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Your Customized Domain Name Strategy

If you commission Blackbrick for development or operations services we may develop a domain name strategy for you. Many people and organizations don't think long and hard about their domain name strategy, but we do. Let us do the thinking and the tedious administration for you! We'll come up with and execute a plan for securing your first-class Internet brand.

Domain names

Having a domain name strategy means having the following types of domain:

1. A canonical domain
2. Alias domains
   • Locality domains
   • Typo/homograph domains
   • Hyphenated domains
   • Alternative domains
3. Reserved domains
4. Desired domains

These types of domains are discussed below.

A canonical domain

The canonical domain is the domain name that you tell everyone you have and that alias domains redirect to. E.g. PersonalServer.com. The canonical domain should be a .com domain (not .net or .com.au etc), should be as short as possible, should not contain punctuation (e.g. the dash symbol) and should be covered by good locality, typo/homograph, hyphenated and alternative alias domains. In the old days encryption (HTTPS) was typically only supported on the canonical domain name, but these days it's cheap and easy to support encryption for all domains, not just the canonical domain.

Alias domains

Alias domains are domains that redirect to the canonical domain (for HTTP) or that forward to the canonical domain (for email). If the user opens a web-page on an aliased domain they will be redirected to that page on the canonical domain, and if the user sends an email to an aliased domain the email will be forwarded to the user at the canonical domain. There are four types of alias domain: locality, typo, hyphenation, and alternative domains. As mentioned above these days encryption is typically supported on all alias domains, whereas in the past the cost for that was usually prohibitive.

Locality domains

Locality domains are domains for the country (Australia), e.g. personalserver.com.au.

Typo and/or IDN homograph domains

Typo domains are domains that have a typo or spelling mistake, e.g. personallserver.com. See also IDN homograph.

Hyphenated domains

Hyphenated domains are domains with a dash symbol in them, e.g. personal-server.com.

Alternative domains

Alternative domains are alias domains that are not locality, typo or hyphenation domains, e.g. personalserver.net.

Reserved domains

Reserved domains are domains that are not used (they are not canonical domains or alias domains) but are registered. The reason for registering domains which we don't use is to preclude the possibility of a competitor or 3rd party registering domain names which might impinge on our brand. We don't want the domains to actually work (that might create a maintenance problem) but we do want to make sure no-one else can get them.

Desired domains

Desired domains are domain names that it would be nice to have but that are currently registered by another party meaning we can't get them.

Heard enough?

Want expert help with your domain name strategy? Then get in contact with us today!

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