Real Estate Network

Posts Tagged ‘Internet’

This is the year you watch your real estate business take off. This is the year you work toward establishing a strong Internet presence. This is the year you begin to understand the importance – and power – of the Internet and real estate SEO.

Don’t let your competitors pass you by. The Internet (and real estate SEO) is a tool that can be used and harnessed to capture more clients than you ever thought possible. Best of all, with a few, effective strategies you, too, can build your business to great heights using blogging, social media and real estate SEO.

If you want to build your real estate business this year, here is your guide for establishing effective Internet marketing strategies to achieve your goals:

•    Make it personal. Those form letters you have been sending clients over the years? Dump them. They do nothing to build your business and instead make you look as if you don’t have the time to address your clients personally. Make it personal by talking directly to the client. Ask the client about his new cat, or let the client know about the new school they plan to build in the neighborhood. Taking the time to add personal touches to each and every email (yes, each and every one) you send out will capture the attention of your clients and let them know you are addressing them on a personal level.

•    Use your blog to talk about things other than the real estate market.  Write about your love of travel or interior decorating. Entertain them with topics other than the local housing numbers and you will retain a much larger audience.

•    We love guest blogging because it gives you the opportunity to get your name out there and inform and entertain people at the same time. Simply by providing a guest post on another real estate website that you admire, you can get yourself a link. It’s as easy as that! You’ve already begun your real estate link building!

•    Understand search engines and be on the top of search results the next time someone Google’s the words: San Antonio realtor. Use real estate SEO to your advantage and understand its importance in getting you further in the search engine results. If you don’t understand the process of using real estate SEO to your advantage, make it a priority to learn it so you can begin using it in your Internet marking efforts.

•    Don’t neglect your online presence. Social media sites are the way to make it big in the real estate business, but only if you’re present. In other words, your Twitter page doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t take the time to post regularly. Your social media accounts are your Internet brand, so give them the attention they deserve!

•    Keep up with other local real estate blogs because they may be able to offer you plenty of good information. Subscribe to a number of local blogs and keep up on events that are occurring in your neck of the woods.

•    Become the neighborhood go-to agent. Provide your clients with referrals for everything from moving services to pet walking services. Your knowledge on the best local companies will impress your clients and draw in new ones.

Learn more about how you can maximize your real estate SEOand capitalize on the power of real estate link buildingthrough RealtyRankings.com’s savvy advice and tested experience.

If you are a realtor who is interested in marketing yourself online, then you know that this is not as easy as it sounds. When it comes to realtor marketing, there are many options available and it is difficult to know which ones will be most successful. Realtor advertising is a very broad category and there are many different ways that realtors can go about marketing themselves. If you are interested in learning more about marketing for retailers, then you have come to the right place. This article will tell you about some of the different realtor advertising techniques that are commonly used.

One of the most common realtor marketing strategies that is used is simply using the internet to get your name out there. In any given metropolitan area there are probably hundreds of realtors, if not more. Many people find a realtor by asking friends or relatives for recommendations, but other people find realtors by searching online. Having a well-designed website that is optimized for search engines is an excellent way to draw people who are looking for leads for realtors. If you do design a website or have someone do it for you make sure that it is optimized for keywords that are relevant to your area. For example, if you are a realtor in Denver, you will want your website optimized for Denver realtor, realtor in Denver and any other relevant phrases. This makes your website more likely to draw in people who are actually looking for leads for realtors.

In addition to using the internet to get your name out there, you can also use it to increase awareness. For all of the people who search for a realtor online there are just as many who search for a house online. Designing a website that enables you to feature different houses that are up for sale is a great way to customize marketing for realtors and what you need in order to grow your business. If you do decide to list houses for sale online make sure that you include good pictures of the best features of the houses and contact information for people who are interested in learning more.

When realtors marketing themselves have already created a website that is designed to draw in visitors, the challenge then becomes to convert them into paying customers. For most people, purchasing a house is a once in a lifetime situation. This means that your business will often be built from referrals. In other words, you need to make a great impression on your current clients in order to help bring in future clients.

In order to increase the number of new clients that you get, there are a few things that your website must do. It must communicate to people that you are trustworthy, and that you care about them personally. To do this it is helpful to put contact information in a prominent place on your website and feature testimonials from actual customers that you have helped in the past. This will enable realtors marketing themselves to most effectively grow their clientele.

Some estimates say that more than 60% of people looking to buy or sell real estate go to the internet first when they begin their search for real estate information. And as agents and brokers become more net-savvy, and more and more people get online, that number will only increase.

That means that the hottest sources of real estate prospects, leads, listings and sales is online. Which obviously means that if you are a Real Estate Agent, or if you provide a real estate service, you need an online presence.

** Establishing an online presence

Most people have no idea how to create an online presence. But the truth is, it is fairly straightforward, once you understand how the internet works.

It’s all about getting traffic to your website, and then having a website attractive enough to attract the attention, and get the responses of your website visitors.

** How do you get traffic?

There are two well established ways to get traffic to your website. Both of them involve the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The first method is to run advertisements that target the buyers or sellers you want to reach. There is no better way to advertise than by using paid search advertising — what is called “pay-per-click” advertising.

The second method is to promote your website so it comes up high in searches. Most people begin their search for real estate information by typing a search term into their favorite search engine. The list of possible sources that the search engine gives you is called “natural” or “free” results. You place high in these searches by impressing the search engines with the importance of your site. When you come up in the first few spots in “free” searches, you are virtually guaranteed to get “free” traffic — because people will click on your link and be taken to your site.

** Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Most real estate agents are used to traditional advertising methods such as running ads in real estate publications. And they think it is necessary to pay between $250-$750 for one insertion that may or may not bring them any responses. That is the major problem with traditional advertising — it is expensive, and it gives you no guarantee of response.

But pay-per-click advertising is different. On the one hand it can be targeted to reach the precise target segment you want to reach — for instance, people looking for real estate in your town or city.

On the other hand, you only pay for “clicks” when someone who is potentially interested in your service clicks on your ad and visits your website. This is the revolutionary advertising concept that has made Google the hottest and most dominant player on the web.

But pay-per-click advertising can also be expensive and difficult to manage. Fortunately there are ways of establishing an online presence without paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.

** Search engine marketing – Search Engine Optimization

As mentioned earlier, the other way to generate online traffic is to promote your site so it comes up high in organic or free searches. This is called “search engine marketing” and involves two important components.

First, it involves creating a website that makes it very clear who your prospective visitors might be. This process is called “search engine optimization”. You “optimize” your site to include as many references as possible to the subject matter you want to focus on, and the target market you want to reach.

For instance, if you are trying to reach potential home buyers in Sarasota, Florida, then you must make it clear that your site is about “real estate in Sarasota.” You must build as much content into your site about Sarasota as you can.

Since most online business people do not know the “tricks of the trade” when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), they hire an expert who does. Unfortunately there are no guarantees when it comes to search engine optimization. Even with sites that have been highly optimized there is no guarantee that the search engines will reward you with a high ranking. Nevertheless, it is an important exercise to go through, and is one of the foundations on which to build your search engine marketing.

** Search engine marketing – Linking

The other component of search engine marketing is to get lots of “inbound links” pointing to your site from other sites. An inbound link is a link on someone else’s site that makes a reference to yours.

Links give you two important sources of traffic. First, visitors to the sites where your links are found may actually click on those links and visit your site. This is especially the case if your links are on high traffic pages that are highly relevant to your service.

Second, inbound links impress the search engines. When the search engines find lots of links to your site in various places around the web, they interpret this as an indicator of the importance of your website. And that in turn results in the search engines rewarding you with higher rankings in free or organic searches.

Inevitably that results in traffic. And if your website is written to get results, traffic should convert to sales.

If all of this sounds a bit overwhelming, it is best not to simply throw up your hands in despair and concede all of those potential online customers to your net savvy colleagues. The fact is there are very inexpensive ways to cash in on all that online gold. You just have to keep looking until you find the right people to work with.

Although I am not directly connected with real estate selling, I was able to work with several real estate agents in the company where I’m currently working.

At age 50, I was lucky enough to be able to work as an SEO Specialist in a Property Management company here in Fort Bonifacio Global City, Philippines. The company manages several commercial centers and Hotels in Metro Manila, Cebu City and Davao City. They are also engaged in Leasing and Brokerage, selling prime real estate properties, house and lot and condominiums around the Metro and other parts of the Country.

When I was hired as an SEO Specialist, I was expecting to be assigned in their main office in Global City, but instead I was assigned in one of their project in Quezon City, the Cherry Orchard Suites Condominium. I found out later on that the reason why I was assigned there is because, aside from my main job, I will also serve as a technical support for the real estate agents of the said project.

I was really surprised that most of the agents of that project are not too familiar with the Internet yet. Some of them do not even know how to send emails to their client. When a client asks for pictures of the model units, I’m the one doing it since they don’t even know how to attach files or pictures in their emails.

I really realized the importance of Internet to real estate agents. I was able to witness how the Internet helped the agents facilitate some of their task, sell more and earn more. I even remember this one lady agent who doesn’t know how to create an email account since I’m the one who create one for her, but later on became one of the top sellers.

With those experiences, I realized that Internet knowledge is really a must for real estate agents who wants to sell and earn more.