Tips on Choosing a Domain Name - What you need to Know

You're a Real Estate professional, you're establishing your online presence and you still need to establish your domain name. It's all about name branding. What type of name do you want associated with your business? Here's a few tips to help you decide.

• To start brainstorming for a great domain name, make a list. List all the words associated with you, your business, and your area. From there you can create different combinations. Domain names should be short, memorable, not easily confused, hard to misspell, and relate to the core of your business.
• Keep the domain short and simple. Even though you can register a 67 character domain name doesn't mean you should. As great as www.ImTheBestAgentToSellYourHomeInTheWholeWideWorld.com sounds, it's too long for advertising, for people to remember, and quite frankly for people to even type into their browser. Long domain names are more susceptible to misspellings as well.
• Buy your own personal or company name. What better way to make it easy for your customers to find you? As you become better known online, and as you build your customer database, it will become increasingly important for your customers to be able to find you based on your personal name.
• Buying your personal name allows you to build credibility for your brand identity and makes it easy to "Google" you. Ever tried typing in just your first and last names at Google? Try it and see what happens. And buying your own personal name as a domain name is a simple and very effective way to get going. Do people misspell your name or your company name? It's not a bad idea to buy misspellings of your domain name either.
• " You should also avoid trademarked names. You may not realize this, but the term "Realtor" is actually trademarked. There are rules and regulations regarding HOW you use it. Here are the rules:
  
  
  • The term REALTOR®, whether used as part of a domain name or in some other fashion must refer to a member or a member's firm.
  • The term REALTOR® may not be used with descriptive words or phrases. For example, Number1realtor.com, numberone-realtor.com, chicagorealtors.org or realtorproperties.com are all incorrect.
  
  A violation of this could result in a cease and desist letter. Don't throw away your advertising dollars with an illegal domain name. Make sure your domain is within regulation, and you'll be fine.
  
  A domain name is a key part of your online marketing efforts, whether it's your primary domain name or simply an additional domain for niche marketing.

Want to register something new or better? You can do so at http://www.z57.com/domain or speak to your Personal Marketing Coach. Register with us and all domain forwarding fees will be waived.