NAR's .Realtor Domains: Should You Buy In? [Video]

With the release of NAR's .Realtor domains coming up in October, today's Pulpisode discusses our thoughts and advice for Realtors® who plan on obtaining them.

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Pulp, my name is Katelyn. Today I wanted to talk about NARs recent approval from the ICANN to maintain and manage the top level domain .Realtor, and what this means for realtors moving forward, on a marketing perspective, and on an SEO perspective.

According to a Inman, a poll of their readers suggests that 81% have intentions to secure their .realtor domain, some of them buying more than one. If the National Association of Realtors' 1 million members feel the same way, then come October 23rd we may see roughly 800,000 new realtor domains. Some of which are going to be with NARs free website template that comes with it.

Now, a lot of people are talking about this, debating whether it's going to be this new big thing or another flop, like NARs failed AgentMatch program. Is this just a bunch of hype?

Over the years we've seen a lot of new domains his the scene, from .tv and .fm. And I'm sure radio stations and tv stations went crazy to buy up their brand.tv or .fm, but we don't see those domains ranking today, years later.

.Com and .org has continued to have the most power when it comes to search engines. I know that with the websites NAR is offering, and the data that is available to them to potentially make these websites more rich and user friendly, definitely draws concern for - how will Google begin treating these domains? Will these websites outrank other realtor websites out there?

I think that's unlikely and, if I were a realtor, I wouldn't used this opportunity as an SEO building strategy, as much as a marketing strategy. Having that .realtor domain isn't going to hurt you, especially if you use their free website template that comes with it. But if you're betting that this is going to give you a competitive advantage in some way, I would say that's unlikely.

I would still maintain the .com website that you have now, or if you don't have a website now I would strive to buy the .com domain that fit my personal brand, but definitely don't assume that .realtor will rank better than your current domain and get rid of it, as if domain authority and page authority disappeared.

But, you could use it as a second online portfolio for your brand.

So, that being said, if you're planning on getting your .realtor domain, I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below. Why are you getting it, how you think they'll impact search, etc. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks everyone, we'll see you next time!

To view the original article, visit the Enterprise Network blog.