I am asking friends and peers about moving beyond using my name as my brand (bradhastings.com). I want to focus on branding a new name and website and the two I have registered and am considering are:

1) ProFoundHome.com
- has an interesting double meaning
- maybe too restricted to "homes" and not land, condos, and others
- I "get" the double meaning, but will anyone else?
- could be some interesting slogans

2) RippleRealty.com
- very nice alliteration and flow
- can be applied to all aspects of real estate
- allows me to open a future brokerage and use the same name (work for a broker now)
- someone else owns RippleReality.com so i wouldn't get that traffic if misspelled
- tagline could be, "We're Making Waves"

I know some people say to use a domain containing a geographic location and I have a ton of those that I can develop seperately or point to these (e.g. NewCTHomes.com, NorthernCTHomes.com, etc.). However, I am looking for a main website that I can develop and potentially sell down the road.

I really respect everyone's ideas here. Please let me know what you think.

I like #2. Do you live near water? If so that would help you brand in the area.

The key to placing web sites high (in Yahoo.com anyway) is more than just one thing.

1) Have a domain name that matches the search term of the people you're trying to reach. for example: JacksonvilleHomesforsale.com (or .net, .org, etc.)

or HomesforSaleInJacksonvilleFlorida.com or HomesForSaleJacksonvilleFL.com, etc.

2) The title, key words, and content have to all match with the domain name as best as possible.

3) Then you have to get other RELATED web sites to link to you. See textlinks.com

4) Give it time. Older domain names rank higher then new domain names.

If you know about key word density it would help you a lot too. Lot's of time and research go into creating a web site that ranks well for a given search term.

If you want to rank on Google... pay for Adwords. Google changes their ranking factors so much that I have gone from #2 to #342 in a week. I gave up trying to keep up.

Look at http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com for some more advice.

My site on yahoo.com ranks:
homes for sale in jacksonville fl: #5
homes for sale in jacksonville florida: #4
home for sale in jacksonville florida: #1
home for sale in jacksonville fl: #1
jacksonville realtor: #1
realtor in jacksonville: #6
realtor in jacksonville fl: #10
real estate company +jacksonville: #8
and more.... :)))

My primary web site is jacksonvillehomeinfo.net, but I have a dozen other sites that all link to my primary web site.

Good luck!

Prodigy - Thanks for your input - I really appreciate it. However, I do not live near the water! I just thought I could craft a cool theme and identity around the name.

StevenB - I appreciate your ideas regarding putting keywords in the title. I agree this is a smart way of driving traffic to your site. However, I am trying to craft a main "brand". However, my question - do you have seperate websites for each of these names or do you have them point to your main site?

Ripple Realty sounds too playful to me...though I do like the "We're Making Waves" tagline.

Hmm.

That's the only feedback I have at this moment. lol

Excellent post StevenB and nice site too!

Increase your link popularity and you will rank higher on Google. I DOMINATE on Google with relative search phrases to my area and this did not happen until I reached over 700 solid links on other sites.

StevenB-

I was reviewing your post and wasn't able to find a few of the sites you have listed. In fact, some of them don't even reported as being registered. Some of the others don't point to anything but a parked page. I'm not complaining since I appreciate any and all ideas in helping me choose a main domain - I'm just wondering if I misunderstood. Are these full domain names, like http://www.homeforsaleinjacksonvillefl.com (which just goes to a parked page)? Did you have them pointed at one point but no longer do?

Again, thanks for your input and ideas.