I wanted to quickly share my recent experience with choosing a domain name that works. I use a lead generation website to feed my pipeline. When I initially signed up, I just randomly chose a domain name when the guy on the phone asked me to give him one. I hadn't really thought that deeply about it.
Fortunately, my first instinct was to make the domain name something generic. Unfortunately, it was a really long domain name. (www.sugarlandhomesforsaletoday.com). The domain name worked at driving traffic, but over time I was questioning that quick decision.
After nine months, I'd sold a few homes with leads from this site but I wasn't able to communicate with some of my leads if they didn't leave a phone number. My guess was that I had this long domain name with common terms in it and the email could be going into a leads spam folders. I did verify this occurred on Yahoo mail often.
What happened next is the main point of this blog.
I decided to change my domain name to my personal business name, www.weldonrealtygroup.com. BIG MISTAKE! The traffic to my site was horrendous and if a potential lead did visit the site they didn't give their email or phone number when prompted. It also turns out that Yahoo wasn't throwing my email into spam just because of my domain name but other technical factors that aren't relevant to this blog.
What is relevant is that people searching the web for homes want to remain anonymous as possible. Even though my picture, phone, and email is on my website, that domain name gives the sense to the consumer that they are not dealing with an individual that isn't going to hound them. (And I don't :))
So, my first instinct on the phone setting up my website was correct, keep it generic. Amazingly, I was able to find the domain name, www.sugarlandtxforsale.com (a lot shorter), and now the amount of traffic has tripled. Folks are filling out the forms and becoming a real lead I can follow up with potentially. There is always the Yahoo and Hotmail bulk mail filters that may throw my email into spam due to other technical algorithms but at least I am now getting tons of more visitors to my website.
Hopefully this will help others. Choose your domain name wisely!!
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