Real Estate SEO

Archive for the ‘Leads’ Category

Let’s get something clear here. Joomla is not the right platform for building real estate websites.

For our readers who aren’t familiar with the system, Joomla is an open source content management platform. It was built to make building a generic website easier. It was not built for real estate offices or agents.

If you’re going to build a real estate website, you need to use something that was designed for the real estate industry.  At Boston Logic, we’ve developed the ONE System Real Estate Website Platform, but I’m not going to write about that today. Before we invested the thousands of hours that we’ve put into building this system, we did use Joomla to build some sites. So, I’m speaking (writing) from experience here. Let me tell you about some of what we learned:

1. Joomla is not built to integrate with an MLS. This is critical. Your real estate website should be built with an integrated MLS search. The search should not be on another website or in an iFrame. You should be building on a platform that has the search, search results, and property details pages right on your site. In addition the interactive user tools should be part of the site and so should your lead management system. Obviously, joomla doesn’t have a real estate lead management system for you to leverage.
2. Joomla’s content management system is overcomplicated for real estate. When you design software, you start with requirements. Joomla was built to do a lot of things. Most of these things, real estate agents and offices will never ever do. Advanced content management requires a lot of user access levels and controls. Realtors require a simple and easy to use interface for managing their content. Joomla, we found, confused our clients more than it enabled them.
3. Joomla is relatively laborious to style. Our team has worked with Joomla plenty of times. It’s still a bear to make the pages all look good. If you think you’re saving money, think again.
4. Customization is harder. When you get down to it, working with open source systems can get you a lot of functionality for no money. That said, going beyond what the system includes and/or what the plugins you find can do is a challenge. So, if Joomla will do 80% of what you want for your real estate website and then you think it’ll be easy or cheap to hire a developer or web development shop to take you the rest of the way home, think again. Customizing Joomla gets expensive quickly. As a point of reference the last Joomla site that we worked on required about $75,000 in work to get to what the client wanted.
5. Joomla is hard to turn into an effective real estate website. Great real estate websites have lots of features that are not part of the Joomla platform. I’ve already mentioned the MLS search above. Agent profiles linked to their listings. Pages on developments and/or buildings with available listings right on the pages. Live Chat. Lead distribution and management. Featured property pages. Maps. And many of the other features that make for a great real estate website are missing.

Here’s the all important conclusion. Joomla should not be used for real estate websites. It’s unlikely that the cost benefit will outweigh the poor end product that you’re going to see.

How to measure quality in a real estate  SEO campaign and in a SEO provider.

I’ve talked about similar topics before, but I wanted to lay it out succinctly for our readers since we get a lot of questions on this. The lists below are ways to judge and ways NOT to judge a SEO provider. They’re also metrics and methods for measuring the effectiveness of a real estate marketing campaign overall.

Indicators of good real estate SEO campaign performance:

• Leads generated
• Site traffic numbers
• Average number of pages visited by users to your site
• Average time visitors spend on your site
• Search engine ranking (placement) for a long list of terms

The most important things that a SEO campaign can do is to cause more visitors to arrive at your site and to generate more leads for your real estate business. Now, the number of leads that your site generates also has a lot to do with the design and architecture of your site. So, if the SEO provider has little control over these contributing factors, then the traffic numbers are the best indicator you have of quality.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t touch on benchmarks for a moment. You must have benchmarks to measure against. If your site is seeing 150 visitors per month from Google when your SEO campaign starts and 1050 users part month 6 months in, this is strong performance. If your website was producing 1 lead per day before the campaign started and how it’s producing 10 leads per day, again, your SEO is doing a good job.

An indicator of a good SEO provider and of any real estate marketing firm is whether or not they provide these metrics to you. If they’re willing to be accountable to you, and they’re not hiding anything, then they have no choice but to show you good work. Otherwise, you’re liable to fire them when the contract is up.

Here are some ways NOT to measure performance of an SEO campaign or of an SEO provider:

• Whether or not you rank for 1 particular term
• Traffic numbers 3 months into a campaign
• The frequency with which reports are delivered to you.

Believe it or not, search engine ranking is NOT what makes for a good SEO campaign. Marketing campaigns MUST produce results. Results = revenue. Results and ranking don’t mean the same thing. As I’ve said before, ranking and a token will get you on the subway.

This same analysis must be applied to all real estate marketing campaigns, media, and ad buys. If the money ain’t producing the biz, then it’s not well spent. Ask the questions, do the math, get real numbers to judge performance.

Can a new operating system by Google really affect my business? If you’re not asking yourself this question, you probably should be.

Yes folks, Google is challenging Microsoft, again, this time where it really hurts. Google is launching a new operating system called Google Chrome OS. This will affect your business. In fact, it’s part of a trend that already is.

Today, Google officially announced that in 2010 their new Google Chrome OS will be available commercially. At first, it’ll mostly be in Netbooks, they’re telling us. Netbooks, for those of you who haven’t heard, are small, portable laptop computers. They’re intended for a market of people who spend a lot of time on the web. This is key!

The fact that there is a market for Netbooks nowadays is very telling. Netbooks are, somewhat by definition:

• Small
• Portable
• Have relatively low processing power
• Make it very easy to access the web, and
• Cost far less than your average laptop.

To look at this from another direction, the reality is that there are millions of people who spend so much time on the web. These folks are using applications like Google for searching, Facebook, Twitter, and email for communication, and thousands of productivity applications too numerous to list. You might be one of these people. If you’re not, that’s OK, but you MUST realize that these folks are a large and growing segment of the population.

Let’s discuss some other facts about the Netbook-owning population:

• They’re well connected – Verizon offers a Netbook with a built in cell phone card. This is so that the owners can access the internet from anywhere using the device. In fact, I think they device is discounted or free if you sign up for long enough, much like a cell phone
• They’re on the move – These are busy people who want quick access to information, communication, and really the world.
• They have some money to spend – The fact is that most Netbook users aren’t buying these devices to be their main computer. It’s their secondary device or even tertiary. It’s somewhere between their cell phone and their laptop, but serving a different set of needs.
• It’s hard to grab their attention – This is a population, and I am a member of this club, that is not looking for distractions. We have too many. Inundated by information and looking for a way to get to the good stuff faster, Netbook users aren’t easy to market to. They’re going to come and search for you. You need to be able to be found by them.
• They’re electronic – Don’t think you can grab my attention with a newspaper ad or a post card in the mail. I don’t pick up paper. I hate paper. It kills a tree. If I want something, I’m going to go searching for it. Probably on Google. When I want to buy a house, I’m going to Google and I’m searching for real estate. This his how this population thinks. Start thinking like them now and you’ll be ahead of the competition.

Know this, if you start thinking about how to reach the folks who will be using Google Chrome OS now, you’ll be selling them real estate in 2010 when the OS comes out. In fact, these folks are already out there. You’ll probably be selling them homes next month.

Image source: news.cnet.com

How the big guys plan to exploit the little guys and how Real Estate SEO and Real Estate SEM level the playing field.

It’s no secret that the National Association of Realtors is on the side of the big guys. I’m talking about the ERAs, C21s, Prudentials, and Exits of the real estate world. From one point of view, that’s OK. These big firms employ hundreds of thousands of Realtors.  That’s a lot of jobs. I’m sure that a lot of our readers work for some of these larger companies and that’s all well and good.

Now, I’m going to draw out exactly how the system that the big guys, supported by the NAR, have put in place, can actually work to the little guy’s advantage, through the use of the internet, SEM, and SEO. It goes like this…

The revenue model at the heart of most the big residential real estate companies is pretty simple.

1. They want as many real estate transactions as possible to happen under their brand
2. They want to keep as much of the transaction’s value as they possibly can.

Seems pretty obvious. If a trillion dollars in real estate transactions happen in the US in a year, then Coldwell, for example, wants as much market share of that trillion to be under their name. AND they want to keep, that is the corporation wants to keep, as much of that as they can.

Most of the big guys are on a traditional split. The agent negotiates a commission with the seller and the company keeps a percentage of the commission. There are 2 ways for the company to make more money:

1. The agent negotiates a bigger commission from the seller. This is all well and good, but most markets are seeing consistent commissions paid by sellers. It’s likely 5 or 6 percent in your market and just about everyone is working for the same percentage – regardless of how long they’ve been a Realtor. So, the corporation has little control over this.
2. The corporation takes a bigger percentage of the agent’s commission.

Now, most of these companies start you at a low split. If you’re new to the industry, they may take 60% of your commissions for the house. If you’re doing a lot of sales, that will graduate to 50/50 and on down until you’re keeping 80% or more of your commissions.

Of course, the big companies want to keep as much of the commission as possible, they don’t like 80/20 splits or event 60/40 splits. Their goal is to have as many entry level agents doing deals as possible. The result is that they’ll keep 50 or 60 percent of the commission. In order to make this possible, they need lots of new realtors in the market pretty much all the time.

So, the big companies, in cooperation with the NAR and local real estate boards around the country have kept the barrier to entry into the real estate profession exceptionally low. Lower than almost any profession where someone has as much earning potential as they do in real estate.

This means that just about anyone can come into the industry whenever they want. So long as this is true, there will always be too many real estate agents for very many of them to make a great living. Sure, some of them will make lots of money, but most will not. Most will take on a second job or do real estate on the side or even average less than 1 deal per year. Just take a look at NRT’s stats for deals/agent and you’ll be shocked. (they’re the largest residential brokerage in the country)

Now, here’s how this all plays into the hands of the average realtor. The internet is one giant level playing field. The big guys can try to buy a million clicks or SEO around every term on the planet, but it’s untenable. They’re years behind the local guys and longevity matters in the SEM game.

You can start a real estate website today and so long as it’s built on a good platform and you hire a good SEM/SEO team, you can achieve ranking in just a few months. In some ways, this means that the internet is in the little guy’s favor. The independent real estate company can be ranked right next to the big guys. In lots of markets, the big companies aren’t ranking at all.

As real estate marketing and client acquisition continually goes more online, the big guys will be more and more left out of the picture. With time, it’ll be easier and easier for the independents to challenge the big guys and take market share. We’re already seeing this in lots of markets. Do a Google search with your town or city’s name followed by the words real estate. This will give you some insight into who’s already investing into real estate SEM and real estate SEO.

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts? We’d love to hear from you. Thanks!

Image source: www.nuwireinvestor.com

Are you looking for ways to take your real estate blog to the next level? Over time we’ve written a lot about blogs and how to blog for your business. As a matter of fact, we consider it to be fundamental to a successful online marketing strategy. It’s a way to connect to and communicate with your readers and followers, generate leads, and improve your organic search results (and since you’re reading this, then I assume you are trying to achieve just that).

Without further ado, here are is our advice about blogging best practices:

1. SEO 101 – How to SEO my Real Estate Blog
2. SEO 101: Blogging Part 2
3. Answers to common Real Estate blogging questions
4. Starting a conversation
5. SEO Army – A Real Estate office working together
6. How long should my blog post be?
7. Redesigning your blog? Keep SEO in mind
8. Top 10 sites to submit your blog
9. 10 ways to optimize your blog for Real Estate SEO
10. Blogging instead of spending