RealTown's RealTalk

I would like to know how my Internet leads compares with other Real Estate agents. I get about 1 to 2 legitimate leads per month from my personal website. Also, if your Broker has a site, do you receive any leads from them?

Joe Marshall

Broker

Marshall Realty

Joe, the answer may be dependent on many variables, i.e; city/area population, density, whether resort destination, beach community, foreclosure area, employment opportunities, etc. Also, it will depend on how much value you offer a visitor wih they visit your site, how extensive your site is, is it optimized for long tail searches, does it have IDX, neighborhood info, etc... the list goes on. An agent in Dallas might get 40+ leads a day, a small beach town agent 15+ a day, etc.

I don't know your definition of what a legitimate lead is, but if I were only getting 1-2 a month in your market, I would not be a happy with my website performance.

Drew,

My definition of legitmate would be a valid Name, Email address, and phone number at the minimum. I went back and looked at my leads for the past two months. I received 5 in February and 6 so far this month, so I under estimated a little.

Joe

Hi, I am glad to see your post as I am also doing research myself. I have used http://www.prostepmarketing.com/ for a custom site for the past 3 yrs www.hornerhomes.com and I paid them for SEO and didn't renew it. I didn't find the results to be good and I paid Thousands and thousands of dollars.

I signed up with another SEO company www.compassinternetsystems.com who recommended Point 2 Agent but I have not done research on this company. I recently spoke to two agents who were happy with Z57 and the leads they get (in two completely different states).

I have narrowed it down to the following and would love to hear what others have to say if they are using websites from these companies: Z57, Real Pro Systems, Ala Mode, Top Producer, Number 1 Expert, Birdview, Web Agent Solutions and Point 2 Agent.

JoAnn Horner, REALTOR, GRI, ePRO, ASPM, joann@hornerhomes.com 925-818-0731

Keller Williams Realty, East Bay CA, www.Hornerhomes.com

Tal Kramer

Tal and Jeanette Kramer
Re/Max Communities - Greater Atlanta
770-971-0025
678-978-1900 - Tal cell
678-978-1800 - Jeanette cell
Kramer@MyDreamHome.com - Tal
Jeanette@MyDreamHome.com - Jeanette
www.MyDreamHome.com

We're never too busy for your referrals :-)

I get 35 to 55 leads a month from my website that at least offer a valid e-mail address. However, I participate in Google AdWords for my target market : Nashville Condos & Lofts. Of my 19 sales last year, 12 came from my website.

Last August I began to require a "teaser" registration. My IDX promts you to sign in after you view a couple of properties. This is by far the best method in my opinion - registration for me more than quadrupled. Sure, I get some "Mickey Mouse" registrations occaisionally, but even with those I can sometimes get good e-mail addresses. I add everyone to my once-a-month e-newsletter and hope they call when they are serious.

The newsletter is key. I write all my own copy and make it relavent to my market. If you don't have a well-defined niche like I do, there is other good content that can keep readers opening the e-mail. A spread sheet showing market tends by zip code is a good way to go. Including an "Around Town" events schedule is a good one too. I personally think pre-written campaigns are a joke - so avoid those.

Bonnie wrote:
"In Jacksonville, a well-optimized site that answers for the visitor "whats in it for me" should produce 1-3 legitimate leads a day in this down market, 5-7 a day when the good times are rolling."

Not meant to be argumentative, but the number of leads one gets has too many variables from site to site and market to market to be able to give a definitive number. However, if Jacksonville has a population of 800,000, you should be getting far more leads than 5-7 leads a day if your site is a focus of your business. Areas with 100,000 population easily get that number if the site has good SERP positions and offers what a visitor is looking for.

It really depends if you work your site to stay current with the market/search trends as well as how many well optimized, competitive websites in the area. For example, in this market, if you don't have pages to show REO and Short Sale property listings, you are missing a large part of what people are searching for. Neighborhood searches are also a huge source for getting leads.

A small part of it is who you use for your website. It is what you do with your site once you have it. The majority of websites these companies provide are all the same, so there is nothing to differentiate yours from the thousands of others they host.
I have three sites. The first is hosted by ihouse. It is http://www.lakeworthproperties.net. It is a framed site. I took their basic template, optimized it for my keywords, changed all the meta tags and receive about 10 leads a day. If you search South Florida Rentals on google, I fluctuate between #4 and #9, South Florida homes #9 and #19. I am also on the first page of Google for many other search phrases.
For http://www.southfloridarentals-homesales.com I rank #1 on MSN, Google Yahoo for many of my keywords. This is a site built from scratch.
Lastly, for http://www.palm-beach-real-estate-homes.com/ a Point2 homes site, I am ranked on the search engines also. It is a good site if you customize it and you can change each page.
The point is whatever you choose, you have to put work into it in order for it to be successfull. The majority of SEO companies are a waste of money. Also the pay per click. I get a lot of calls by them solicited me for a top 10 ranking on Google. While they are talking to me, I am checking out their site. I'll check their Google page rank and their Alexa ranking. When I question why their ranking is so poor and why they promise to make my site appear on the first page when they can not make their site highly ranked, I get hung up on a lot.
Sorry to be long winded, but I hate to see people waste their money. Before you choose a host take the following steps.
Be prepared to put work into it or hire someone to do it.
Check the providers site and their Google page rank and placement.
Make sure that you can edit the meta tags and pages
Avoid flash sites. Pretty, but the search engine spiders do not read them.
Get a domain name that applies to the area you are servicing. Bobsmith.com means nothing and will hurt you.
Build one way links to your site from real estate related sites with a Google page rank of 2 or better.
These things don't happen overnight. They do take a lot of work. I did optimized one site and they went from no where to page one on Google for their keywords. It is all in the optimization.