Once you’ve established, or started to establish, an online real estate marketing presence, you need to protect it.  And, when you think about it, the one thing that represents your online business more than anything else is your domain name.  So, it’s more than worth protecting it.

This topic came to mind because I recently received a letter containing a renewal notice for my domain name BuildRealEstateResults.com.  It got me thinking about all the ways you can get into trouble with your domain name.   Here are some tips for protecting yourself.

Protecting Your Domain Name and Your Internet Presence!

1.  Your domain registrar will never send you a letter containing a renewal notice.  These letters are sent out by disreputable domain registrars who want to “steal” your domain registration business.  If you complete the form, these registrars will initiate a transfer of your domain name to their registrar service.  Then, the next time you need to do something with the domain name, you’ll find it resident at a different vendor’s site.  Don’t laugh.  I’ve seen it happen more than once.

2.  Set up your own domain registration account.  I don’t care how much you trust any vendor you’re using, you don’t want anyone acting as an intermediary between you and your domain name account.  Besides causing confusion and potential problems, many vendors use a “wholesale” domain registrar like Melbourne. 

The problem with that is the fact that a wholesale registrar isn’t very friendly to individual account holders.  So, if you ever want to take over your registration, you’ll find extremely poor support – unless you enjoy calling Australia for help  - and outrageous fees for simple things like changing DNS server information.

3.  Keep all of your domain names in one account.   Some of the biggest problems people run into is that they forget where their domains are registered, especially if they opened a new account at a different registrar for every domain name purchased.  

In addition, significant problems can occur if you change your contact information and forget to update one account.  You won’t receive the email notices concerning renewal, and could end up losing your domain name, or paying sometimes thousands of dollars to retrieve an expired domain.

Domain names only cost about $10/year.  Don’t purchase your domains at whichever registrar is running a sale!

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The other thing I’ve noticed is that not all registrars are created equal.  GoDaddy is the best registrar I’ve found.  Their support is excellent, and they do the best job of doing things like changing DNS servers.

For example, if you are changing where your domain name is directed, you change the DNS server information at your registrar.  At least one registrar I know of immediately removes the pointers once you make a DNS change.  The result is that for some period of time, your domain name goes nowhere.  Not a good situation.

GoDaddy has never done that to me or one of my clients.  It seems that they must keep the domain name pointed where it was until it moves over to the new host.  So, no matter when you use the domain name, you end up somewhere. . .   either at your old site or your new one.

I feel so strongly about the importance of maintaining your own registrar account, that I host a GoDaddy registrar website at GetRealEstateDomains.com.   We receive a small commission from domain name sales at that site.

Wherever you purchase your domain names, just make sure that you maintain your domain names in a way that protects your Internet presence!