How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Real Estate Firm

A domain name is the one part of your marketing that you can't print wrong and fix later.

You can change a brochure. You can repaint a signboard, though it costs money. But a web address that has gone on cards, hoardings, WhatsApp statuses and a thousand old messages stays in people's heads for years. So it's worth an hour of thinking before you pay for it.

Here are the rules we'd follow, with the reasons.

1. Pass the phone test

Say the address out loud to someone who can't see it. Then ask them to type what they heard.

If you need to spell it, or add "with two Ls" or "the number, not the word", it has failed. A buyer standing outside a flat, calling you to ask for the website, will not wait through a spelling lesson.

Say you run Sharma Realty. Sharmarealty.com passes. Sharma4realty.com fails, because nobody knows if the four is a number. Neither does a name with a creative spelling, like Shaarma or Realtee.

2. Use your firm's name, and leave out the dashes

Your address should be the name already on your signboard. It means a buyer who sees the board can guess the website before they reach for a pen.

Skip dashes in the name. A dash in the middle looks tidy on a screen. In real life people forget it, type the name without it, and land on somebody else's website. It's also hard to say on a call.

3. Add the city only when you have to

This is where we disagree with the usual advice.

A lot of guides tell agents to put the city in the name, like sharmarealtymohali.com, for local search. We think that's the wrong first move. If your firm name is unusual, the plain version is shorter, easier to remember, and it doesn't box you in. Work in Zirakpur and Kharar next year, and a Mohali address starts to feel odd.

The exception is a common name. If three other Sharma Realty firms exist and the plain address is taken, the city at the end does a real job. It separates you from the others and it tells the buyer where you work. So: plain first, city if you have to.

4. Choose .com first, .in second

A .com is what most people type when they aren't sure. If it's free, it's the safest choice.

A .in shows buyers that you're an Indian firm, and a good name is sometimes still free there when the .com is taken. If you can afford both, buy both. Use one as your main address, and ask your domain seller to forward the other one to it. That way a buyer who types the wrong ending still reaches you.

Don't buy ten endings. One main address, one backup. That's enough.

5. Don't borrow a portal's name, and don't be generic

Names like cheapflatsmohali.com feel clever in a meeting. They have two problems. A buyer can't tell who is behind them, and you can't print them on a visiting card with any pride. They also sound like a portal, which makes a serious seller wary.

And never copy, or sit close to, a big portal's brand name. A lookalike can bring you legal trouble, and buyers will wonder who you really are.

Before you pay, search the name on Google and on Instagram. If another real estate firm in your city already uses something close, choose again. Buyers will mix you up, and the other firm will get your enquiries.

6. Buy it in the firm's name, with the firm's email

This rule has nothing to do with the name itself. It matters more than anything else on this page.

Register the domain with an email address that the firm owns and the owner reads. Keep the login yourself. Don't let a designer, a nephew or an employee set it up under their own account "for now". When that person leaves, or stops answering calls, you can't renew the address, move it or point it anywhere. Getting it back can mean weeks of calls and forms, and sometimes a new name. That's a hard way to lose a brand.

While you're there, turn on automatic renewal, make sure the card on file doesn't expire next month, and put the expiry date in your calendar. An address that lapses can be bought by anyone. Your signboard would then send buyers to a stranger.

7. Match your other names

Check whether the same name is free on Instagram and on Facebook, and use it for your pages if it is. When your address, your Instagram and your Facebook page all say sharmarealty, a buyer who finds you in one place trusts you in the next.

It also makes your life easier. You only remember one name.

A quick checklist

Before you pay, read your choice against this list.

• Someone can type it after hearing it once.
• It has no dashes and no numbers that could be words.
• It is the firm's name, or the firm's name plus a city if the plain one is taken.
• You've searched for it on Google and on Instagram.
• The firm, not a person, is the owner on the account.

If you can tick all five, buy it.

After you buy it

A domain on its own does nothing. It becomes useful when it opens your website.

If you're on the Agency plan, you can connect your own address to your agency website. It takes one DNS record and about ten minutes of your time. We wrote the steps, and what goes wrong, in how to connect your own domain to your agency website. The short version is also on our support page.

And if you want to know what a good agency website needs besides the address, read how to build a website for a real estate agency in India.