Deciding Between 2 Domains for a Real Estate Website... What is Your Opinion?

[entourage212]

I own : waterfrontrealestatemiami.com & miamisrealtor.com I am the beginning phases of developing and designing a website for a Realtor within South East Florida (Miami) She specializes in luxury waterfront properties (homes mainly) but does not want to be to limited, as she is open to anything within the area. But the bread and butter is luxury waterfront properties. I am torn between the right domain choice. Any suggestions between the two listed above? Please list why, Thank you for your help.

[Laurean]

What has worked for my clients in the past, is to have two domains:

(1) the main domain for SEO purposes, controlled in Google Webmaster tools as the primary domain
(2) a shorter marketing domain, that forwards (with masking) to the main domain.. and passes the juice.

This way the marketing domain can be shorter, advertised in newspapers,business cards, etc... and can be easily remembered.... and main SEO domain still gets the value of the direct hit traffic.

[MarieHaynes]

My response is probably the opposite of what most SEOs would say.  My husband and I are both realtors and we have a domain that ranks really well in our city.  The domain name?  Our names.

We don't have any keywords in the domain at all.

Keywords in the domain can help...but they're not as helpful as in the past.

Here are some things to know from the perspective of the realtor:

-You are constantly telling people about your website.  It's easy to say, "Go to myname.com".  People remember that.

-Similarly, the agent is going to be giving out her email address often.  It'll be a pain if she has name@longkeywordrichdomainname.com as an email address.

-We get a lot of searches for people who are looking for us by our name.  Granted, you'd likely still get those if you crafted your content properly with a keyword domain.

-Think of advertising.  If I buy a bus bench ad, I don't want to have to put on the ad, "VISIT BESTHOMESINMYCITYFORSALE.COM"  No one's going to remember that.

-Does your realtor sell more than just waterfront homes?  IMHO you're limiting her if you put all of her business on a site about waterfront homes.

A tip: keep an eye on snapnames.com or namejet.com.  Sometimes real estate related domains come up that you can get for a really good price.  Once we already had our domain with our name in it, one came up for "[city]homes.com".  It had a good backlink profile.  Plus, one of the top realtors in the city who advertises a lot on the radio has [city]homes.ca.  We purchased [city]homes.com and redirected it to our site and now we have an even nicer backlink profile, plus we get type in traffic.

[SEODinosaur]

Kind of long however if you get 3 leads from here a month and close 4 houses a year that is a pretty high ROI... These houses are multi million each if I am not mistaking.

Its not about the quantity of leads in this case it is more about the value of each lead. There are 28 searches a month which is 336 per year. If you can close 1% of this it's a great amount of money... Correct?

[entourage212]

I really appreciate your advice. Thank you. so something like

Name+1KW.com would be best in your opinion?

[irvingw]

Although it is good to have the keywords in the domain name, if you need to go with something like miamiwaterfronthomesFL.com or something that is difficult to tell someone in the elevator then you are better to go with a brand name and try to get one keyword in like BRANDrealtor.com.

Also, having a spammy looking name means less credibility and  people will be less likely to click on your search result because they will think it's some cheezy affiliate site built for SEO and not a real legit company.

Usability comes before SEO especially when naming your site, plus once you name a site you are married to it so choose wisely and make it something you wouldn't be embarrassed to put on a business card or tell someone.

[entourage212]

How about "waterfronthomesmiami.com" She uses her first and last name currently. I have been all over pool.co, and snapnames.com trying to get better URL's very difficult and costly. Any suggestions? It is a VERY competitive market. in South Florida, this is why I would like to go with the KW rich URL and some vanity URL.

[irvingw]

neither are good in my opinion, the first is impossible to remember and the second has a S in the middle. Keep digging IMO.

Does she have a business name, might be better to go the brand name route.

[entourage212]

What do you think of WATERFRONTHOMESMIAMI.com slightly better...?

[entourage212]

I was able to get WATERFRONTHOMESMIAMI.com

[entourage212]

Taken... waterfrontmiami.com

[danatanseo]

It looks like a potential competitor already owns: miamiwaterfront.com

However: waterfrontmiami.com is available. 6,600 local monthly searches, but only medium competition. I would buy it.

[entourage212]

The idea is to use the MiamisRealtor.com as the vanity and WaterfrontRealEstateMiami.com as the KW / SEO oriented domain.

[matbennett]

My concern with the shorter name is that people might easily miss the S.  That is when branded domains perform better.

I don't know the US realtor market well, but I assume this domain will end up plastered over boards outside properties. If that is the case then there is a pretty strong argument for a branded domain rather than a kw led one.

[SEODinosaur]

You are searching on a broad scale.If you look to the left of the adwords tool, check the box that says [exact] the search volume for this exact phrase is 16

[entourage212]

I see your point... but the key phrase "waterfront real estate miami"

From Adwords tool

Competition = HIGH

GMS = 880

LMS = 720

Does have potential, I agree that the name MiamisRealtor is easier but that can always be the vanity URL.... What do you think?

[SEODinosaur]

Miamisrealtor is shorter and easier to remember. (If you do some keyword research you will find that both: "Miamis realtor" and  "Water front real estate miami" have barely any search volume https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS)Having a URL that your customers can remember and wont have problems typing is better in this case.

Exact domain are best however they are only best if there is traffic for the term.