SEO and Online Marketing For Real Estate

Getting The Brain Going - Remarkable Marketing

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:34:36 -0600

Once in a while there will be a couple of ideas that just astonish me with their creativity. These two ideas below really got my brain going.

The 72 Hour Open House

Simple idea. "The 72 Hour Open House is like other Vancouver Real Estate Open Houses, except that it doesn't stop for 72 hours after it starts." Not ideal for every property but I would definitely remember any agent who tried this.

The T-Mobile Dance

This is viral marketing at its best. 3.5 million views on Youtube alone. An attempt at branding T-Mobile as the phone company to use for digital sharing with phones.

What gets your braing going?

Or better yet, how are you remarkable?

$100 Free Facebook Advertising - A Guide

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:22:13 -0600

A lot of real estate companies and agents may have been thinking about doing some Facebook advertising but are not sure if it will work for them. Well here is your chance to get $100 worth of ads for free.

If you do a quick search on Facebook advertising you may have noticed that there are various coupons online available. Here is one that I have found that takes four minutes (timed it) and will give you $100 free ad spending.

This gives you a good chance to do some test runs on some Facebook campaigns.

Firstly, log into your Facebook account.

Secondly, sign up for the Visa Business Network application: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=24249628048

Thirdly, Allow the application access and wait for an email to come to your email account. Once you get the coupon, go to your ad campaign management and under billing go to funding sources and enter coupon code.

This is TOO EASY

I even put together a short video tutorial on how to do the entire process. It’s not overly hard to do but some might find it easier to follow and I need the practice making them anyways.

Video - The Next Big Thing In Real Estate SEO?

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:35:02 -0600

Google has been increasingly shifting towards a universal search where not only are traditional web page results shown but so are other content types such as videos, images, news articles and more. You will notice now on numerous searches that there will sometimes be a thumbnail present indicating these types of results available.

Take for instance this search result below for the keyword “YouTube Marketing”.

Obviously when you are searching, these thumbnails will be the first thing that attracts your attention and therefore will receive many of the clicks. Consequently there is and will be a major shift by companies to start concentrating more on developing video content. Well the shift to video on the internet is due to many reasons but it`s emergence in search is helping it along.

As a result it is beneficial for real estate companies to pay attention to this trend and start experimenting now, so they are ready for this upcoming (some could say current) shift.

Video Search Technology

The current technology used by Google is primitive 1st generation compared to other services which is surprising. The other services can actually decipher speech in order to determine the contents of the video. Whereas Google currently relies heavily on the text supplied by the video uploader for a description of the video. Relying on users inputs can lead to some manipulation of search result’s and therefore it will be only a matter of time before Google develops or acquires the technology for second generation video indexing.

As a result I have been experimenting with some Youtube videos for promotion. The competition for real estate results can be fairly tough or at least take time, but within a week I had a PEI golf course showing up on Goolge although on the second page.

Youtube Marketing Techniques I Used:

1) Upload (duh)

2) Ensure proper tags

3) Put website link at the first of the details portion

4) Proper tags

5) Keyword heavy description

6) Build links to videos

See a full list of videos I`m promoting.

I have developed a short guide on the proper technique to upload videos to Youtube. I decided to start a seperate account seperate from my personal one to keep everything in the same theme. It`s up to you.

You can follow my video journeys if you subscribe to my Youtube channel.

Is anyone else out there experimenting or getting results with real estate video promotion? Do you think video is the ``next thing``?

Guide: Put Youtube Videos On Your Century21.ca Website

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:04:16 -0600

For anyone using the Century21.ca platform.

How to put a Youtube video on your century21.ca website.

Here are a few things to note:

1 - You can not remove the embed Youtube code

2 - You can not edit the embed Youtube code

3 - Be very careful on the sizing of the video since once it is in place it can not be edited. 350 is recommenced width.

I was told by Century21.ca member services that this is a hack in approach but I found it very similar to putting videos on other websites.

The Internet Explained "In Plain English"

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:37:54 -0600

Below are some great vidoes I have found that explain various different websites and internet terms that have helped me a long the way. These are all, "In Plain English" videos.

I use Youtube alot to find guides for learning. A lot easier watching someone do it then read about it.

More of these videos are available on Youtube here.

Social Networking

Twitter

Blogging

Statastic - Are You Tracking Your Online Marketing Efforts?

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:23:12 -0600

I find that tracking stats for my websites (analytics) to be addictive. It’s almost like a video game for me. The stats show a complete analysis of who, when, and how visitors find the site. In fact I was spending so much time reviewing stats that I had to set up a schedule where I only review stats that I have to set up a schedule where I only review the stats once a week.

I usually use Google Analytics (free) to analyse my site traffic. It requires placing at tracking code in the html of your website.

NO WEBSITE STATS AVAILABLE!

It was to my dismay that until recently I was unable to access statistics for three of my clients. They are all under the Century 21 Canadian platform, which gives every office and agent their own website. The issue was that I couldn’t get Google Analytics to work on these sites. They told me they were tracking the data themselves and would later make this option available at a later release. This release occurred the other day when they released the traffic analysis system to the companies and agents. So after many months of work, I can finally see the stats to back it up.

It was interesting for me to finally see what was working and what was not for these clients. For perspective two of these clients are real estate companies and another real estate team, all from Century 21 Canada.

Below are some of the observations that I made from the statistics without giving away too much specific info:

REAL ESTATE ANALYTICS REVIEW

Visits – No matter what kind of website you have, you always want to take note of how many people are visiting your site. A huge number of visitors is obviously not worth the same as highly targeted and convertible visitors. This is hard to determine but this can be aided by other stat categories, such as the ones below. It was interesting that my long time PEI real estate client has been getting double the amount of traffic as my newer Vancouver real estate client despite the substantially larger market in Vancouver.

Referring Sites – This is usually the next set of stats that gets my attention. This is where your website traffic is coming from. What sites and search engines are sending traffic your direction. You always find something interesting in your referral traffic. Some sites you never thought of may be sending you large amounts of traffic. Because of my company’s concentration on search engines, I usually concentrate on how much traffic Google is bringing in. My Vancouver client is relying on 50% of its traffic from Google which is a pretty high percentage of leads.

Search Phrases - Finally, I check the search phrases that users keyed into a search engine to find the site. This shows you if your search engine optimization efforts are working but could also point out search phrases that you may have overlooked. A lot of the search phrases for my clients had a variation of Century 21 and then the region. This tells me that the C21 Brand is being searched for people looking to buy in the region. It’s also interesting for individual agents or in this case the PEI Gold team to see users are finding them by simply Googling their name.

Another stats category that I usually view but which was not available through the Century 21 system is the location of the visitors. For example, if potential buyers are out of province or out of country. This is good information to know so you can further targeting certain geographic areas with Google Adwords or online classifieds.

How much emphasis to you put into reviewing your web statistics and what stats do you concentrate on?

Know Your Stuff If You're Selling Online Ads

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:53:31 -0600

I recently sat in on a meeting the other day between one of my real estate clients and a local ad representative for a national news organization. Since their national website divides news in the different provinces, they were looking for local advertising to go a long with the content. My client had just recently agreed to a similar deal to do some online advertising for another local online news site. The real estate client was definitely willing to experiment with some more banner advertising. So I was pretty sure he was going to buy the ads and try them out.

The thing is though, a lot of these older traditional print marketing companies are not training these sales reps on the basics of online marketing. Granted the rep had a lot of stats, but couldn’t really explain them. Since the proposed banner ad was going to be run on impressions, we wanted to know what the average “Click Thru Ratio”(CTR) was. AKA if the ad is shown 100 times and one person clicks it, the ad would have a CTR of 1%. The CTR is very important because the ad could potentially be shown millions of times and would have no clicks. A waste of money in my opinion.

Well the rep didn’t know what CTR meant and to be honest most people don’t unless they have had experience in the marketing practice. Also they had yet to make any sales for these online advertisements so hopefully the learn from their mistakes. We explained as much as we could to the rep on how online marketing worked including some stuff about Google. Anyways this rep wanted $25 for 1000 impressions whereas we had been getting 1000 impressions for $1 with another very similar company. That meant this rep was 25 times more expensive.

The two news sites would be as close as you could possibly get to being the same thing. We decided to pass on the offer although we were asked to try it out for a month and buy $1000 worth. We mentioned that was at least double what we had been paying for Google ads and they are more targeted than banner ads. We have been managing to get 34 to 20 cents per click for banner ads which is comparable to Google. Anyways this just another example of how important it is to know what you’re selling and also what you are buying.

Some important terminology for online advertising:

CTR – Click Thru Ratio – How many times your ad was clicked given how many times it was shown.

Unique Visitors – How many unique people visit the site. More accurate indication of visitors than other stats that measure visits because they can be strewed by multiple page visits by the same user.

CPC - Your calculated cost per click. Impressions – How many times the ad would be shown.

Impressions - How many time the ad would be shown.

Fresh Content - Key To Search Engine Success

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:17:23 -0600

Having a great website that people will keep coming back to requires fresh content. Having a website that search engines keep coming back to requires fresh content. So guess what...you need fresh content! Read the rest at my Real Estate and SEO blog,

Top Search Result.

Free Webinar - Low-Cost Strategies to Ramp Up Your Online Marketing in a Down Turn

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:02:42 -0500

I received an email today from a real estate broker informing me of a free internet marketing webinar. It is put on by Inman News which has done some great real estate content to date. I have no affiliation with the company but thought it might be of interest ot some of you. I will be checking it out for sure.

Intelligent Internet Marketing! 25 Simple, Low-Cost Strategies to Ramp Up Your Online Marketing in a Down Turn

Online Marketing Webinar Details

"On October 29, 2008 at 11am PST Inman News presents a one-hour Webinar packed full of practical tips and takeaways that will help you ramp up your online marketing to respond to this tough market. Join Joel Burslem, Inman News VP of Content and founder of the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog in this fast-moving presentation, where he will cover all the web marketing basics; what you must have on your web site to compete for attention, simple successful search engine optimization strategies and ways to extend your online brand through creating and managing your online identity.

Registration for the Intelligent Internet Marketing webinar is on a first-come, first-served basis and attendance is limited. Inman News Premium Members get priority registration to all Inman News Webinars.Secure your seat by joining today.

Schedule of Event

October 29, 2008 11:00-11:05 am -

Introduction 11:05-11:40 am -

Main Presentation 11:40-11:45 am -

Sponsor Message 11:45-12:00 pm - Q&A Session"

Technology and Population Growth Video - Must See

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:52:37 -0500

I was sent this link from a real estate broker http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF

Interesting video on the world and stats on population and technology. It takes a few minutes but has a very powerful message.

Could not find this exact one on Youtube if anyone could send me the link. Thanks.

Share your comments below.

Google This Property Experimentation

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:12:05 -0500

I’ve just been asked to set up a pilot project for a local Century 21 brokerage. It involves setting up a domain for the listing as well as Google marketing for the individual property. This will be my first experience setting up a website address for an individual property as well as trying to use a “Google This” property marketing technique. 60 Battery Point, Prince Edward Island will be the test listing with the domain 60batterypoint.com being used.

It is important to do a pilot project because the brokerage has 400 plus listings and they want to make sure it works before they invest in all those domains. I’m hoping the property domain will be indexed organically (not paid for) but I’m also setting up Google Adword campaign on the property to see if it gets any clicks. The only issue with the century21.ca site is there is no tracking system available (analytics) yet so it will be hard to see if it is getting any traffic..

Only real way to tell if anybody is searching for 60 Battery Point will be the Google Adwords data. Stickers have been made with the web address indicated as well as a Google prompt for the sign on the property. There will also probably be a mention of it in print adversting. Worst case scenario is that the property owner will be happy we’re leveraging the internet to increase the chance of selling the property.

Hopefully it works...

If you find yourself stressed out about using online marketing for real estate purposes then check out Top Search Result. We take care of your online marketing needs.

The "Gentle Island" - Prince Edward Island, Canada - Real Estate Overview

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:06:20 -0500

Prince Edward Island - My Home

Not many people are familiar with Prince Edward Island so I thought I would change things up and do a post on where I live with a little bit of real estate related info too.

Prince Edward Island, Canada is on the east coast of Canada and it is surrounded by miles of sandy beaches and red sandstone cliffs. The maritime province is the smallest in Canada in both land area and population (excluding the territories). There are only 140,000 "Islanders" presently living in the province with Charlottetown (capital) and Summerside consisting of a large portion of the population. Charlottetown is often referred to as the birthplace of Confederation as the first meetings to establish Canada were held there. There is 22 plus golf courses on PEI. A substantial amount for such a small geographic area.

The province is known mostly for the vast array of farms, primarily potatoes farms. “PEI currently accounts for a third of Canada's total potato production, producing approximately 1.3 billion kilograms annually. Comparatively, the state of Idaho produces approximately 6.2 billion kilograms annually, with a population approximately 9.5 times greater.” (Wikipedia).

There is very little manufacturing and the economy relies heavily on farming, tourism, and fishing. To get to PEI you will have to fly into Charlottetown, take a ferry, or take the Confederation bridge which is the longest bridge in the world covering iced water.

There are a lot of small communities and PEI is a slower, relaxing place. Islanders are a very tight knit community and will consider you to be “from away” if you were not born on PEI. Even if you have lived there for 50 years you are still classed as such. That being said, the people are extremely nice here and practice East Coast Canadian friendliness.

PEI Real Estate Summary

Prince Edward Island has some of the cheapest land in North American due primarily to its low cost of living. Real estate values on PEI have grown consistently over the years but have never been part of a huge boom nor bust. Therefore there are still great inexpensive properties available with the majority “from away” buying summer homes/cottages. In recent years there has been a run up in Americans buying PEI waterfront lots. This has dropped since the rise of the Canadian dollar in comparison the US dollar. But, the influx of Western Canadian buyers has kept the waterfront buying fairly steady even with the decrease in American buyers. Developments are slower to arrive on PEI and they have just recently seen condo developments slowly springing up.

If you want to learn more visit the PEI Tourism Website. If you want to look at PEI Real Estate check out listings online from Century 21. Planning to visit? Try and go in the summer months unless you like snow and hockey...

Always Dress For Success Even In Summer!

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:23:54 -0500

Casual wear is the norm for most businesses these days and I have no problem with that but when you are doing real estate business - please look like you are doing business. I have seen agents looking like they were going clam digging!

I had a discussion today with an agent who said she was told to always be dressed for work -as one day she was grocery shopping and in "comfy" clothes - she ran into a client who remarked "It must be nice to have a day off" (thus stating - why aren’t you selling my house) while if she was dressed for working- it would have appeared to the client that she was just picking up a few things.

I know it’s hot outside and I have nothing against shorts (class ones). Just ask yourself when you leave in the morning: “Would do business with yourself looking the way you do?”

Only Agent's Are On Active Rain So How Does This Help You Sell Real Estate?

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:31:51 -0500

I was asked this question the other day. "If the only people who are on ActiveRain are Agents then how does this help you sell more real estate?"

To be honest I struggled with the question and I often find it hard to explain to agents why it is good to blog on ActiveRain. I have narrowed it down to the following reasons why an Agent would use ActiveRain.

* Fun - you enjoy sharing your thoughts with a good community.

* Referrals - you are hoping to get a referral from an agent.

* Search Engine Optimization - you are hoping to rank better in search engines by blogging on AR.

* Credibility - You are trying to establish yourself as a credible source on a specific real estate topic.

* Sales - You think you can make sales through the community.

I'm not an agent (minority). The reason I'm on ActiveRain is I stumbled upon it doing some work for a local Century 21 real estate company. I now stay active because I'm interested in real estate (fun) and for some Google Juice. I'm certainly not here trying to sell real estate or any services for that matter.

So the question is then: Why Do Agents Use Active Rain?

Hopefully your answers will give me a good response to the question!

Print Advertising Is A Pain

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:21:28 -0500

Right now I’m doing a two page color ad for 50 real estate listings that runs in the local paper. I know a lot of people think print advertising is dead (I’m leaning that way) but I live in the small city of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and everyone here reads the newspaper.

Anyways I have to send an email with 50 real estate descriptions and the pictures attached to it. Right now I’m putting down all the listings in order. Open houses, new prices, and new listings go in first and have a special indicator on the top of the ad. I look up the property on our network and copy the pictures. I then copy and paste the ad from the network into a word document and then move them around as I see fit. I then copy and paste this and send it through email. We exchange proofs until finally it is published a week later.

I’m new to print advertising but this seems like a cumbersome way of doing it. Does anyone have any past experience they could share or advice? I would really like a program that would organize this information in an easier way but I don’t know if that’s available. How does everyone else do their print advertising.

No wonder everyone likes the internet, it's faster and you have more control.

Anyways back to work.

Robert

The Print Ad Is Not Dead…Yet

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:34:52 -0500

This week I was given a new duty at work. I’ve been put in charge of the ad listing for a local real estate guide. It’s a two page color ad featuring all new listings and old listings ( on a rotating basis). My experience has been solely based on online marketing to this point, so I’m excited to see what print advertising will be like. Since I’m young,

I often find myself running around trying to figure out things that older people can easily do and they are running around doing things that I can easily do. For example, I can barely send a fax because I never had to do it before and everyone else doesn’t know how to use email effectively because they never had to before. But like anything, I’m sure print advertising can be mastered.

So the first thing I did was I read through a couple old issues of the real estate guide. Picked out certain things I liked and certain things I didn’t. One thing that is not happening right now is symmetry between the online website and our print listings. Century 21 Canada offers the ability to link directly to the listing page of the property by using the property number. For example, http://www.century21.ca/100392482 Will take you to a page that will offer you the ability to see more pictures, information, directions etc.

This will allow for a short print description that is often squeezed too tightly with information. Right now nobody is using this listing feature in our office. But another local real estate company is doing it in their ads. Another thing I noticed was there were two sides of a duplex listed in the same guide in different ads. Why not just have one listing for the two of them. These are just some basic things I want to implement.

I know a lot of people say that Print Ads are dead but I think they will always have a place in real estate. If the consumer is not 100% sure in what you want, print offers a great way for introduction to your products. Once they know what they want, I believe you have to make it easy for them to access through the web. And that is what I am going to try and do. The print ad is not dead...yet.

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes.

Robert

First Blog Post

Robert Dawson SEO (Top Search Result) — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:04:32 -0500

Well this is my first blog post (for this website anyways). I am always thinking about stuff at work that I think other people would be interested in knowing, especially keen real estate agents. This is will be my outlet for my thoughts and ideas. My posts will be heavily related towards technology and search engine optimization.

A little about myself. I'm 22 years old, I work for a real estate company in Prince Edward Island and just graduated with my BBA from UPEI. I also run a few websites and have my own start up company called Top Search Result.

I tend to strive more for quality than quantity for blog posts so there may be some time in between posts. That and I tend to run out of free time some weeks, like everyone else.

Cheers.

Rob