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10 Things to Avoid When Purchasing a Domain Name
The selection, purchase and promotion of a domain name is an integral part of you internet marketing strategy. It’s an important part of branding and search engine optimization. Here’s the quick and dirty about what to avoid when selecting a domain for your website:
- Not buying a keyword related domain. Search engines give some value to having a targeted keyword within the domain. This tends to be the case more so for Yahoo and MSN, than Google, but even Google shows a little favoritism for an exact match keyword domain. Many agents buy a domain with their first and last name, which isn’t terribly bad, but it’s not optimized for individuals to find your site if the are typing in keywords related to real estate in your area into one of the search engines.
- Putting ‘Realtor’ in your domain. It would make sense that you’d like to place ‘Realtor’ in your domain for search engine optimization purposes. However, NAR explicitly states that they own the Realtor trademark. Use ‘Realtor’ in your domain and you risk getting asked to take your site down by NAR. With the new guidelines put into the Code of Ethics this year about use of ‘MLS’, you might run a similar risk by using MLS in your domain (although NAR does not own trademark rights to MLS).
- Putting your franchise name in your domain. A domain is something that you will want to keep long term and search engines like Google value domain age. If you place a franchise name in your domain and later do not renew with that franchise, you’ll need to change your domain name and thus start from scratch again on building your domain brand again.
- Buying a .biz, .info, .us, .ws etc. TLD. Nothing denotes a cheap spammy site than having a TLD that conveys that you are late to the game or uncreative. Get creative and try to register a .com or at worst a .net or .org.
- Putting dashes in your domain. It was once thought that having dashes between words in your domain was more search-engine friendly. Again, it just conveys a spammy, fly-by-night site.
- Buying a vanity domain. You know these tacky domains when you see them (like those vanity license plates you see that make you want to puke). Some might dispute that a vanity domain like thedogfriendlyagent.com is catchy and is specific to a niche, but again, it is not optimized for keyword searches and many times just comes across as cheesy.
- Buying a domain with your competitor’s trademarked name in it. It’s a quick way to create enemies and get slapped with a lawsuit.
- Buying a domain where the .com version of it is already in use. Return visitors will rarely remember that your domain is a .net (or something else) as opposed to a .com. If your competitor owns the .com domain, you’ll be sending free traffic to them.
- Not buying alternate TLD versions of your .com domain to protect your keyword and brand. It’s a good idea to protect your brand and to prevent your competitors from snagging a keyword optimized domain.
- Lastly, delaying to register a domain could be the one of the greatest mistakes. Top-level and keyword-focused real estate domains have been snatched up and are being snatched up on a daily basis. The longer you wait, the more risk you run of not finding an optimal domain.