Choosing A Great Real Estate Domain Name
February 27, 2009
There are many ways you can select domain names for your website for driving more traffic to it and developing more prospects. Here are two of the most important:
1) Choose A .Com Based On Industry And Location
You need to make sure you use the type of domain suitable for your purposes. For instance, a domain ending with .org is for non-commercial types of organizations such as non-profit groups, credit unions and churches. .gov is for government, .mil is for military, .ca is for any Canada based website and .edu is for educational institutions. So if your domain is one of these, you’re not only in the wrong category in search engines, you’re also in a small place on the web. Having the wrong domain type is like exiting the information highway in a small town instead of the big city.
Lots of real estate sales people make the mistake of using a .net domain. A .net domain is intended for internet service providers like Rogers, Sympatico, Verizon, and especially small dialup internet providers in rural areas. So having a .net domain gives you the same problem as having a .org. The commercial domains include .ca, .biz, .info and .com. These domains are for any commercial businesses.
Now let’s consider .com separately from these other commercial domains.
When you have a .biz or .info domain, you’re exiting the information freeway into a small rural community. Not a lot of business is there, and so not a lot of traffic goes there. A .ca domain is better because it represents all of Canada. It’s like exiting the highway into a big city. But remember: when you are a .com this is the gateway to the world on the web. This is most popular domain for businesses worldwide, and .com domains are worth the most when re-sold. So since you are in business for yourself as a real estate sales person, and buyers can come from anywhere in the world, you definitely want a .com domain for your website.
2) Pick Domains Based On How People Search For Listings
You should have both a generic name for your website (eg. Mississauga-condos.com) and your own name (JohnSmith.com). A domain with your own name is part of your personal branding. But when the day comes to sell your website domain, unless you’re a famous person, no one is going to be interested in buying your JohnSmith.com website name. But they’ll be interested in Mississauga-condos.com. This could become a valuable piece of “dot.com real estate” that could eventually be worth tens of thousands of dollars when you retire or leave the real estate business.
Some companies specialize in buying domain names and re-selling them, so try looking around for some popular domain names describing your farm areas. Some domains already have high ranking in the major search engines, so by buying one of these domains you can start getting lots of traffic to your website immediately. My turn-key website for real estate reps Moneymaker gets you this in spades. You may be able to buy a great domain name which no other real estate sales person is using, but it may be expensive. Even if another sales rep has a domain you want, email them and make them an offer for the domain. They may not understand the value of their domain or realize the high search engine ranking their domain has, so they may cut you a great deal.
In my course Building Your E-Commerce Business I teach a great deal more about search engines, why they’re the number one way to drive traffic to your website, and how you can get your website onto page one of search results for the major search engines. This course was been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 to qualify for 6 Credits.
Filed under: Realtor Websites - Best Practices,SEO For Realtor Websites
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