So what's in a name, you say? 
A name is how people know you and what sets you apart. If you are a parent you have you choice of naming your new baby a trendy name like Jacob, Joshua, Emma, or Isabella, a classic like John or Mary, or an oddity like Bronx Mogwli, Moon Unit, or Apple or the outrageous Ella Phant. When you're a kid, you may like your name to blend in, when you're grown, you might not mind a unique name. If you're named "Mary Alice" and everyone calls you "Alice," your teachers, the IRS, and all your professional contacts call you "Mary" until you clarify you want to be called "Alice."
The dilemmas of child naming are akin to those of domain naming for your website. Suppose your name is, well, "Mary Alice Jones "and you have a real estate business in Aardvark, IL, a Chicago suburb. You call your business Mary Alice Jones Realty. When someone in wants a home in Chicago, the Chicago area, or Aardvark itself, how would they find you from looking on line? If someone knows your name, they might come up with your name as a top result when they punched in "Mary Alice Jones Real Estate." If Aardvark, IL is a small town with not too many real estate agents, you might come up on the first page in a search as well if someone entered "Aardvark homes for sale." Not everyone knows your name or wants to live in Aardvark. If someone did the most common thing of entering "Chicago homes for sale" or "Chicago area real estate," your company might not come up until page 10. You will be sentenced to page oblivion. Having your name as your domain name does not guarantee Google prominence.
You may be thinking that you have seen agent names like www.alicejonesrealty.com as top rankers on Google. Agents maybe well known in the area and achieve this placement. If you really want your name (or your company name) as the domain name, go for it. But if you are still building your presence in the area, you need to make sure you at least have your website filled with enough keywords and other Google attractors to pull up your ranking. You can also buy other domain names that follow the advice below.
A better way to attract traffic is to include a geographic reference in the title. Examples of this might be MaryAliceSellsChicago or ChicagoHomeSales. Not surprisingly, obvious variations of this may have been scooped up by other agents who follow the same train of though. But by slightly modifying the name, you can come up with something close that will be likely to come up when a prospect is searching for a Chicagoland home. You can of course go for your local area (MaryAliceSellsAradvark, AardvarkHomeSales) but the area referenced might be too specific to attract the volume of visitors you want. You want a name that will get a high Google rating so your firm is on the first page or at least near the top of the rankings.
So what's in a domain name? Just about everything! Domain names are not a big investment, so buy and use the domain names that will meke you place high in search engines and bring actual buyers and sellers to your site.
Need some advice on domain name selection? The Prescott Group can help you select a name (or names) in line with your marketing strategy as well as help you with website design. Now we can even sell you the domain names themselves. Check out our cost-effective new domain name service!
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