I am often asking my clients to recommend a good template website.  That's a much more loaded question for me now after having some personal experiences recently with a couple of these companies.

The first one is a very popular company that many people know.  In the past year they have had quite a few problems with the big Search Engines.  Then to make matters worse their system crashed for several days, and people still seem to have lagging problems receiving their emails.  Coming from someone more accomplished in the computer field this troubles me a great deal.

Agents sign up for template websites because more often than not, they are not experienced enough to maintain a website.  They also do not have the experience to know that you can buy your domain name from one company (I stand beside GoDaddy and their outstanding customer service).  They also do not know that you can actually have your email hosted by someone other than the company who is hosting their website.  This would mean that you were not counting on one company to keep your web identity running.  In general the agents who sign up also do not understand how troublesome problems with search engines can be.  If a search engine does not index your site, then to that search engine, you do not exist.  So in turn, someone searching the Internet for property in your area wouldn't know you exist, because the search engine doesn't know that you or your website exists.

Another template company that I have dealt with recently has even bigger problems.  It's not was well known, but they sell their services as more of a custom-designed template service.  I recently obtained a client who dropped $4000 in January for a website that she STILL doesn't have.  A "template" that was supposed to be "custom-designed" within a week of her payment.  The big catch--they got her to pay for Search Engine Optimization BEFORE she had her site.  Well you can't optimize a site that doesn't exist.  And of course, it's past her 30 day money-back guarantee. 

The moral of the story....research, research, research before signing on the dotted line. If you are thinking about going with a company try to find other customers of the same company online, and email them to see how satisfied with the service they are.  Next, set up and use the site immediately!  This means you will be able to review the functionality of the website, hopefully before any money back guarantee runs out.  Don't pay for extra expensive services upfront, before your site is set-up.  If they offer you a special price on the big-ticket item when you sign up, ask to speak to someone who has the authority to give you that same price after your site is set up.  Lastly, remember you can break up services.  You don't have to have (and probably shouldn't have) the same company totally in charge of your web existence. 

Yes, search engines LOVE, LOVE, LOVE content. Their bots index all your text, and search for keywords/phrases. So what do you do when setting up your site? You repeat and repeat stuff, over and over to make sure the search engines understand that you are a real estate agent working in your area. To bad all your visitors get indigestion from reading your redundant copy.

You have got to find a balance between impressing upon the search engine bots and not turning off visitors to your website.  What are some tips on how to accomplish that?

1.  Display rather high up on your page what area(s), counties, city you practice real estate in.

2.  Display a longer listing of the areas, cities, and town within your coverage area in the footer of your website.  Have it displayed on every page on your site, along with your contact information.

3. Develop dedicated community, neighborhood, or subdivision pages.  On the page give a description, display pictures, and tell people why they may want to live in this particular area. 

4. Give your visitors information relevant to real estate, your area, relocating, and moving.    

5.  Arrange your website so that information that may be redundant is displayed in a way that is supports each other.

6.  Monitor search engine bot hits and your rankings on the search engines.  Notice a climb in your ranking, and see if there have been any recent changes that you made that may have paid off. 

7.  Don't repeat the same phrase over and over.  Change up the wording, and/or create different context that will enable you to repeat the phrase.

Remember, your goal is to keep visitors on your website, and get them to come back.  Focusing on only impressing the search engines way turn visitors away which negates the whole effort. 

The vast majority of website text is boring, unimaginative and self-promoting. If you don't present a compelling focused purpose then you are just wasting peoples' time, and your money!!

Yes, your website is to promote your real estate business.  But the best way to promote yourself is to establish yourself as a knowledgeable industry professional, not to simply state how great of an agent you are.   It is not always me, me, me that gets the best response.  You need to find a balance between self promotion and supplying real estate information to visitors of your website. 

The best way to promote yourself is to provide potential clients with information that will help them with their real estate transactions.  Your goal is to provide your clients with all the information they need so they will not stray from your site, and then keep them coming back to your site for more. 

A great way to establish yourself as a real estate professional to visitors is to provide relevant real estate content.  Don't simply provide links to another website to read a real estate related article.  Read the article yourself, cite the source, summarize, and then give your opinion of why the article is relevant, or irrelevant to your potential clients.  It makes you look like you are up-to-date on current real estate news, and may also help decode and put into simpler terms for your website visitors. 

Blogs are also a great way to keep your potential clients informed and keep them coming back to your website.  If you don't have the time or expertise to do this yourself, hire someone who is knowledgeable in the real estate profession to do it for you. 

Sometimes agents who are just starting to develop their websites read online articles posted by companies who want you to think you HAVE TO HAVE them work on your website to get optimum website ranking on search engines.  You take what they say and decide to implement it yourself in order to save money.  The articles though, have you all worried about load times and search engine optimization, and other things you don't really understand.  So you dump most of your images, and proceed to put enough text on your site that would take a month to study.  But are potential buyers and sellers actually reading all that stuff?

People like to see pictures.  A slideshow of your current listings is a great way to get the interest of buyers, and a great selling point for potential sellers.  If you don't have any current listings, ask an agent in your office if you could put a few of theirs on your site.  Rarely would anyone say no, because its additional advertisement for their listings.  A win-win for everybody.

The right picture in the right context is a great way to draw attention and get people to visit a particular page.  Use small pictures to get people to visit areas such as Search the MLS, Featured Listings, Free CMA, Free Reports, Contact Me, areas that will enable you to capture their contact information. 

A small picture of yourself can be used to create a great sense of familiarity, but its best not to post tons of pictures of yourself on your real estate website.  Potential clients want to know about real estate, not see picture of you in the Bahamas.  Should you win a real estate related award or honor it is appropriate to have a photo taken with the award and display that on your site.  It distinguishes you as an industry expert.

Pictures are your website should be sized accordingly, and if you aren't quite sure how to do that, its worth paying someone to help you with it.  A slow loading website does discourage some people who may not have a lot of time, or who may not have high speed internet. 

A few really great pictures showcasing listings or neighborhoods in your service area speak a thousand words--although words are still very important, but that's a whole other blog.

Friday, January 26, 2007

A popular idea right now for getting your webpage ranked higher on search engines is reciprocal linking. Have you ever consider that each link to another website is an invitation to leave your site? Is that really what you want - to invite people to leave?  Hmmm, maybe not. Search engines are also catching on to this strategy.  Some have started analyzing the relevance of your reciprocal links to your business.  So while you may have TONS of reciprocal links, maybe only 40-50% actually pertain to your real estate business.  There may come a time very soon that instead of helping you, this fact could hurt you, and your website ranking could plummet. Before inviting a link exchange ask yourself these questions: 1.  Does this link make sense and give my customers/clients relevant information that they need?  2.  Do I have the right context for this link, and if not, can I create one? 3.  If I were buying or selling a house would this information help me? 4.  Do I really think adding this link will be beneficial to those who follow it? 5.  Is it important enough to direct potential customers away from my site? There is a much needed place for reciprocal links on real estate websites, but my advice..... CHOOSE WISELY!