Having your own agent website is incredibly important. It’s a great way to build credibility, to demonstrate your expertise to prospects, and to help people find you online. A good agent website that is filled with content and photos and gets updated frequently will help set you apart from the crowd.
But before you start building your agent website, you will need to pick a good domain name for your site. A domain name is your website’s unique address on the Internet. Here are a few tips for picking a good domain name
Keep it Short!
A good domain name is a name that would be friendly to both human visitors and search engines. When it comes to humans, you definitely want a short, memorable domain name – something that would be easy for people to remember and to type. You also want a name that you’ll be able to print on business cards – so a long domain name, again, is not a good idea.
Keywords Are Important
When it comes to search engines, you should include – if possible – the main keywords in your domain name. This would enable search engines to properly index your agent site. This often means that you want to include your location in your domain name. For example, if you’re a realtor in Austin, Texas, your ideal domain name would be:
AustinHomes.com or AustinRealEstate.com
While the inclusion of keywords often creates a slightly longer domain name, the SEO benefits are generally worth it, as long as the domain name isn’t too long. As a general rule, don’t include more than 2-3 keywords in your domain name.
Dot Com Is Still The Gold Standard
Of course, most good domain names are already taken – especially the .com names! So you’ll need to be creative and search for the best domain name still available to you.
If you absolutely can’t get a good .com domain name, .net and .info are acceptable alternatives.
Should You Use Your Own Name?
Probably not. Although using your name would help establish your personal brand and help clients find your site, it won’t do much in terms of search engine optimization. After all, buyers who are starting their search for a home on the Internet will type keywords, not your name, into the search engine search box.
Finding A Name
The website NameBoy.com is a great tool for finding domain names based on keywords. Going back to our previous example, a quick search for the keywords “Austin Realty” shows that AustinRealty.info is available (at least at the time of writing this article).
Once you decide on a domain for your site, you will need to register it with a provider such as godaddy.com, and then renew your registration every year.