Real Estate Web Design

Buying A Domain

So you have decided you need a website and a presence on the internet. The first step is buying a domain. There are 3 different ways to buy a domain.

• You can buy a never used domain from a domain reseller.
• You can buy via an auction.
• You can buy a recently expired domain, known as a deleted domain.

Each one of these ways offers potential benefits and risks.

The one with the least amount of risk is a never used domain. The problem with a new domain is finding a domain which is easy to remember, matches your offline marketing goals and has a .com extention. The greatest benefit of buying a domain which has never been used is that it does not have a sorid history in the eyes of the search engine. Some top domain registration companies are GoDaddy.com and NetworkSolutions.com
The next way of buying a domain is at a domain auction. These domains tend to be expensive as they are usually domains which are in desire. Some of the top domain auction websites are BuyDomains.com, sedo.com and tdnam.com

The third way is to buy a domain that is recently expired. These are hard to find as the popular ones get picked up very quickly. You can however track domains which are about to expire using a service like deleteddomains.com. This used to be a free service but now requires a membership fee to use all the features of the website. If you don’t need a domain today, this can be a way to get a good .com domain which someone used for years but for some reason is no longer using the domain. The negative aspects are that someone may have let it expire because the domain had been used for non conforming uses in the eyes of the search engines and that history will make it harder to rank in the search engines if that is one of your primary goals.

The second aspect in buying a domain from a real estate agent perspective is whether to buy your name as a domain name or a domain name which has your geographical location and a keyword in the domain. My recommendation to clients has always been the same.

If you plan to have other agents work under you in the future, don’t use your name because most agents won’t want to have an email that says bill@johndoe.com. They would rather have an email that says bill@sandiegohomes.com.

You can always register both your name and a keyword specific domain and have them both point to the same website. If you do this, just make sure you create a permanent 301 redirect on one domain so that the search engines don’t penalize you for having duplicate content on two websites.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to buy a domain, but what domain you buy is important. Think of it like raw land. You will be the only one to own this piece of real estate on the internet and if you manage it correctly, it will only increase over time and at some point may become a valuable asset which has resale value. Good Luck and if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.

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