How To Choose The Right Real Estate Domain Name

One question that we get a lot from Carrot members and people looking to use the internet to drive leads for their business is, “Does my real estate domain name really matter for search engine optimization?”

Even if they’re not looking at search engine optimization a lot of people have that question. You know, what should my domain be? Should I have my keywords in it? Should it be location-dependent?

That kind of thing.

In this post, we’ll go through some suggestions on when you’re thinking about buying your domain, what you can go through, and help you make the decision.

Guide to Choosing the Right Real Estate Domain Name

First, does your domain name matter for SEO?

Yes, it does. You want people to recognize your brand, your business, or what your real estate website is about. An SEO-optimized domain name is one that breaks through the search engine results clutter and becomes more likely to be clicked.

So you think about your branding and your keywords and how they can impact your search rankings.

Exact Match Domain Names

What an exact match domain is, is when you use the exact same words all in a row, all in one phrase, in your domain as the phrase you’re looking to rank in Google for.

For example, if you’re looking to rank well for Las Vegas foreclosure properties, and you own the domain LasVegasForeclosureProperties.com, which I do, and I actually had a domain ranked very well for LasVegasForeclosureProperties.com … Las Vegas foreclosure properties at one time.

After a 2012 Google update came out, that website, which was a very low-quality website, it didn’t have much content on it, was immediately banished from the search results because it was a low-quality website. It had the same keywords in the domain as the keywords I was looking to rank for.

Google’s stance, is an exact match domain, your exact keywords for the phrase that you’re looking to rank for, or in your domain, will not help you with SEO unless you have good quality content on your website. Good quality, unique content on your website.

How Do You Choose the Right Real Estate Domain Name?

How do you choose domain names? Well is the way that I choose domain names, and I own well over 100 domain names in the real estate market, I own some insanely great domain names like LasVegasForeclosureProperties.com, like some other really great ones.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, there’s not any good domain names anymore.” Every month, I buy some insanely great domain names just off this one website I use. There are some great domain names out there still.

The way that I like to choose domain names is rule number one, don’t overthink it. Don’t buy the domain name just for SEO, but if your keywords happen to be in the domain, awesome. That’s a kind of a bonus. Do not overthink it and don’t buy a domain just for SEO reasons.

Buy a domain that you like, buy a domain that kind of follows some of these criteria:

• It’s simple.
• It has as few letters as you can get in it.
• Try to avoid dashes.
• Include your location.
• Make it easy to remember.
• Use a .com or .net.

Simple and Limiting Your Letters

LasVegasDiscountForeclosurePropertiesForSale.com, or something like that, would be way, way too long. Las Vegas Foreclosure Properties isn’t too bad. That’s probably about the max amount of words that I would want in one of my own domains.

Make it simple, simple that someone can remember; at least when someone is reading it, it makes sense. Las Vegas Foreclosure Properties makes sense, but Foreclosure Properties Las Vegas might not make quite a as sense when you read it literally.

Just make sure it’s simple and has as few letters as possible.

Try to Avoid Dashes

A lot of people will have domains similar to Buy-My-House-Cincinnati.com. It’s not that you can’t have that, it’s not that Google is going to penalize you a bunch for it, but it’s just hard to read.

It’s kind of clunky if you’re putting it on a postcard, or putting it in some direct mail, or even on Google Ads. We want to make it to where it’s something that people visually can immediately see what that domain says.

When we put a bunch of dashes in it, it makes it harder for people. At the very most, if you had to have a dash in your domain, at the very most just have one dash. No more than one dash, preferably no dashes.

Use Your Location

Including your location can be good, but it’s not required. One of the biggest questions we get from people when they’re looking at getting their domain names, is they say, “Hey should I include my city in it? Should I include my keywords?

If I’m in a Duluth should I make it Sell House Fast Duluth, or Sell My House Fast Duluth?” That’s really up to you. We have a lot of members who use just their company name in there. We have a lot of members who use a generic phrase like that, that’s Sell Your House, and then their city.

It’s up to you on what you like. I’m not going to say that one or the other is going to help you with search engine optimization, just make sure that the one you choose makes sense, it’s as simple as it can be, and it has as few letters as you can make it.

Recall

Ideally, make it easy to remember. Like I said, going back to the Las Vegas Foreclosure Properties, that’s pretty easy to remember. Foreclosures In Las Vegas is a little bit tougher to remember because it’s got an S thereafter foreclosures and it’s got the word “in”, in there. It’s not something that someone is gonna immediately potentially remember. This isn’t a requirement but ideally, make it as easy as you can possibly make it memorable.

Just in case you branch out and do some other marketing. Let’s say you start postcard marketing or bandit signs, and you’re gonna include your URL or a billboard or radio ad. For those instances, people have to remember the domain. Try to find that one that could maybe grow with you, if you plan on doing offline marketing as well.

Go With .com First. If That Fails, Go With .net

Go with the “.com” as much as possible. A lot of people say that there’s not any good “.com’s” out there anymore. That’s not the case. I buy good ones every single month. Go with the “.com” as much as possible or the “.net”. I’m not a huge fan of the other ones. I’m not a huge fan of the “.co” or some of the other ones out there like that. Now the reason for that is, people are just trained to put “.com” in their domain names. That’s kind of the mental default.

If you have a website called BuymyhousefastAtlanta.net and someone sees the ad somewhere, they might remember the “Buy my house Atlanta” part but might put “.com” mentally because that’s what we’re trained to do.

If your competitor has the “.com”, you could be trickling off traffic to them and not even know it. Try to with a “.com” as much as possible, or if you’re gonna do a “.net”, do the “.net” as long as no one’s using the “.com” effectively.

Examples of the Type of Things You Could Look For…

Here are some examples of things you can look for. One great way to do it is to base it on your company name. If you have a company name, it’s decently easy to remember.

Go ahead and do that. As an example, the company name “Real Property Mavens.” That’s not bad. It’s got three words in it. It’s memorable; it’s easy, and it rolls off your tongue. That could be your domain for that, let’s say for your main company site.

That’s one way to do it, or you could base it on your keywords plus your location, as previously mentioned. PittsburghHouseBuyers.com, WeBuyBakerHouses.com, SellMyBakerHouseFast.com, iBuyBakerHouses.net.

Those are all good. They’re descriptive.

They tell the person what you do. Immediately seeing the domain, they can tell what service you provide, that it’s in their location, and that you can potentially buy their house. Those are good examples of domains that include your keywords and location.

You could just base it straight off on your keywords. If you’re going to invest in multiple different cities, let’s say… These examples are just for motivated sellers, but let’s say you’re doing it for cash buyers and note sellers.

The same concept plays here. You could base it off of your keywords alone or just your company name if you are planning on branching off into multiple locations with that same website. FastHouseOffers.com.

That’s a great domain name.

It doesn’t include a location, but it also doesn’t bind you to just one location. You could technically use that website for multiple different states, and multiple different cities, which is really cool. RapidHouseBuyers.net. The same thing; that’s just a good example.

Where Do I Buy Domains [IMPORTANT]?

You might be asking, “Where do I buy domains?” Well, there are a lot of places to buy domains out there, and they’re not all created equal. If you haven’t bought your domain yet for your Carrot website, please, please, please pay attention to this. Make sure you do this because this could save you a ton of time and money in the long run.

We have found that some of those domain providers are insanely unfriendly regarding what they let you do. Some of them actually require you to pay them an extra fee to even do some of the very simple, basic things that you need to be done to attach the domain to your Carrot website.

Do not buy a domain from a provider like this. Buy a domain from one of two sources. They’re the easiest, ones we’ve been using for years, and they’re the easiest to hook up your domain to Carrot.

• Replace “The first one we prefer is a company called NameCheap” with: “We recommend Hover. It has automatic DNS setup, and it’s fast.”
• Feel free to simply swap out GoDaddy or the other secondary domain registrars with Namecheap instead.

We recommend Hover as the first one. It has an automatic DNS setup and is fast.

We would earn a couple of cents if you purchased a domain through Hover. We are not referring you to this website because we earn an affiliate commission. Hover is easily integrated with Carrot websites.

We can earn an affiliate commission off of sending you to any website out for domains, including Namecheap or even GoDaddy. Both of these options make it easy to attach your domain with Carrot.

Can I Switch My Domain Later?

One question we get a lot from people on domain stuff is “Can you switch your domain later?” Let’s say you have a domain and you attach it to your Carrot website today or you have a non-InvestorCarrot website and you attach it to it. Then 6 months down the road or a year down the road you say, “You know what? I’d like to change this” or even right now, while you’re setting up the website, “You know what? I’ve got this domain here, I’m not sure if I want it long-term but for now, I’m just going to attach this one to it and I can change it later.”

Ideally, you stay with the same domain that you set up your website with, and you don’t change it. Technically speaking, yes, you could change your domain name anytime. Just know that whatever search rankings that you were able to earn up to that point, even if it wasn’t high rankings, even if it was page four or five, those are going to disappear.

Those are gonna disappear as soon as you change your domain. All of the backlinks that you may have built with that domain, all of the social media activity that you may have built with that domain, are gonna go with that domain. If you attach a fresh new domain to your website, it’s gonna be starting from scratch.

Just know that if you change your domain, you will start your search engine optimization efforts from scratch. Everything that you did before that is going to go with that previous domain.

Get Started Now!

Just get implementing! Do not get stuck choosing your domain. Do not get stuck sitting there, thinking that you’ve got to get it perfect. Come up with something catchy, good enough, and tied to your company, keywords, or whatever.

Go out there and get creative with searching for domains. If you’re looking for motivated sellers, phrases like “Sell House” and then location or “Sell My House” plus location or “Sell My House Fast” plus location. Location “House Buyers,” location “House Buyer,” that kind of thing. “House Buyers In” location. There are a lot of different variations of ways that you can really build great domains.

Reach out to us if you need help getting started. Do not get stuck on the domain choice. Longer than a day or two … If you’re taking weeks to pin down your domain choice, you’re taking too long and stunting your progress.