Choosing the Best Domain Name for your Real Estate Website

One of the most important parts of your online presence is your domain name, and choosing the right one is an important step in building your brand. There are lots of different strategies for coming up with a domain name, but here are a couple of tips to get you brainstorming.

Make easy to remember:  Word of mouth is an extremely important part of marketing, so your domain should be easy for your visitors to recall. Keep it short and simple so that it rolls off the tongue and looks good on your business cards. Really long phrases look awkward and can be hard to read or remember.

Use keywords and key phrases:  Brainstorm the top keywords or phrases that best describe your business and niche. If you want your website to come up in Google when people are doing general research, than this is the way to go. The trick to this is finding a balance between this tip and the first tip: something that is short and sweet but still easy to stumble across when browsing the web.

Stay relevant:  The more relevant your domain name is the quicker visitors will understand what your website is all about. It is relatively easy to guess what the content of the websites mynewplace.com or  listingbook.com might be, while names like Zillow.com or Trulia.com require much more branding. If you can’t make the investment in marketing that Zillow did to make it a recognizable name and brand, then using a “discoverable” name built around keywords is the way to go.

Avoid trademarks and copyright infringement:  Don't use anyone else’s trademark or copyright in your domain! Nothing could be worst that building a brand only to discover you made this mistake sometime down the road. Copyright.gov is a great resource to check your ideas against before you decided on your name.

Common pitfalls:  Avoid using acronyms, numbers, or hyphens. These make it very difficult to remember and very hard to verbally tell someone else your site's name. Acronyms are challenging to remember, numbers are too ambiguous (2 or two?), and hyphens are far too easily forgotten and left off.

There is no right way to choose a domain name. Consider what your marketing strategy is and remember that this is a creative process that will take some time to get right! Come up with options and ask your friends and other professionals for their opinions. With a little creativity you will get there!