There are various ways you can refer your website address in a written format. For example;

• http://www.example.com
• http://www.example.com/
• www.example.com
• example.com

None is more correct than another (although, on a technical level, there are differences.) You should check to make sure that your website is accessible without the ‘www’ — this is dependent on your web host, and in most circumstances, if it is not configured this way, it is easy to change (and you should request this.)

Then, you need to consider and adopt a consistent way of displaying your website address. Consider these factors when making your decision:

• The ‘http://’ takes up a fair bit of space
• The ‘www’ stands out and is immediately recognisable as a website address
• The shortest form, example.com, can be more easily associated with your business name, and is easier to speak (which makes it easier to remember)

Whichever you choose, be sure to maintain consistency!

There are several legitimate reasons to own multiple domain names relating to the one website. You might own both the .com and .com.au (or equivalent) to protect others from registering them and causing confusion; popular misspellings to capture visitors who type in your domain name incorrectly, or other domain names that you use to track various offline marketing campaigns.

The best way to handle these is to choose a single, primary domain name. Choose the domain name that the search engines seem to know about (i.e. you search for your business name; the first result that appears is the domain that the search engines primarily associate with your website.) Then, redirect all other domain names to this primary domain. The best type of redirect in this situation is a “permanent redirect”, also known as a “301 redirect”. Your web developer will be able to achieve this for most websites by using what’s known as a “.htaccess file”. Avoid redirects that involve placing code in an HTML page; search engines struggle with these.

“Parking” domain names to your primary website is an easier option, and is usually okay, provided no other website refers to the other domain names. Otherwise, search engines will pick those up, and become confused by the apparent duplicate websites. But to be safe, apply a redirect.

Know who your domain registrar is — the company through which you registered your domain name(s).

You will receive dozens of letters and faxes from competing domain registrars that look a little like a renewal invoice, but are just an invitation to swap your domain name over to them, or register similar domain names to those you already own.

Ignore these. Stick with your existing domain name registrar unless you actually want to move your business elsewhere.