discuss "Keyword" Authority?

I own and have sold many real estate related domains, some into the tens of thousands of dollars. My experience is generally with .COM, so that is what I going to use here.

As far as keywords go Real Estate and Homes are generally more popular keywords than realty.

For instance I would expect Dallas Homes or Dallas Real Estate to have significantly more resale value than Dallas Realty.

But keywords are not the be all, end all when it comes to domain value. There is also brand authority.
This is really where realty stands out. The term is often used in company names.

(Word)Realty make good brands, especially with popular branding terms and surnames.

For instance I have sold domains like Icon Realty in .COM. There are several end users.
Only one person can own the domain.

Brad

I'm from an SEO background, my authority on what makes a keyword is whether people search for it. That is also a proxy indicator for general market demand (i.e. non SEO demand).

Use tools like KeywordsEverywhere, which integrates into your google searches and dumps out keyword volume.

Click around a bit on related searches and you soon start to get an idea of the demand for the various keyword variations in the niche.

And anecdotally, "Realty" is a brand name, but probably not a high demand keyword, i.e. "miami real estate" is definitely popular, "miami realty", I wouldn't expect to be popular.

bmugford said:

I own and have sold many real estate related domains, some into the tens of thousands of dollars. My experience is generally with .COM, so that is what I going to use here.

As far as keywords go Real Estate and Homes are generally more popular keywords than realty.

For instance I would expect Dallas Homes or Dallas Real Estate to have significantly more resale value than Dallas Realty.

But keywords are not the be all, end all when it comes to domain value. There is also brand authority.
This is really where realty stands out. The term is often used in company names.

(Word)Realty make good brands, especially with popular branding terms and surnames.

For instance I have sold domains like Icon Realty in .COM. There are several end users.
Only one person can own the domain.

Brad

Click to expand...

Thanks Brad....good stuff. As we know real estate is a huge market/industry. You make a couple of really good points, especially about the word "Homes". Both Homes.com (the website) and the nTLD .Homes are located here in my town. They're both owned by Dominion Enterprises.

The interesting thing when comparing the use of the words homes, realtor, realestate (actually two words) and realty, like you said the (Word)Realty does stand out and appears 2 to 3 times more often than the other words in company names. Isn't it interesting that all the words have a nTLD affiliation, but I agree that .com is still king and wherever possible I own the .com as in;

WickedRealty.com
and
Wicked.Realty

Getting back to my original question, i guess there is no "authority" on what is and what is not a "keyword"..... i guess it depends

Finally, while Realtor® is trademarked by the National Association of Realtors, they also own the extensions; .Realtor and .Realestate making them competition in a way. That said, because I own Broad Bay Realty, LLC and the domains BroadBayRealty.com and BroadBay.Realty, i plan to join their organization to give my .Realty domains maximum exposure.

Thanks again.

The Oxford is the authority for words Cambridge next credible.Websters well that was something you could rebrand although factual it's just a publication.
I have WebmasterAuthority.com

This is from a page I found at atinternet.com:

"A keyword is a term used in digital marketing to describe a word or a group of words an Internet user uses to perform a search in a search engine or search bar.

In an SEO strategy, keywords are very important and should be the core of any copy written for the web (present in the content, titles and SEO elements).

Keywords should be developed and carefully selected before launching content online on web and mobile platforms."

So really a keyword is defined by internet users based on what they search for. No one is the authority. But I would say Google are the ones that drive a lot of the conversations and decisions around keywords.

When we talk about a keyword in domaining, we're talking more about the core word that a name is built around. So again, anything can be a keyword; some are just more popular than others.

crackflavoredseltzer said:

I'm from an SEO background, my authority on what makes a keyword is whether people search for it. That is also a proxy indicator for general market demand (i.e. non SEO demand).

Use tools like KeywordsEverywhere, which integrates into your google searches and dumps out keyword volume.

Click around a bit on related searches and you soon start to get an idea of the demand for the various keyword variations in the niche.

And anecdotally, "Realty" is a brand name, but probably not a high demand keyword, i.e. "miami real estate" is definitely popular, "miami realty", I wouldn't expect to be popular.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for contributing. I own FloridaHomes.realty where both "Florida" and "Homes" are considered keywords whereas with FloridaHomesRealty.com, "Homes" and "Realty" are considered keywords. Like with most everything in life context matters, and much of what I'm doing doesn't really lend itself to SEO. The context in which the word "realty" is mostly used is in a business name where thousands of real estate names end with the word Realty.

Last question, does SEO take into consideration what's right of the dot? It doesn't appear to. Why not? Thanks again.

Keyword authority is as overrated as backlinks.

excuses to overpay; this my personal opinion.

Wish there a bigger emphasis on actual name;
People let these “Psuedostats” (often change) rule their lives and have highest priority decide

Samer said:

Keyword authority is as overrated as backlinks.

excuses to overpay; this my personal opinion.

Wish there a bigger emphasis on actual name;
People let these “Psuedostats” (often change) rule their lives and have highest priority decide

Click to expand...

I tend to agree Samer, especially when an "end user" doesn't have a clue what we're talking about. Try explaining "new gTLD's" to anyone not in this business, and if they don't laugh they'll change the subject, or better yet turn to drink

I sold a *realty.com domain for 2 figures, at Sedo, and later sold for 10x that price at Afternic (but couldn't transfer). Who knows maybe they bought it from me twice by mistake. This happens because (I suspect) endusers ignore emails, and when they feel like it they go to Godaddy, Godaddy goes to Sedo, Sedo hides buyers' data, and we feel 2 figures is what we can get from such a domain.
Someone from one of the richest countries (Germany) bought a domain for 2 figures, and didn't pay for it, and said, he will pay 6 months later. and didn't pay.
....
I feel in some European countries, realty is replaced with reality. Some domainers have many reality domains, but obviously they consider them as real estate domains.

topdom said:

I sold a *realty.com domain for 2 figures, at Sedo, and later sold for 10x that price at Afternic (but couldn't transfer). Who knows maybe they bought it from me twice by mistake. This happens because (I suspect) endusers ignore emails, and when they feel like it they go to Godaddy, Godaddy goes to Sedo, Sedo hides buyers' data, and we feel 2 figures is what we can get from such a domain.
Someone from one of the richest countries (Germany) bought a domain for 2 figures, and didn't pay for it, and said, he will pay 6 months later. and didn't pay.
....
I feel in some European countries, realty is replaced with reality. Some domainers have many reality domains, but obviously they consider them as real estate domains.

Click to expand...

Funny story....was it VIPRealty.com?

Getting back to "keywords", is VIP even considered a word? Ironically your "VIP" moniker led me to buy Luxor.Realty after seeing some "comparison" sales data at GD. I see where LuxorHomes.com sold for $5,000 raising the question is "Luxor" even a word or is it a city in Egypt?

Thanks for contributing Topdown even though I'm a Bottomup sort of guy

No I wouldn't sell viprealty.com for less than 4 figures if I owned it. The word before realty doesn't have to be a dictionary word, it can be a madeup company name, or a realtor's name, or abbreviation (how many LLLrealty.com taken).
VIP can stand for Virgin Islands Properties.

for anyone that doesn't know the word realtor is a trademark make sure not to reg those

AEProgram said:

for anyone that doesn't know the word realtor is a trademark make sure not to reg those

Click to expand...

Interesting that NAR aka National Association Realtors own extensions .Realtor and .Realestate, and Verisign does their backend. Thanks for the heads up.

topdom said:

No I wouldn't sell viprealty.com for less than 4 figures if I owned it. The word before realty doesn't have to be a dictionary word, it can be a madeup company name, or a realtor's name, or abbreviation (how many LLLrealty.com taken).
VIP can stand for Virgin Islands Properties.

Click to expand...

"The word before realty doesn't have to be a dictionary word"...... Thanks topdom.... your words had me register XenithRealty.com and Xenith.Realty. We use to have a Xenith Bank headquartered here in Virginia that was bought out three years ago, and I always liked the name and looks of Xenith as compared to Zenith, so learning it was available I've created and registered several Xenith//////.com domains.

Curious topdom...what do you think of the non keyword/word Xenith?

Xenith: no idea. I mean, looks like an ok word . but not sure how well it matches with realty.
...realestate.com taken. ...properties.com available.