Nowadays in Real Estate it’s so important to have an Internet presence, and not only that, you need to be very prominent.

If you want to get your share of the leads that come from the Internet through your website, there are very specific things that you need to do, and in a certain order to enable your Website to out-perform your competition.

You’re a real estate agent, and your job is to sell homes to buyers and to list and sell homes for sellers.

You should think about hiring someone like us to provide you with a strategy to have your website give you a daily supply of buyer and seller leads from your website.

If you already have a website we can review it for you and let you know if we can work with it, or whether you need to start from the ground up…from scratch.

Some Agents want a website that looks good, with lots of pictures and words and phrases that enhances their image !
If you’re that type of Agent then we probably can’t help you.

On the other hand, if you’re the type of Agent who wants a website that works and will give you with a daily supply of leads, then we can definately help you out.

Who cares if your website looks good….if it contains great information and links that help buyers and sellers understand the buying and selling process, and it gives tons of local and neighbourhood information then you will get more business from your website than those agents who use the Internet to promote themselves as # 1 etc…

We are taking on very limited projects and you can contact us using the email link.

We provide full service if you need it…which is Search Engine Optimization services, website reviews, lead generation, online forms,advice on topics to write about,Social Media Integration like YouTube,Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn etc…

Another important aspect of generating large numbers of leads online is keeping in touch with them….we also provide email software providers and contact management systems to incubate your leads till they’re ready to do business with you.

Send me a detailed email with your problem if you’re looking for help.
Use the email link on the right for the quickest response.

 Benefits of Using Organic SEO for Your Business

When reading this post, just think about yourelf NOT as a Real Estate Agent, but as a business owner…it will make more sense then…

Website and Business Owners, thinking about otsourcing your SEO and Search needs…
If you are struggling with a website that produces no leads, or even worse, dud leads who aren’t ready to buy or sell now, you can change that !

Your Income will Increase if your website can simply perform the way you want it to, and you grab your share of the Online Business.

There are so many factors that can influence how Your Website Will Perform.

Some companies will charge you a lot of money to “SEO Your Website”… …Just make sure you’re getting what you want….and it’s sometimes not easy to know what you want in this field.

I only perform SEO White Hat, or best practices, and my focus is optimizing websites for Organic Search, which is what people get when they perform a search on Google.com

If you want to get into Adwords and PPC Campaigns I can help you with that too.

I have Solid Testimonials from recent website owners where their businesses went up by 100% due to simple website changes.

I recently consulted with a company who source jobs for Teachers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. They have offices in Melbourne and another in London England.

They wanted their website to rank higher in the search engines.

I met with the owner of the company on 2 occasions where I tried to understand their business and what they needed to do to get more online business.

We did a couple of conference calls with his web designer, myself and him, where we set out a strategy to rank higher for the best keywords and phrases.

Now they feel more focussed and confident in their Internet Strategy to capture more online leads for their business.

They already spend a lot of money on Google Adwords to drive traffic to the website, but see the huge importance of getting ranked high using Organic Search Engine Optimization Tactics.

Recently….after only a few months…they are seeing real results…here’s an email I received today from the owner of the company.

Hello George,

“I was going to email you today to tell you some good news.”

Have a little search for “OUR CHOSEN KEYWORDS” and “OUR OTHER CHOSEN KEYPHRASE”….for the phrases we have concentrated on we had 3 listings on page one last night!

Remember…3 Listings on Page 1 of Google for your chosen keywords gives you 30% of the search results, or 3 times the chance of getting the click…when some people would kill for just 1 listing on Page 1.

A few days later, I get another message from the Owner…
“We are getting a lot more WEB traffic at the moment. I don’t think we are in a position to maximise twitter and Facebook yet as we are struggling to keep up.”

If you’d like to have the problem of having too many leads….contact me…

Testimonial from a business owner who gave up some responsibility and profited
Since George Bradie started to advise and implement our initial SEO changes back in 2009 ANZUK has seen a 100% increase in overseas teacher leads which we have been able to convert into significant feet on the ground in Australia and the UK.

George single handedly gave us the means to grow our profits by an average of over 100%.

Investing in George for your SEO will net results.

I was very sceptical at first and was trying to do everything on my own and in-house.

Don’t wait too long for this opportunity….

Daniel M.
http://www.anzukteachers.com.au/

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

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.

]]> http://agentincanada.com/2011/12/17/wordpress-for-real-estate-agents/feed/ 0 http://agentincanada.com/2011/12/17/seo-your-real-estate-website/ http://agentincanada.com/2011/12/17/seo-your-real-estate-website/#comments Sat, 17 Dec 2011 03:47:03 +0000 George Bradie http://agentincanada.com/?p=139 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 !!

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

Are you already using YouTube for your real estate business ?  If not you are missing a lot of opportunities to market your listings as well as yourself as a single agent or your real estate team.

A YouTube account is very easy to set up and you can upload movies to YouTube from a simple webcam, or from a camcorder, a flip video camera and lots of other ways.

If you take a new listing you can impress the seller by having a movie about there home on YouTube, or you can make a monthly movie about the real estate market in your city telling them where your local real estate market is headed, what are the average prices in your area and any other recent news that affects the real estate market where you work.

YouTube also has analytics built in, so you can check out how many views your movies are getting, as well as where these views come from….how old are the people who are viewing your movies and a ton of other great information.

You can place links in any movie you make to have people subscribe to your YouTube Channel, or to take them to another movie within your YouTube Channel.

You can make your YouTube Channel look different from the rest by editing the clour schemes and font colours using the built-in editor.

You can also add a title and description as well as a location to your movies, and YouTube Movies show up in the search results within Google Search…so if someone is looking for movies about your local real estate market, having YouTube Movies with their search term in your title and description gives you another chance to be found on Page 1 of Google.

Make your YouTube Movies fun, exciting, different or funny and they might just go viral…giving you the chance to get millions of views and links to your movie from other websites and blogs.

Remember to have your website link on your YouTube Channel so visitors can click through to your business real estate website or blog.

Want to sign up for a YouTube Account, go here… www.YouTube.com

…

There are so many real estate websites out there today for real estate agents to choose from….where do you start ?

I have tried many websites designed specifically for real estate agents, and must admit that most of them are missing something or other that I really want and need to make running the business smoother.

There are Templated Websites that when you buy them a whole bunch of content and pre-made pages are already there to give you a head start…like a Company Page, an About Your Area Pages and some generic reports written for Buyers and Sellers.

My advice here would be to ditch those pages as soon as possible, maybe keep the Pages, but remove all of the content that’s there and replace it with your own custom content.  Nothing can replace customized content that is targetted to buyers and sellers in your local market.  The reports and information that comes with your templated website is very generic and not tailored exactly right for you.

Today, I am recommending Point 2 Websites as a great platform for your Real Estate Business.  I can recommend Point2 Websites as I have been using them since 2000 and I am a member of their Advisory Council.

Their customer support staff are very helpful and if you get stuck or have a question you can email them a ticket and get a speedy response, and if you have their Professional or Premium Package, it comes with telephone support which I really like, any problems I can have sorted in just a few minutes with 1 phone call.

If you’d like to try out Point2 Websites for 3 months at No Cost, use my afilliate link here and sign-up for your 3 month trial with no obligation to keep it after the 3 months.  Point2 Website 3 month Trial

Some of the benefits of Point2 Websites are:

Very easy to use interface to build your Point2 Website, you can add content or edit your website from any computer, no matter where you are.  You don’t need much technical experience.  But, if you want, you can hire a web designer who can use HTML to build you a custom website, using your Point2 interface.

I personally took the time to learn everything about editing the website myself so that I can make quick changes on the fly, with no delays having to contact my web designer, and best of all, no cost to me.

Every page you add allows you to add a Name, Title, Description and Keywords.  This stuff is what helps the SEO for your Point2 website.  When people search for real estate terms in your City, you want to be found on the first page of Google, so you should take the time to understand what your page Title and Description should be…not so much the keywords as these have become pretty much useless at getting you high rankings on Google….I will discuss SEO and Keywords in another blog post later…!

And…there are also some great ways to discover what words and phrases you should include in your title and description, as well as the main content on your pages…again, another blog post will discuss this.

So…Point2 Websites are very easy to get set up…very easy to edit and there is more…

Your website has a bunch of forms you can add to have buyers and sellers contact you for more information, to buy a home, or to sell their home.

There are home evaluation forms for sellers, homesearch forms for buyers and a generic Feedback Form to contact you with any questions.  There are other things you can do to get creative and take advantage of using these forms in other ways, which I will tell you about later.

When you get a lead from your website, you can find these leads easily when you log into your website.  You can then email right from within the website to keep a track of all your communications with that lead and also add that lead to a group of leads that are similar…where you can send a group email to them all at once.

Point2 also has Drip Emails..that is a bunch of Pre-Set emails, all written and ready to go out to any leads at time intervals that you decide on.  What I mean is…say a buyer signs up for new listings Today…without you doing anything at all, that buyer could receive a welcoming email from you Tomorrow, then another follow-up email in 4 days time…then another email with some buyer information 6 days after that one….and you don’t need to do a thing, it all happens automatically and 24/7.

Point2 also offers neighbourhood expert pages which you can buy, and then you get more exposure on the main Point2 Homes Website.  If a buyer goes to www.Point2Homes.com and looks for homes in a neighbourhood where you are the Expert, then your website and logo are there and you can be the agent they will contact for any listings that they see.

Maybe the best feature of all about Point2 websites is the amount of memebers they have and the amount of listings they have.  Plus…you can use their Handshake feature to allow all the other members in your area to share their listings on your website…so your site can have hundreds of listings, and when people view them on your site, they will contact you, even though it might be listed with another agent.

Some agents don’t like this feature and I never understood…nor do I want to…why they did not want all this great exposure for their sellers listings.  Maybe that’s for another blog post …

You can also make money from your Point2 website if you upgrade to their Premium Package..where you can place banners on your site for Lawyers, Mortgage Contacts, Banks etc…and charge them a fee.  Plus you get full reporting on how many times their banner was viewed..and how many people clicked on their banner…you can send them monthly reports so they can see how well their banner is doing on your website.

Check out all of the features available in the 3 levels of membership

If you want a reliable and fast website host for your real estate website I can tell you that I use Hostgator and have never had any problems with them. Fast and reliable, serving up your website or blog the instant people request it.
Check out Hostgator Pricing here

Their hosting plans are very competitive and you can run as many blogs and websites as you need right from within one account, which helps your management.

Their back-office has a ton of other applications for you to use, including setting up email addresses and forwarders.

Hostgator works very well if you want to use it for your WordPress self-hosted website or blog
Check out Hostgator Pricing here

 If You’re a Real Estate Agent in Canada and want to improve the visibility of your real estate website, then one good tip is to have a domain name that will work well for you when searchers on Google.com try a search to either buy or sell a home in Your Town.

Rather than have a bunch of domain names spread all over the place, you can register all your domain names with one central registrar and manage them all within one Control Panel.

If you already have a few domains registered with different companies, you can transfer these domains into one central registrar and make things much easier to manage.

If you want to search for available domain names available that might work well in your local market, visit Guess Domains and get good pricing.

Watch this site for updates on how to choose the right name for your domain name shortly.

Have a look at some of the Premium Domain Names we have for sale relating to Real Estate Agents in Canada. 

View Premium Domain Names