How important is the domain name in SEO.

Say I want to increase potential position for Real Estate.

How much greater would the chances of getting higher search engine placement for keywords "Real Estate" if I included Reel Estate in the domain name?

example: realestateseotechnique

0.0000000001%.

It's a minor factor at best, and if you were targeting real estate, you'd stand next to no chance at ranking with all the manipulators anyway.

Ok, I understand there are hundreds of thousands of real estate sites. I'm trying to focus on one state. I'm not looking for a quick fix. I'm talking in the overall scheme of things.

In your opinion (besides the obvious: back links, content, and so on...) what would be the best method of attack to peak through such a congested market?

Any suggestions?

Question: Will RealEstateSeoTechnique.com do what you want, or do you need Real-Estate-Seo-Technique.com? I'm trying to figure that out with regard to some pages on my site that I need to rescue.

Can you tell us what state you're targeting? That might actually have a lot of bearing on the answer.

This is probably my background biasing my point of view, but if you're talking about a state that has a lot of picturesque scenes to take advantage of, in such a tight market, you need LOTS of content, far outweighing your real estate sales info, to stand a chance. I would gather lots of beautiful photos showing reasons a person might want to buy a house somewhere, along with advice about local attractions, hikes, traffic info, all of that.

I'm actually targeting Commercial Real Estate in Ohio.

Good question... I'm not sure which would be better RealEstateSeoTechnique or Real-Estate-SeoTechnique


The competition is huge in the real estate market. I understand the content/ links/ way of thinking but my question is... "Does a domain name have any baring on position"?

It seems when I search google, the search criteria is in the domain name itself not just meta, page name and content.

If you go to google and type "real estate" Look at the top positions...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

and another http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bands&btnG=Search

The top listings have real estate or a form of the search criteria in the domain name itself.

Maybe it's a no brainer but, it seems having a domain with the target search words in the name itself would help?

No?

Neither really has that much of a bearing. And I wouldn't tie SEO technique into it.

If you're targeting commercial real estate in Ohio, you'd actually be better off completely ignoring the so-called SEO benefits of a domain name containing the term "commercial real estate" or some variant thereof and finding something fairly short and memorable.

You're dealing with corporate types and people who don't have a lot of time on their hands, so you've gotta make it something they can jot down on the back of a business card and then go home with and punch in later.

Forrest is also right...you'll need a hook of some kind. Real estate is that competitive of a market. If it's commercial real estate, I'd look at market studies of the various areas...what businesses work, what don't, etc. That would be a huge hook if you could pull it off.

LoL Adam, I definetily wouldn't use RealEstateSeoTechnique

That was just an example of including the term "Commercial Real Estate" in the domain.

I get it, I think... your suggesting offering information pertaining to real estae based on studies of "what" and/or "where" businesses are successful as the hook... Interesting.

I'm going to disagree and say there is seo importance to your domain. Google and I think the other engines will give you a boost on an exact match search. So if someone searches for the generic 'real estate' then realestate.com will get a boost for that search.

I couldn't tell you with any certainty how much of a factor it is to have keywords in your domain. I suspect it would be some kind of factor, but probably not a lot. I would always go with a memorable domain over a keyword rich domain, but you should be able to come up with something memorable that also includes a keyword.

All the dashes should be avoided because it's hard to remember and looks spammy to both people and search spiders. One dash ok, two is pushing things, three or more is probably bad.

Now where having keywords in your domain can help a lot is in the links you get to your site. People will often use your domain or company name as the anchor text when linking to you. If you had the domain realestate.com and showed your company name as Real Estate.com guess what words you're going to see a lot in anchor text.

Is it the most important thing in the world to have keywords in your domain? Nope. I'd sooner go for a short domain that's easy to remember. But if you can do that and still get a keyword in there why not get the keyword in there.

Actually the idea was to use the domain as a subsidiary domain to hold the listings and Commercial Real Estate rich terms. The original site has a domain and content that is more like a company profile than a real state company. The secondary domain was just an idea I came up with to draw more traffic from search results. Both domains are the same company.

Would this be a bad idea to do?

Thanks for all of the help here!

Do you mean you'd put up a second site on the new domain? If so then you'll basically end up with two sites to promote instead of one. There are valid reasons to do that, but if the main goal is to promote the original site you'd probably be better off just adding new content to that site.

There's no reason why you can't add the keyword rich content to the main domain. In fact if the current site is simply a company profile or brochure kind if thing it can probably use some more content.

Originally Posted by Sydpix

I get it, I think... your suggesting offering information pertaining to real estae based on studies of "what" and/or "where" businesses are successful as the hook... Interesting.

That, and demographics on where the best employees live, traffic congestion, zoning... Somebody may even buy from a competitor but find this stuff so useful, they give you links and referrals.

For Ohio, I'd also include photos of Cayohuga National Park, lake shore, some of the valleys, and maybe even stuff like Rickett's Glenn and Shenandoah.

First let me say thanks again. I value your input and feel privileged to speak with such knowledgeable people in the field.

The demographic idea is an excellent idea.

The separate domain would be just an extension to the existing site. Maybe a good place for the demographic idea and links to property availabilities?

Your suggestions have really sparked some creative thinking!

To be totally honest, I can't take full credit for the market idea. The only reason I thought of it is because there is a bar in my old hometown that used to be (in chronological order):

A thrift shop
A donut shop
Another donut shop
A third donut shop
A bar
A convenience store
Another thrift shop

All of this occurred in a 10-year period.

Personally, I would put whatever aux information you want to keep on the same site / same domain. The idea of including all of this is to attract people to your site who wouldn't be there otherwise, mainly the people who aren't aware of you. To come up under search terms that are important to real estate buyers, that generally won't be part of your competition's game plan. Anyway, once you grab these viewers, you need to shuffle them to your properties, and make a conversion. You're not trying to be on page 1 in Google for he fun of it; you want to use a very wide net filling lots of niches to get people to come buy your real estate. So if you use two sites, it's going to be harder to move people from one to the other.

This might or might not be off-topic, depending on how you look at things, but have a look at these photos. They're not mine, so it would be rude to embed them in this message, so instead I'll link to them for anyone who's interested:

http://web.mac.com/barlisbre/iWeb/Brent%20Allen%20Collins%20Photography/Ricketts%20Glen_files/IMG_2167.jpg
http://web.mac.com/barlisbre/iWeb/Br...s/IMG_2023.jpg

This is western PA, not far at all from eastern Ohio. Quality employees and quality of life are going to be on your customers' minds. Anything you can do to show that will help your site market itself, to some degree, helping you glean potential customers for the real deal.

I think what Forrest is really trying to say is that you should hire him as your official site photographer at $85 an hour plus moving expenses and 3 weeks' paid vacation a year and get him out to Ohio.