When Petersburg VA real estate agent Mike May came to me for a custom Point2Agent site design, he was working on reactivating his real estate business after having spent several years focusing on his investment properties. Mike wanted his site design to encompass his use of "Amayzing" in various taglines, such as "Amayzing Homes" and "Amayzing Results". He also wanted a site that would be appropriate for his children to use if they decide to join his real estate business.
I worked up several design concepts to "pay off" his "Amayzing" taglines, including an Indiana Jones theme, a circus theme, and a fortuneteller theme. I especially had fun with the fortuneteller theme, so I was thrilled when Mike (as well as his family) chose it for his new site. I also created a new logo for Mike, as well as letterhead, envelope and business card designs.
Mike has done an exceptional job with both writing his own content for his site as well as working with my copywriters to create more content. Before we moved his domain from his old TopProducer site to his new Point2Agent site, he had been averaging about 2-3 visitors per day. Since launch of his new site in August, 2008, his traffic has climbed to 20-30 visitor per day. And thanks to some nicely optimized landing pages with custom content, Mike's site has achieved page 1 position in Google search results for a variety of keyphrases, such as "Lake Chesdin real estate" and "Petersburg VA historic homes" while attracting buyer interest for both these niches.
Originally I was concerned that the fortuneteller theme might be too much for Mike's conservative Virginia audience, but low home page bounce rates have eased those fears. Instead, Mike's "amayzing" new site seems to evoke lots of smiles and chuckles. And hey! In today's real estate market, any excuse for a smile will do, right? So, if you need a smile today, visit Mike's site at MikeMay.com.
A client has asked me if she should join the Real Estate Cyberspace Society, and I know nothing about it except that their web site makes my eyes hurt. What can you tell me about it?
This morning I learned from a real estate agent that Advanced Access people have been telling their customers not to switch to Point2 because Point2 sites can't be optimized for the search engines. Folks, don't believe this; it's total b.s.
If in doubt Google the following keyphrases and look for the Point2 sites listed:
Mobile AL real estate -- BarbaraReevesRealtor.com Phoenix homes for sale -- JoeJanus.com Daphne AL real estate -- BarbaraReevesRealtor.com and BarbaraSellsDaphne.com Amelia Island short sale -- KathySellsNassau.com real estate Utah -- RealEstateUtah.com and UtahsHomes.com Cabelas Trophy Properties -- OutdoorProperties.net
Also, if you're worried about a site losing its ranking when moved from AA to Point2, both Barbara Reeves' sites and Joe Janus's site are former AA sites that have been moved to Point2.
Last week I had an interesting conversation with a new client. He told me that he had originally planned to have another Point2 vendor design a custom Point2 Web site for him. His decision had been made primarily on the basis of cost: the other vendor's work is somewhat less expensive than mine.
Before finalizing his decision, he called several of my clients as well as several of the other person's clients to ask if their web sites had paid for themselves.
He learned that none of the other person's web site designs had paid for themselves with increased leads and that all of my clients except one felt that their site designs had paid for themselves.
(My one exception was a client with a new site that gets little traffic; I continue to work with this client daily in an effort to boost their search engine rankings as well as helping him learn to blog and getting him to blog here on ActiveRain, which immediately yielded two good leads.)
What this means is that people who hired the other person, whose rates are lower than mine, actually ended up with more costly web sites. And if they are missing out on a lot of leads, the true cost might be much higher than just the difference in cost for our services.
All web site designers are not created equal. There are thousands of people out there masquerading as web site designers who have absolutely NO training or experience in graphic design and marketing communications. As soon as the major graphic design programs, Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator, were ported to Windows in the mid-90s, the market was flooded with unqualified print designers, then the situation worsened when "WYSIWYG" Web site design programs came on the market. I sometimes wish that Web site designers had to be licensed just like real estate agents! Since we're not, do your research!
Look for a designer who actually has college level training in graphic design/marketing communications as well as experience working for advertising agencies and graphic design studios. Also make sure your designer has many years of experience designing web sites in addition to print design experience.
A site designed by a fully qualified graphic designer may cost you more initially, but as a long term investment, it may turn out to be a "freebie"!
As a Web site designer and Web marketing consultant, sometimes I feel as though my primary role is to nag, nag, nag and then nag some more. So I love to see that my clients are paying attention to and using my advice.
Recently one of my nagging themes has been about blogging often. I've been encouraging Amelia Island REALTOR® Jim Williams to blog on his and his wife's Point2 site. Their site itself is young and has been bouncing around in Google, everywhere from page 1 to page 7. Apparently this pattern is common now with new sites.
Needless to say, I am gratified that Jim has worked up the courage to take the blogging plunge. One of his first posts on their Point2 Amelia Island real estate blog was about Kathy getting her foreclosure specialist certification. Earlier today, I copied that article, edited it a little, and posted it in their Active Rain blog. And look at the results! I see that we need to tweak their title tag, but this is great for a newbie effort. Interestingly, their site also jumped from page 6-7 to page 3 for "Amelia Island real estate" today. I don't know whether than can be directly attributed to Jim's blogging, but I'm sure his efforts didn't hurt.
One of my favorite soap boxes to hop up on has to do with the importance of adding original content to your Point2 site. It seems like at least once a day, I'm on the phone with or emailing someone to recommend adding lots of original content to his or her site. I often direct people to Barbara Reeves and Joe Janus' sites as great models for site content.
Both Joe's and Barbara's sites contain an unusual amount of original content. Barbara has written most of hers herself, while Joe has a copywriter friend help with his site.
Great content helps engage site visitors so that they'll keep using your site and eventually contact you about buying or selling. It's especially helpful to people who are relocating to an unfamiliar area.
A second very important reason to add original content is that it helps attract the search engines. The more content you add, the more you are likely to attract the type of searches often referred to as "long tail" searches. These are searches on unexpected keyphrases, those keyphrases for which your site may not be optimized.
Joe's site was originally on Advanced Access. Last fall, I helped him move it to Point2. Since then, he has been religiously adding new pages, both about architectural styles common in the Phoenix area and about popular upscale Phoenix neighborhoods. Since November 2007, his number of unique daily visitors has almost doubled, reaching a respectable 105 average daily unique visitors.
Last May, people reached Joe's site by searching on over 1800 different keyphrases. Many of them were the type of keyphrase you might expect, such as "Phoenix homes for sale." But an amazing number of them were for totally unexpected words and phrases, some valuable, such as the names of prominent Phoenix builders and architects and of upscale neighborhoods such as Arcadia and CamelBack Canyon, and some of questionable or no value, such as "Spanish style TV trays."
But the nice thing about traffic, even if it doesn't bring buyers to a site, is that traffic breeds traffic. In other words, it makes a site appear more authoritative to the search engines and more likely to rank well.
Joe has graciously agreed to allow me to give you a "backstage view" of some of his Ultrastat search stats from last May. The image shown is a composite of Ultrastat search keyphrase info for around 1/4 of the keyphrases used to reach his site. Check out some of the ways people found his site; could you have predicted and optimized for some of these keyphrases?
Since Joe's site is focused on architecturally unique homes, much of his content might be inappropriate for your own site. But check out the number of people who come to his site via searches on neighborhoods like Camelback Canyon, Biltmore and Arcadia. Does this give you some ideas for improving traffic to your site by adding original content about your own market area?
All of you who are Point2 members are invited to join in on a coaching session this Thursday. We're doing something new for Point2, a roundtable style Q&A session that will include several of my clients who have great lead generating sites.
It's from 1 to 2 pm Eastern this Thursday, May 8. If you are interest in listening in, contact Tanya Spilchak at Point2: tspilchak@point2.com
This will be a great opportunity for you to interact with and learn from some REALTORs(R) who've done a great job using their Web sites to grow their businesses.
Please help me welcome new AR member Densay Sengsoulavong. Densay is office manager and a marketing expert with Realty Direct Wilmington (NC). I've had the pleasure of working with Densay to create a custom-designed Point2 Web site for their new luxury homes division, Signature Homes Wilmington. Densay either took or rounded up most of the photos on their site, making my job a lot more fun! He even went so far as to get to their first new luxury listing on a Saturday morning in time to catch a sunrise photo from the tower above the home -- that's giving it 110%!
Joe's site features an interactive menu that allows searches by the buyer's preferred architectural style. His architectural style content has garnered lots of "long tail" Google search visitors. It also has a custom-designed RSS feed on the home page as well as a custom-designed Point2 blog that give him a venue to call attention to architecturally unique homes that have come on the market.
My husband Dave, besides being a very talented graphic designer who specializes in album cover design, has another business, SDPickups, making hand-wound vintage style guitar pickups. Recently Dave has has posted demos of a couple of his products on YouTube. The latest is a jump blues style demo of his newest pickup, the Pig Ninety, played by his friend Vyasa Dodson of the Insomniacs out of Portland, OR. The Insomiacs just got a recording contract with Delta Grooves Music and start a West Coast tour next week. They were named Best New Act of 2006 by the Portland Blues Association. No one as young as Vyasa (Vee-Oss) should be so talented!!! Check it out!
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
;)
;)
