Google Analytics for Real Estate Websites and Blogs

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
google analytics

Are You Using Google Analytics
on All Your Real Estate Websites ?

If you have a real estate website or blog and you’re not using Google Analytics, or any other type of Analytics, then you could be flying blind.

Most websites today might come with some sort of analytics attached to it, to show you how many hits you got, including unique visitors and returning visitors.  It might also tell you how many times your online forms were filled out and how many leads you got from your site.

But…you have the opportunity to take this to a whole new level with the information and data presented in Google Analytics, which is absolutely free to use.

Not only will you get the same basic data you would expect from any website provider, but you can dig much deeper into this data to find out more important facts about your website visitors and where they came from, as well as what they were searching for when they found your website.

You can also see which other websites referred traffic to your website, and which sites people went to when they left your website…all great information to know.

Find out where your visitors are coming from, what the avearge age is and are they male or female …

Use this initial basic information, then start to utilize the Custom Reporting in Google Analytics to present the information that’s most important for your business.

Sign-up for your free Google Analytics Account here

Filed Under: Google Analytics, Real Estate Agents Canada Tagged With:

WordPress for Real Estate Agents

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
wordpress

Using WordPress for Your Real
Estate Websites and Blogs.

Have you considered using WordPress to manage your Real Estate Wesite or Blog ?  If not, you should give it a look !

You can have a free WordPress hosted website or Blog, but here, we are recommending a self hosted WordPress Website or Blog.

When you self-host your sites using WordPress as your Content Manager you get a whole host of options and settings you can customize, as well as thousands of free plugins you can use on your sites.

Some Plugins are specifically geared towards real estate agents, but most are there to help you manage your site, or to help you add images quickly without knowing any code.

Here are the steps to take to set up your first real estate website or blog using the self-hosted option.

1. Make sure you have a domain name you want to use with your new website or blog, and access to change the DNS Settings.

2. Sign up for your own hosting account, and I recommend using Hostgator for your hosting needs, it’s who I use.

When you have your hosting account in place, they will send you an email confirming your account is active, and they will provide you with the Domain Name Servers.  These are the two names which will be a bunch of numbers like ……..   NS…followed by some numbers.

Your Domain Name must point to these servers to work with your hosting account and WordPress when you have it set up.  You will log-in to the account where you bought your domain name and simply change the DNS to your new server numbers.

Once you have pointed your domain name to these servers, you can now login to your Hosting Account’s Control Panel and use the quick launch tools there to easily hook up your new domain name to WordPress.

There will be some set-up information you will need to enter, create passwords etc….then your WordPress Website or Blog will be up-and-running within minutes.

You will see a link to go view your new WordPress Website…click on that and bookmark it for later use.  You can then navigate around the WordPress Content Manager and Dashboard to start setting up your site exactly the way you want it.

WordPress has some default information already there for you, but you can remove/delete a lot of this…things like a sample page, a sample post etc…

Search through all the WordPress Themes and choose one you like…then activate it to see how it looks…don’t like it…simply download another theme and see what it looks like.

This is your basic guide to get yourself up-and-running with a Self Hosted WordPress website or Blog for your real estate business.

More articles will follow to help you get more out of your new WordPress sites.

Filed Under: Real Estate Agents Canada, Wordpress for Real Estate Tagged With:

SEO Your Real Estate Website

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
SEO

Search Engine Optimization
for Real Estate Websites.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO is crucial for your real estate website if you want Organic Traffic from Search Engines like Google and Bing.

SEO has been around for years now, and has changed dramatically throughout the years.  What worked only a few years ago might not necessarily work in Today’s marketplace.

There are certain things that need to be done in a certain order to ensure that your Search Engine Optimization campaign for your website goes smoothly.

These are invaluable and can save you hundreds of hours of work.

These 3 steps are the very very basic things that you can do right away to start on your SEO plan for any website….then it should be an ongoing process.

A.
The first step is to find out which keywords you want to target…that is, what words and phrases are people actually using to try and find your website….or products and services in your local market.

That would be either a buyer looking for homes for sale, or a seller wanting to know how much their home is worth….if you’re a real estate agent.

B.
Don’t just add keywords and start shooting for them…you need to target the very best keywords to increase your chances of being on the First page of Google for the actual keywords that will bring you the right browsers, looking for what you offer.

C.
When you have your targetted Keywords the next step is to incorporate them into your website. Good copyrighting should ensure that they are not inserted too often or too little, but just enough to have the search engines recognize what each page of your website is about….this is the Keyword Density

You should be making sure your website is aiming for the best keywords, that it gets found for those keywords and that the copyrighting, links, descriptions and all other aspects that influence the optimization of your website are done correctly.

Now…you have found the right keywords and phrases you want to optimize your real estate website for…but where do you put them to get the best results ?

Your website will allow you to enter Meta Tags and Keywords for every page on your website.

Target one ideally, or two…or even three keywords or phrases for every page, do not have several pages all shooting for the same, high traffic keywords.

This is basic SEO, and I will expand on this in some later articles and blog posts….but if you’d like to find out what Keywords or Keyphrases will work best for your real estate website, feel free to email me and I can review your current website and show you how to find the best keywords and how to implement them into your website for the best results.

One tip I can give you for free right now is….don’t bother so much with Meta Tags and Keywords to optimize your website…these no longer work like they used to…Google is getting much smarter, and stuffing your Meta Data and Keywords will have no effect on your website ranking anymore.

Your time and effort should be spent finding targetted keywords…then writing compelling original content for your website…basically serve up the stuff that people want and are searching for.

Oh….and some great quality, not quantity of backlinks to your website will help you enormously !!

 

Filed Under: Organic SEO, Real Estate Agents Canada, SEO Tagged With: , ,

Google Apps for Your Domain Name…

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
google apps

Are You Using Google Apps for Your Domain.

Google Apps for Your Domain works for you, as a single agent, but really works best if you have a team of Agents, or if you are a Real Estate Broker with many agents.

You can have a fully functioning email system with SPAM Protection that’s second-to-none…in my opinion.

When you apply Google Apps to your Domain it works seamlessly….if you set it up right the first time.

The easiest way to set it up, is by buying a domain name through your Blogger Account, very easy to do, as Google/Blogger have automated setting up the CNAME etc…to make it all work….only use this way if you have a blog that you host on Blogger and want to use that domain name.

But, if you already have a website you use with your domain name, and you want to use that for Google Apps, then you can set it up yourself, or have someone with some technical experience set this up for you.  You might be able to call the domain reseller where you bought your domain name to set your domain up to wotk with Google Apps.

When you have it set up, anyone in your company will log into their very own Intranet Type environment that you just set up….very Professional Looking…with your Logo instead of the Gmail Logo.

They will be using Gmails robust platform for emailing, and you will have shared document storage, group calendars with reminders by email, text, and onscreen reminders.

You can set an Administrator to run Your App the way you want, like setting filters for all your employees emails etc…

Most Brokerages will pay for Spam Protection and filtering…no more, with Google Apps….it does all this, and more.

You can find out all you need to know at Googles pages for Google Apps for Your Domain

Filed Under: Google Apps, Real Estate Agents Canada Tagged With: