I find it very frustrating trying to come up with a domain name for anything real estate investing related that isn’t already taken. I have spent days looking for a domain name only to discover that unless I wanted something resembling a sentence….
WeBuyUglyHousesInNorthernNewJerseyAreas.com
…I was out of luck. I don’t like long domain names because they are just to hard to read. You get lost in all the words. Just imagine what it would look like if you didn’t show the domain with first letter capitals….webuyuglyhousesinnorthernnewjerseyareas.com It’s like a brain game puzzle to try and find all the words. I like no more then 3 to 4 short words (WeBuyUglyHouses), or 2 longer words (StrugglingInvestor). Anything under 20 characters total is what comes across as a quality domain name to me. Everything else just seems like a late night infomercial!
Top Level Domains
Sure you can have some luck using .Net or .Org or one of the many other top level domains (TLD for short). For some reason, in my head they come across as lesser quality. What would you think of the site ESPN.net or Yahoo.org or Google.info? To me, they would seem like knockoff sites. .Com is the gold standard and you aren’t taken seriously unless you have the .com in your domain. I only settle on the other TLDs if I’ve exhausted all other possibilities.
I do have one .org site that is doing fairly well for my keyword, NewJerseyProbate.org. It is a site I setup a few years ago with some content and then left it as is. Ranks #1 for the keyword New Jersey Probate. It shows you that the most important thing in a domain is your keywords, not necessarily the TLD choice. But my personal perception is the .com just gives you more credibility in the eye of the person who will be clicking on your link.
How to Get a Desired Domain Name?
Last month I was going through the frustration of finding a domain name for my main website to replace ScottyBuys.com. Even though it’s catchy it doesn’t have that keyword power like WeBuyHouses.com would have. If you just saw my domain you wouldn’t know what Scotty buys, just that he buys. I also think it hurts my ranking in Goolge by not having that inherited power of having your keyword phrase in your domain. So I went on a hunt…
WeBuyHousesNewJersey.com
WeBuyNewJerseyHouses.com
WeBuyHousesNJ.com
WeBuyNJHouses.com
WeBuyHousesFastNJ.com
WeBuyHousesFastNewJersey.com
WeBuyHousesQuick.com
No matter what I put it, it seems like they were all spoken for! The kicker is that some of these domains didn’t even have a website attached to them, they were just claimed and left to rot. I got to thinking, that at some point these rotting domains would be let go by there owners. So for the domains that fell into this category, I used the WhoIs tool in Godaddy to lookup the domain. This gives you such things as the owner, the registrar and also the status of the domain.
I stumbled upon one domain in particular, WeBuyNJHouses.com, that was past it’s expiration date. It was in it’s redemption period, meaning that the owner had 1 month to reclaim it before it went back up for grabs. I wanted it!
Godaddy, and I’m sure other registrars do as well, have a paid service that will monitor the status of domains and when they get put back into the pool will grab it for you. This was great! Now I wouldn’t have to painstakingly monitor it myself and who knows if I would have been able to act quick enough to get it. The service costs like $20 and does everything for you, even registers the name.
Well luckily enough, after 2 months of waiting, I am the proud papa of WeBuyNJHouses.com!!!
Waiting On Multiple Domains
Following this success I have added multiple domains to the Godaddy service to see if I can grab another one. Seems like a great way to slowly hoard all the good domain names for your area.