Search Engines and Your Domain Name
"How important is my choice of Domain Name for
Search Engine Ranking Purposes?"

Many of our clients ask if they will gain more exposure for their website and boost their rankings in the search engines if they secure a domain name relevant to real estate, using the word "real estate" and/or "homes" in the name. The answer is a definitive "it depends." Your placement in the search engines is determined by many different factors. In fact, the nature of search engine placement changes on nearly a daily basis. (See "factors in search engine placement" above.) 

A FEW of the search engines will take into account your domain name when determining the placement of your website. However, many of the search engines do NOT factor in the domain name. All of our websites are fully optimized to be search engine friendly on the Internet so we can submit them on a regular basis for listing in the search engines, no matter which domain name is chosen for that web site.

Approximately 80% or more of our clients use their first and last name as a domain name, and they are still chosen for listing in many of the search engines. This is due to several other factors that influence placement, as described above. There are instances; however, where using a domain name that exactly matches your #1 keyword will help boost your rankings in certain search engines even further. For example: If Bob Jones sells real estate in Brea, and he chose www.BreaRealEstate.com as his domain name, it may help boost his rankings in some search engines because "Brea Real Estate" is his most dominant keyword, which exactly matches his domain name. (That's what we call "relevance" in search engine terminology.) However, if he decided on www.BreaBob.com as a domain name, he will still be listed in certain search engines anyway, because his site is fully optimized by our firm.