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!