Professional Domain Names

So What's really in a dmain name? Actually, alot. If you choose a great domain name and people will be knocking down the door to get to your website. Choose a poorly structured domain name and you will find yourself in the forgotten internet corner.

For real estate agents or brokers the big question is, what constitutes a "professional" domain name is a matter of debate, and this debate has as many opinions as the domain industry has experts. However, despite the domain debate, there are some best practices on which most people will agree.

1. Choose a domain that's relevant to you - You want your domain name to make sense to your clients and reflect what type of real estate you offer. Minus from using your own name (which you should) many agents don't like to do that, so for example; If you are John Doe and offer vacation rental real estate, you don't want a name like, John Doe Commercial real estate dot com.
   
2. A memorable domain name - The worst thing you can do is force your clients to have to search for your domain name (website) every single time they need to visit your website, so give them a domain name that's simple, catchy, and easy to spell. Like we mentioned above (choose a domain that's relevant) you should use your name, that is one of the best ways to have people remember. It's a pretty good chance poeple will just type in your name should they miss place your business card. This will help you from loosing several prospects.
   
3. Grab a dot-com domain name - Most people are used to the .com extension, it is attached to thet internet in most eyes. Even if you build a popular .net or .org site, you will still loosing out on some of this traffic. If you think about it for a second, every domain you type in is pretty much with the .com extension. Just like if your name is Jane Doe, your clients will automatically type in JaneDoe-dot-com rather JaneDoe-dot-net.
   
4. Keyword stuffing your domain - The use of keywords in your domain name is somethng you will want to avoid at all costs. Doing this will place you on the 'not so good' list with any of the search engines. When we talk about 'key word' stuffing, we are not saying that you can't use any key words, we are saying 'stuffing!' for example; If you are a real estate agent in Ohio that niche markets the condo market....using a domain like ohiocondos.com is perfect....using something like ohio-condos-for-sale-in city name.com, could be considered 'key word' stuffing. If you want to incorperate a keyword into your domain, limit it to one phrase, like the example of ohiocondos dot com.   
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5. Try not to use hyphens/numbers- Adding hyphens or numbers into your domain is harder to remember (and type), so try use a non-hyphenated version if you can. People will have a hard time with this. This also goes for adding numbers into your domain name. i.e. if your domain is realestate4less dot com, people may not understand and type our realestateFORless dot com. or the hyphen example of; Jane-Doe-Real-Estate dot com...people will type it out as janedoerealesate dot com. We think you get the picture with hyphens and numbers in domains.
   
6. Take your time - If you are not using your first and last name, take your time with our domain name choices, always solicit the opinions of others, sleep on things if you have to. Keep in mind that changing a domain name after you have established your website is not easy task, so make the effort to get it right the first time.