As of about 90 days ago, domain names up to 63 characters in length can be registered. Prior to this recent change, domain names were limited to a maximum of 22 characters.

While this change in domain name registration rules is not exactly a secret, and is well known in Internet Marketing circles, most agents I surveyed had no clue. On a recent search, a major national real estate franchise company name that was about 30 characters long was still available with a .com extension! (I sent them a friendly note pointing out that they should register it immediately before one of their competitors did.)

The ability to register longer names means this:

To begin with, you can now register many names that simply would not fit before, and also get a good domain name with the much preferred .com address. (People recognize .com addresses much more readily - in fact, if you have a .org or .net domain name, you can be sure that many people are entering it with a .com extension out of habit and are landing on a different site - quite possibly one of your competitors!)

The availability of the longer names is certainly great news for people and companies with long names, and it also opens up the field for more creative names. For example:

• massachusettsrealestate.com
• huntingtonbeachrealestate.com
• yourphoenixrealestateexpert.com
• indianapolis-top-real-estate-agent.com

More importantly, search engines tend to give a higher ranking to sites whose web address contains the keywords that a person is searching on. For example, suppose you registered:

minneapolis-minnesota-real-estate.com

If a potential customer was searching for "Minneapolis real estate" or "Minnesota real estate" your site would rank higher in the search engines (other things such as meta tags, content, etc. being equal).

So how do you use the new domain names? Easily. You can literally multiply your site traffic and leads by simply creating a duplicate of your current site and hosting it under the new domain name, or simply have the new domain name "point" to your existing site. If you don't understand this, don't worry. Any good Internet Service Provider (the people that host your site) can handle the details for you. The important thing is to hurry and get your domain names registered!

Most experts recommend that you register both hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of your name. For example:

greenwoodvillagerealestate.com

and

greenwood-village-real-estate.com

In addition, many agents also register their main domain names with the .org and .net extensions as cheap insurance to protect their "brand names" from use by others.

But don't delay! There is a stampede to register the new longer domain names, and the best ones are DISAPPEARING FAST!

To quickly and easily check the availability of any domain name at no cost or obligation, click on this link.

In addition to the ability to register the longer names, the recent changes in domain name registration rules have also made it much easier and cheaper to register. Prior to these changes everyone had to register through a company called Network Solutions, the fee to register a domain name was set at $70, and you had to have the IP address of a server to complete the registration.

NOW... there are a number of companies authorized to register domain names, many offer discounts off of the $70 price and will register your domain for up to ten years, an improvement over the two-year limitation previously imposed. Most will provide an IP address if you don't have one and even offer free domain parking. (Domain parking is where you register a domain name, and then leave it inactively "parked" until you decide to use it.)

Many agents think that they have their Internet marketing bases covered with just one domain name. But top Internet marketing experts agree that secondary domain names are a great way to boost your exposure, search engine traffic, and overall on-line success - so seriously consider registering a couple more!

So should you go hog wild and register dozens of new domain names? Probably not. But you should give serious thought to registering a handful of strategically selected domain names. The increased exposure and search engine rankings can multiply your lead generation and give you a leg up in the emerging highly competitive electronic real estate battlefield.

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