I am a new agent and am planning my website. Trouble is, I can't decide on a domain name to use. I know I should not use myname.com, but can't decide on much else. Any suggestions?

I am in middle Georgia.

thanks!
Jessforce

If you have a RE market specialty I would recommend incorporating into domain name. For example if your speciatlty is condos in Mytown you could have MytownCondos.com

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If you are honest, you don't have to remember anything ... Mark Twain

jessforce>

A good domain name could help you more then you think. If you want email me some information about the type of real estate you deal with mostly along with your name, and the areas you serve starting with the most popular one.

I will use that information to find a good domain name which is "Keyword-Rich" for the most popular keyword.

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Real Estate Web Design - 30 Day Free Trial

'warner-robins-realtor.com' appears to still be available. Search engines will interpret the dashes as spaces so it *should* be just as good as warnerrobinsrealtor.com (which is taken). Use godaddy.com to reserve it for $8. Good luck.

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Marc
Top REALTORS® , home values , and real estate news & trends

Personally speaking, and I will admit to not having any experience to back up my claims, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But I hear that of all domain names, keyword and targeted domains are "in the out" and easily recognizable names are the "retro cool" and are the way "in".
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

That site is what I am refering to. It is really well written post on how to plan your website. Some of it might not apply to you, but it's still worth a good read and I think everyone can take a little out of it to help.

As a opinion and nothing more hopefully akin to jon doe public, I would hardly remember any site that is keyword oriented or your-name-goes-here.com for my real estate needs.

Just my two cents like I say.

~Matt Brandt

Well, as i said, I am new. I have no particular area of expertise.

I have been doing some marketing for some properties listed with my company. Here is a link to one: http://www.110sweetbay.com
I am a slightly skilled amateur in web design and creation, as you can see.

But I am looking to do my own personal site, and I just need a good domain name.

Other realtors in my area just use their name, but... who is going to be looking at my name in a search engine???!

Anyway, any more advice is still needed and appreciated.....

I always try to find the shortest easy to remember .com URL that I can find, not easy anymore but they are out there. I used http://locateAhouse.com for my main Realty site and it's not a year old yet, it does take a while to find something with house, home, realty etc.. in it, not a lot left.
One place that might help in your search is http://nameboy.com you can type in keywords etc to see what comes up, if you find something double check it at http://register.com, I have found a few names at nameboy but they were taken already.

Having a keyword rich domain name will help but it will not make you rank #1 just by it self although it will help.

In order for your site to rank well on Google and other popular search engines your website needs to have authority. By authrity i mean it needs to be recognized as a suitable website. Currently one of the best ways to get authority is by getting other websites to link to you.

Sites which are relative to the content on your website will give you a better boost then sites which are not.

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Real Estate Web Design - 30 Day Free Trial

what city are you in?

try www.MoveToCityName.com a lot of cities are available that way, it's catchy and easy to remember.

i would not use a domain that has dashes in them in any print advertising. same thing for a .net, most people will leave them out or type in .com anyway. if it is a domain just for search engine placement, then they would be fine.

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Wes Murphree
Investment Realty
http://www.SCInvestmentRealty.com
http://www.3NetLease.com
http://www.MultifamilyListings.com

I picked mine so that my clients can remember it better and type it on their browser easily.

It's Lula Sells Homes. Very easy for clients to remember.

Search engines is another story, but you can score well without having keyword-rich domains.

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South Bay:Torrance Real Estate

Well I finally picked my domain name and built the site. Now, I ask the question of you experienced tech agents, :

do I need a form to gather my users contact info?
How effective is it to gather the data?

http://www.homesofwarnerrobins.com

All sites should have some way to collect the names and email addresses of their visitors, although it should not be your primary focus. Integrating this function is one of the most basic web development tasks, and will soon be required as part of the VOW protocal...

Being the new(est) guy, I'm just full of opinions, so here's mine!

I think everyone should have TWO domain names.

FIRST DOMAIN NAME:
I call it your advertising domain name - This one should be the one you use in print advertising and verbally. Easy to remember, easy to say, easy to read.

Easy to remember:
If you have to "explain it", don't use it. www.myhome4sale.com If you use this domain name, and tell someone it, you'll have to explain that it's the number 4, not the word four - don't use it. It should be short and easy to spell. www.isellfoothillneighborhoodsincalifornia.com. You can see the obvious problem here... and the word neighborhood is probably the most misspelled word there is.

Easy to say:
www.TVdoesRE.com - short and sweet, but all the letters sound the same... T - V - R - E. Say that in a crowed room and all you'll hear is, "what?"

Easy to read:
www.for10tosell.com - is that a 1 (one) or a lower case L? Is that a capital O or a zero? Also, you should be putting your domain name on your yard signs, so make sure it's short enough so you don't have to use tiny lettering to fit it on your sign, then no one can read from their car.

SECOND DOMAIN NAME:
I call this one my search engine domain name. This one doesn't have to be easy or short. I wouldn't go over-board, but you "should" try to include search keywords in it. If you plan on selling Denver Real Estate, you obvious domain name should be www.denverrealestate.com. Don't forget you can use hyphens ( - ) in your domain names. So maybe www.denver-real-estate.com or www.denver--real--estate.com or denver--realestate.com.

No one is going to try to remember this domain name... it's just to promote on the web where people will just be clicking on it and probably not even notice what the domain name is.

Why shouldn't you register yourname.com? If it's available I say grab it! It's the perfect domain name for clients & prospects to remember -- if they can remember your name, they can remember your site.

I would also register a second domain name for people that don't know who you are. This would be perfect for print advertising. You can then point both domains to your main site and tell people that already know you the yourname.com domain while still being able to advertise the catchy domain in the paper.

By the way, I wouldn't register a domain name that has Realtor in it as it's my understanding that it's a trademark infringement. Imagine spending years promoting your domain and then all of the sudden having to give it up and start from scratch

FYI...it is correct that you can utilize multiple domains pointing to the main site but if done incorrectly, this can cause your sites search engine rankings to suffer on google and Yahoo still isn't handling 301 redirets properly and without penalizing the site regardless of the recent claims that they are implementing a fix for this well known problem

"By the way, I wouldn't register a domain name that has Realtor in it."

NAR says you CAN use Realtor in your domain name, as long as it's being used to describe you. Like RealtorGreg.com, or GregtheRealtor.com. You must use your name with it... I actually have an email from them because I used it incorrectly, and they promptly sent me the rules and regs for it... so I know them. I can forward these rules to anyone that wants them... email me a request.

"multiple domains pointing to the main site but if done incorrectly, this can cause your sites search engine rankings to suffer"

Not if you don't promote both on the web. Pick ONE to submit to search engines and post in forums. Only use the other in your print material and the search engine will never ever know about it. Even if it does get picked up by the search engines for some reason, it won't hurt anything... you'll actually see the "cached" paged is from the "real" domaim even though you typed in the alias.