Real Estate Web Hosting - Your Own Website First !
The First Step - Registering Your Unique Real estate Domain Name
So where do you start in the quest to establish your own independent real-estate website ?
Lets explore the things you need. The very first step is to find a good name for your real estate business. Now maybe you are already incorporated or more likely you work under your broker using your own name.
First you need a domain name, A domain name is your own unique address on the world wide web. Domain names ends with .com or .net etc. Its always preferable to have a domain name with a .com extension, because that is the most widely recognized for businesses, and there are other advantages too which we will get into later.
Now this might easy, but selecting a good domain name is a very important step. Ideally it should be easy to read and spell, not very long preferably limited to 25 characters or less. Your own name or your own business name is probably the easiest place to start. Remember to search using variations of your name eg. John- Doe- Realtor. com might be easier to get than John Doe. You can read an article exclusively devoted to picking a good domain name here. If you already have a domain name in mind you are ready for the next step.
Is that domain name already taken : I can almost guarantee you that if you thought about the perfect domain name for your business, it is very likely that it has already been taken by someone else. If you had started this process in the early days of the web (eg. 1997), you would have found your ideal real estate domain without any competition! These days competition for domain names is fierce. But do not despair!, being late only means that you've been busy doing other exciting things.
Thousands of articles have been written on picking a great domain name and the importance of the domain name in getting positioned in search engines like google or yahoo. But here is a secret - Its been debated among experts - but it is very possible that the age of your domain name matters in search positioning. The older your domain name, the better chances it has of coming up higher in the search engines. So even if you do not plan on developing your website immediately, atleast do yourself a favor and reserve that favorite domain name NOW!
So how do you find if your perfect real estate domain name is already taken by your most hated competitor ? This is the next step. will then need to search if the domain is already taken by someone else. The easiest way to start your search is to go with an ICANN domain registrar like GoDaddy or Dotster. GoDaddy is probably the largest domain registrar in the world.
Actually you can make this an interactive process - that is search for the domain name and see if it has already been taken in one step. So go to the GoDaddy site for instance and type in your domain name of choice, and if the domain name is already taken, you will be given choices for alternate names that sound similar, or variations of the name you typed in - its called Smart Search.
Now that you have a domain name in mind, you might want to consider registering the name, or alternatively if you also plan to host your site, you might be able to register the domain name for FREE! - because most webhosts lets you register your domain name without cost if you purchase a basic Webhosting package from them. See the next article on How to choose a Web Host for your Real estate website.
Note: Realtor is a trademark of National Association of Realtors. This site nor the author is affiliated in any way with NAR.
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