Hi, I just got into domains a week ago, very new to everything. I'm thinking of a name for a website that could be used for a relative's business (property agent). Of course, all the best domains are gone, but I need advice as to how to choose from the remaining ones. Should I use the person's full name? It's a chinese name that's 7 letters long in total. I'm tempted to do this because the surname, XXX has about 4000 searches as shown in overture. However, these are probably in relation to a university that the XXX also represents. Should I go for the catchy name of the person, or try to make a website property related. Shall I try to make a country TLD, because the country that this person is in has a population of 3 million but a LOT of the country TLDs are still available there, and I can get a great one. How do country TLDs perform in google searches? This is the key really, because I'm trying to figure out how to get the most traffic, by simply catching all the people who search the XXX name, that may not be property interested, or to get a country TLD? I almost never see country TLDs come up in google searches, so I'm skeptical about them... Help please?
Many property and real estate agents use their name. It's what they want people to remember. In your case it would depend on the name, length and if it was easy for non-Chinese people to remember and spell. Definiely get the local TLD especially if the country has only only 3 million people and he is selling property locally. If you can get a .com/.net or .info then do it and redirect the country TLD to it or vice versa. Who are his customers? Locals or foreigners?
Thanks for replying, based on your advice, I'm gonna get the name.com domain. Her customers are mostly locals but she serves foreigners as well and I'm interested in helping her reach more foreigners as well as locals. I'm considering advertising for her on certain other webpages, but am not sure how much this costs... As for the country TLD, I wanna be sure that it's gonna be useful before I get it cos it's a little more expensive... what are the advantages of having a local TLD? Just to help locals to remember and relate to it? Or does it help direct local online traffic as well when they do local searches? Could you tell me roughly the costs of advertising on other pages? Cos I'm wondering whether she should keep advertising in newspapers or use some of that money to advertise online...
Use the .com but also get the local TLD if you can. You will regret not snagging it if someone else buys it. IMHO, local real estate agents are wasting their money advertising online and will get better returns advertising in print locally. Print advertising & business cards should include a website address that print readers can visit. A website helps convert print readers. You could try targeted Google Adwords ads but watch your budget and see how they convert.
I see your point about using the website to convert print readers, I think it's a really good one... Ok, I'll definitely be getting the .com domain, guess my final question would be this: -- I understand what you said about agents trying to sell their name, but I don't think she's gonna get any traffic from just internet surfers with hername.com... would she get traffic with a country TLD site? I mean there are just so many country TLDs that are available, that it makes me doubt the value of getting one of those in her country. I mean if bank.(country TLD) is available, then how good can the country TLDs be you know? I mean, is she ever gonna get internet surfers who type in singapore property and end up at her country TLD? I guess this is another topic altogether, but if you could give me a little advice I'd appreciate it, cos I'm perplexed as to why people don't wanna get bank.(country TLD) for maybe 50 dollars a year, which is expensive yes, but it seems like you could make a lot of money with it or get a lot of traffic with it... I rarely see any country TLDs come up in search engines.. what's the deal?