer an auto-renew function but this requires valid billing details and it will normally renew at the current price, not the one you paid originally. Registrars will communicate with you via email and internal messages on their website in the run-up to the renewal, and this is just one of the reasons you must ensure your contact details are kept up-to-date.

Depending on your registrar or hosting service, you may need to consider security upgrades, as well as CMS updates. Some providers and suppliers will handle this for you but it’s best not to take it for granted.

We recommend two-factor authentication for all logins you have, as this will help keep your details, account and services secure. There are different ways to do this, from receiving a code sent to you through a message to an app.

One option you can choose from your registrar is IRPO, which stands for the Individual Registrant Privacy Option. This is for individuals or those not in significant trade. It’s a privacy function that keeps some details private and gives you peace of mind.

Support and dispute resolution

In a perfect world, everything works fine and no arguments arise. While we might not be there yet, we have put in place a support network to help you with a range of issues you may face. We may not be able to help directly but we’ll do everything we can—or point you in the right direction.

Check the pages below to find out more about our support services and the Domain Name Commission, which is open to everyone looking to resolve disputes on domain names.