What the Farq…

Solid online strategies for Real Estate Professionals

A professional Realtor® has always been good sales person and a good marketer.  It should come as no surprise that the Internet is changing the way Real Estate Professionals are doing their jobs.  Here’s are some (hopefully) helpful tips to nurture a good Real Estate Website

Key Goals:

• Traffic Acquisition.  Basically, you want traffic on your site.
  • Marketing your listings
  • Marketing yourself (to buyers and sellers)

• Traffic Retention. Once you get traffic, you want them to read and stay on your site.  It would be nice if your visitor came to your site every week, but for most real estate sites, that’s a lofty goal (not impossible).  Simply, you want them to stay just long enough to “know” you a bit better, and hopefully contact you for business.
• Traffic Conversion (to a lead, or a call, or new business).  This need not be technically complex.  If your site is compelling and useful and helpful, then chances are YOU are compelling, useful and helpful.  When potential clients see this, they’ll be more inclined to call or contact you.  If you’re technically strong, and want to invest in CRM’s and more complex technology, that’s grand.  If you just want to make sure your phone number is on your site, that’s fine too.  Manage your leads in a way that’s comfortable to you.

It all starts with strong value — you.  Your site should be an extension of you, your values, your ideas, your insights, and your personality.  That’s so much more than just a site with your phone number and head-shot.

Things you must do on your site:

• host your site on your own domain name.  Since your name is such a strong part of your brand, your domain name should be your name (not always, but it’s sure a good suggestion).  That’s how people will remember you, so avoid cutesie wootsie domain names.
• update your site often, and write lots of content.  This need not be hard or time-consuming (hint: blog).
• be useful. be relevant. be helpful. be on topic.
• use important words on your site (writing an article on relocation is a great excuse to use the word “relocate” often). These important words will help your site to show up in Search Engines.
• make sure you have content for:
  • General real estate topics
  • Buyers information
  • Sellers information
  • Listing information (publish your listings — manually if you must)
  • Self promotion
  • Local Geographic information

I know this seems like allot of work, but the right content on your site can make or break your site.

• Content Matters
  • Original, useful, relevant … content Is King
  • Titles are important (Search engines, and people, use titles to gauge the topical intent)
  • Meta Descriptions Make a Difference
  • Word density counts (but over density hurts)
  • The formatting of content matters
  • Content in header tags as well as bold, italic, anchor text
  • Overall site relevancy helps
  • Visible Elements, Text, Images and Links (the words you use, matter)
  • Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
  • Think about the words users would type in a search to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
  • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines
• Use keyword synonyms in content
• Update your web site with good, new content (freshness counts)

Write exceptional listing descriptions.  Many MLS systems have limits on the description length. Fine.  Do what you need to for your MLS system, but when marketing your listings to the general public, you really must be as descriptive as possible. Some tips:

• Don’t abbreviate.  The main way people will find your listings, is by searching. Nobody searches for “bdrm”, they search for “2 bedrooms”, so when you abbreviate, you miss your audience.
• Use the words that are important to your listings target market. High-end buyers want “granite countertops” and “hardwood floors”, where lower priced properties should use words that emphasize the lower price and will help market the listing to buyers looking for something they can afford.
• Don’t ever hide the address, and when publishing on the web, always use the full address, including the zip or postal code
• Use a language that your buyers use. GB&E, HVAC, ALF’s are all “Realtor speak”, and your general audience don’t understand these terms, but “air conditioning” and “light fixtures” are perfectly clear to everyone.  (remember, don’t abbreviate)
• Share your listings.  If you, or your broker, can share listings with sites like Zillow, Trulia, househunting.ca (the site I built), Point2, or others, DO IT.  The more visibility your listings get, the more it will be seen.

Write local content about your key neighbourhoods or areas

Blog! Don’t know what to blog about?

• add your listings as blog posts
• blog about industry news (your local MLS usually has quick 1 or 2 paragraph monthly or weekly statements about the state of the industry), use it and add a personal touch.
• add photos from your neighbourhood
• add a restaurant review
• Create a consumer case-study
• Create a video portal

Publish an XML sitemap to the search engines

Make sure you have Friendly URLs on your pages

Have an ongoing link building strategy:

• see blogging
• One great way to have people link to you, is giving them a reason to.  Nobody is going to link to your home page, just because they like you.  If you have a Home Staging write-up or advise on first time mortgages, people will link to it, because it’s useful, interesting, and unique (not the same old content that’s everywhere)
• Participate in forums, other blogs, and the online community (whenever possible, include a link to your site, or a link to a specific page on your site, if it’s in context to a comment you’re adding to some other blog)

Avoid “Black Hat” SEO consultants or tactics.  I’ve also got a prior blog post on why I think “SEO” is crap, and we should focus our site efforts on optimizing for humans.

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.
• Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.
• Avoid Keyword Stuffing
• Never use Hidden Text
• Never Cloak (a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see)
• Never use Doorway Pages (pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor)
• Never use Redirects (similar to doorways or screen doors)
• Never publish Duplicate Sites (identical sites on more than one domain name)
• Never “Interlink” (the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together)
• Avoid “Paid SEO Links” (paid Search Marketing is fine, and works)
• Duplicate Content holds little value (if you’re just going to copy/paste from some other site, it’s not worth the time… you’re better off linking TO the original content)
• Never “shadow” domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects.

Agree?  Disagree?  Comment, and tell me what you think.

Happy webbing!

Related Posts:

• Chasing your (SEM’s) long tail
• Brush aside the trees to see the forest
• A New slice of the pie