Choosing Good Real Estate Domain Names

One often underestimated part of a Realtor's online marketing campaign is the domain name. A good domain name can play a major part in the success of your web site.

This article will focus on how to select a good domain name. For information on why your own domain name (as opposed to a URL such as www.realtor.com/mystate/mycity/MyName) is important for your business, refer to our article on Why Use a Professional Domain Name .

While the most obvious and probably the most common choice for an agent is to use their own name as their web site's domain, this is often not the best choice. While this may be a good name by which existing clients can remember your site, the key is for your web site to generate new leads and new clients. Domain names like JohnDoe.com will not identify your web site to potential clients searching the web for a home in your area.

It is unlikely that homebuyers will search for you by name. Instead they will be searching for "Manhattan real estate" or "Manhattan properties". Furthermore, once they've visited your site and moved on, it will be much easier for someone looking to relocate to Arcadia, CA to remember the name ArcadiaRealEstate.com than to recall the name of a Realtor they've never worked with. This holds especially true if your name is not common or is difficult to spell. I would suggest registering your JohnDoe.com as a second domain name that is directed to the same site, but not as the only name used.

The best domain names should be descriptive and serve to identify your target market. Ideally it would also contain keywords that potential clients would search by. This simple change will help improve your site's search engine rankings dramatically.

The words "Real Estate", "Properties", or "Homes" can be easily combined with the locations you serve, creating a domain name that is both descriptive and contains the highly important keywords. An excellent domain name for an agent serving the city of Oakland, CA would be OaklandRealEstate.com. Although many of these names may already be taken, you could try using the names of smaller neighborhoods you serve instead of the larger metropolitan area. In the case of the Oakland example, you could try using the communities of Rockridge, Claremont, or Lake Merrit in your domain name.

Another option is to register more than one domain name or even have more than one web site. By having more than one domain name and web site, you can target each smaller community specifically, and establish yourself as the expert in that area. See our article on targeting for more details: Importance of Targeting a Niche Market

Now that you have a good idea of what to look for in a domain name, you will need to find one that is available and register it. If you have a few specific names you're considering, you can go directly to a registrar site such as NetworkSolutions.com or RegisterNames.com. If it turns out the ideas you had are already taken, you can try using Nameboy.com. Nameboy.com will automatically suggest available domain names based on the keywords you provide.

A good web hosting company will often handle your domain name registration for you or direct you to the registrars with the best rates.

Additional guidelines for selecting a domain name:

Keep It Short:
It is often a tradeoff between having your domain name descriptive and having it short. Ideally you would have domain name that is both descriptive of your service and short enough that it can be used in conversation easily. Shorter names tend to be more professional, easier to spell, and more memorable. They also look nicer on printed materials and advertisements.

Avoid Unnatural Spellings:
With many good domain names already taken, many people are using "creative" ways of getting the domain names they want. Many domain names use numbers to represent words such as 2 for "TO" and 4 for "FOR" or the letter Z in the place of an S. Names like 4NewYorkRealEstate.com can make your domain name more difficult to remember or, worse, send your visitor to your competitor at ForNewYorkRealEstate.com. By choosing a domain name that is easy to spell, you'll maximize the number of repeat visitors to your site.

Use a Dot-Com Extension:
The shortage of memorable dot-com domains has led to the creation of dozens of other extensions. However, nothing will replace the brand name associated with a dot-com domain name. Similar to the 1-800 toll free numbers, dot-com will always be the most well known extension and the first place people will look for a name they remember. Most importantly, the reason companies usually register with a non dot-com name is that the dot-com is already taken. Now do you really want to run the risk of advertising and promoting your web site only to send a large portion of your clients to your competitor's site?