Some people say that the domain name doesn’t matter that much for ranking high on the search engines and as long as you have a lot of pages with unique articles (and some good back links) then it doesn’t matter what domain name you use. Well I agree with that up to a certain point, but in reality having the right domain name makes a lot of difference in the number of visitors, because even if a website makes it to the first page on the search engines there are still a lot of people who look at the domain name first before clicking on the link and if somehow they don’t like what they see then they are going to stay away from the website. Most people look for domain names that are a logical choice for what they are looking for and that are authoritative enough to gain their trust, especially now that a lot of websites seem to be using the same titles since they are all optimized for the same popular keywords in their field, and so what sets those websites apart once they make it to the first page is going to be their domain name. On top of that most search engines like relevancy and so if you have matching keywords in the domain name, title, and description of the website (in addition to the actual content) then you might have an advantage when it comes to getting on the first page and more importantly for getting the visitors to choose your website between all the other ones that have also made it to the top. IMO


PS: when choosing long-tail domains (domains that are three words or longer) it’s important to know if the search engines can parse the keywords used in the domain name and that are able to recognize them separately. Try googling the keywords in a domain name without any spaces (and without the extension) and see if they can be recognized as separate words, if so then it might be an advantage to use those keywords in the title and the description too. IMO


Here is an example:

www.SuperLuxuryHomes.com , when searching for SuperLuxuryHomes on google it will ask you if you meant: Super Luxury Homes

and so that means that google can recognize the keywords in my domain.

What’s your opinion about this.




(not meant as professional or legal advice)

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How about something like www.northmyrtlebeachrealestatesales.com ?
Clay Branyon
North Beach Realty

Do you think you could get it a little longer?

Considering that your primary keyword “North Myrtle Beach” is already three words long, there doesn’t seem to be that many options available for short domains that you can use. It’s probably best to go with as little number of words as possible that still show that you specialize in “North Myrtle Beach” real estate.


Here are a couple of domains that are available for your area:

NorthMyrtleBeachBrokerDotCom
IsellNorthMyrtleBeachDotCom

(not meant as professional or legal advice)

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It might also be worth mentioning that if you are willing to consider other extensions (such as .US) there might be more choices available to you, but then you have to decide what domains and extensions are the best match for your specific use, I always think that it’s best to have as many good domains as possible that relate to a certain region since each domain can act as a portal that can bring in new visitors either through direct type-ins or through search engine optimization for the ones that are developed into websites (or mini sites).


(not meant as professional or legal advice)

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Also for real estate agents it might be worth it to consider buying a better quality domain in the aftermarket, specially if they were going to use that domain for their main website.


(not meant as professional or legal advice)

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At this point rather than spend $10k on a great domain name I would rather have a short easy to remember one and spend $10k on web development.

As long as you build enough backlinks and such it will not really matter with the actual search result placement. However, with that in mind if you domain has keywords in it every time someone googles that keyword it will bold your domain name.

While the domain may not be important for placement it can help drawing a customers attention when they see you in the SERPS.

Although I used to be of the school of thought that the domain name doesn't make a difference and it's almost entirely dependent upon the inbound links/anchor text - I've seen several cases where two different domains were put up for the same subject, and with ZERO other SEO effort, the domain that was more keyword rich outranked the other domain (by a large margin).

Based on that, yes - links can outweigh anything, but if you have a keyword rich domain, it might make for less work to get rankings.

because brokers are based in a specific MSA, there is no need for a fancy name like "realestatebroker.com".

go to a site like www.instantdomainsearch.com (not affiliated with me) and type in your local market area- you should be able to find a good available domain name in your local market that's easily memorable... or alternatively, you can use a name like "Christherealestatebroker.com"

I don't know... I would worry too much about having the keyword in your domain name if it is 3 words or longer. Don't get me wrong, I know that having the keyword in the domain name is a great thing to have, but you have to remember that people will need to type your domain in their browsers. I don't know about anyone else, but I would be tempted to look elsewhere if I had to type in a ridiculously huge domain name to access a site. Just remember... people have a tendency of being lazy.

What's important is to get backlinks with your targeted keyword(s) in them. As long as you continuously do that, you'll move your way up the search engines while having a more suitable domain name... it's like having cake and eating it too.

Here is what I consider to be most important to keyword domain names as well as on page SEO kind of go hand in hand.

I know Google looks at the keywords in the domain name and also looks for the keyword in the:

<title>
<H1>
<meta tags> believe it or not
and keywords lightly sprinkled throughout the web page.

Now when you have anchor text back links point to your web pages or website home page, that creates more relevance on popularity to boost your rankings.

The bad thing about back linking is that it is time consuming and boring.

- Gary

I'm a real estate investor in the Manassas, Virginia area. I am finding that my website, because of it's name, attracts targeted visitors. http://www.manassashousedeals.com