In case you needed any more proof, Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service, reported last week that Google accounted for almost 64% of all US search engine queries for the month of August 2007.  While this is down a hair from July, Google outran its nearest competitor, Yahoo!, almost 3:1, with Yahoo! grabbing about 23% of the market. 

The next closest engines were MSN with just under 8% of the market and Ask.com with about 3-1/2%.

According to Hitwise, there are 48 other search engines out there, but their share of the market combined is less than 2%.

Real estate searches were not specifically referenced in the press release, but other major categories, including travel, entertainment and business/finance saw significant gains in their traffic from search engines and, specifically, from Google.

What does this mean for you and your advertising strategy?  Google is the happening place for search engine advertising.  Dominating marketshare will likely allow Google to be more expensive for sponsored advertising, but you'll get more exposure.  Exposure is good for long term branding purposes.  If you don't need thousands of website visitors to support your business, try comparing click prices, but for our money around here, we focus on Google.

To your unlimited online marketing success!

Anybody who tells you that it doesn't rain in Southern Calfornia was not with us up at Big Bear over Labor Day weekend!  What an adventure that was!  I grew up in the Northwest and I know a thing or two about rain, but it seems that I'm way out of practice.

I'm blessed with a group of distant cousins here in Southern California that "adopted" me a few years I moved down here.  Every Labor Day, without fail, this bunch meets up for the long Labor Day weekend for an adventure.  When I first joined in, the trips were tent camping and campfires.  As we get older and ok, softer, the trips tend more toward cushy cabins or luxury motorhomes.

This year we went the cushy cabin route.  As I was packing up my husband and daughter for the trip, LA was in the midst of a blazing heat wave of the national news-making variety.  I'm talking 90's at the beaches kind of hot.  I checked in with family up at Big Bear who went up a day earlier as was told to bring a jacket for my daughter because there had been some sprinkles.  Jacket, yeah right!

We got up there Saturday evening.  Sunday morning everybody was running around like maniacs deciding how to spend the day.  This is no small group.  We probably had 30 people in two cabins and a couple of motorhomes.  And this group does not sit still well.

As I said, everybody was running around trying to coordinate movies, hikes, zoo trips and stuff like that.  Having just started my "relaxing" weekend, I was somewhat overwhelmed.  Rain to the rescue!  It started coming down big time right after breakfast.  Not a big deal, but everybody stopped talking about the zoo.

Unfortunately for our golf contingent, they were already out swinging their clubs when the real fun began.  Yup, thunder and lightening.  I was thinking for the umpteenth time that it was a good thing I never took up golf.

Over at my cushy cabin, we ended up spending the afternoon laying around reading.  Now THAT is my idea of a relaxing holiday weekend.  A relaxing, drizzly lay around the house day.  For a little spice, the thunder and lightning kicked up again later in the afternoon.  Let's just say I know how to gauge the closeness of lightening by observing the timing of the lightening flash and the matching thunder and this stuff was close enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  In fact, we had one strike that sent up a little cloud of smoke on our street and caused the headlights on our car to stop working for 24 hours.  Yikes!  Never boring when I'm with this part of the family.

We came down the mountain on Monday in another cloudburst.  All in all, I felt like we traveled a good two states away when we got back to the continuing heatwave in LA on Monday afternoon.  Big Bear is only about 120 miles away, but worlds away in weather that weekend.  Now that is what I call a get away!

Breaking news in the world of search engine advertising -- it was announced late last week that the plaintiff in a four year old case against Google has agreed to drop its claim that Google abuses trademarks by allowing business rivals to buy ads that appear when consumers search for information on a particular business.

Under the practice, a search request by a consumer for a specific business, like American Airlines, triggers ads from competitors which appear in sponsored positions around the search results.  These ads appear because the rival companies include portions of the target business' name as keywords in their Adwords campaign.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., which sued Google over the practice, claimed that Google was using its trademarked name to send search engine visitors away from American Blind and to American Blind's competitors.

One leading tech commentator called the settlement a "stunning victory for Google."

Google has successfully defended its keyword policy several times in US courts, although the company has lost similar cases in Europe.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (an advocacy and legal group that works to protect digital rights), and other similar groups, have weighed in strongly in favor of allowing trademarks to trigger sponsored links, arguing that such ads are good for consumers.

What does this mean for you?  At the moment, it means you can use your competitors' trademarked terms (like their name) as part of your Adwords keywords.  Google clearly states its position in its trademark policy:  "Please note that we will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint." 

Of course, a recently filed case by American Airlines in the very conservative Texas courts might change this in the future, but as of today, trademarks are up for grabs in the world of search engine advertising keywords.  Tech commentators don't think American Airlines will fare (pardon the pun) any better than American Blind, but you never know.  A big negative for the plaintiffs that bring these suits is that they have usually engaged in the same practices that they complain about in their lawsuits.  One thing is for sure -- the American Airlines case was just filed last month in August and you can almost count on another four years before anything significant happens in that case.

A word of caution for Utah realtors - be aware that the practice of purchasing keywords on trademarks has been specifically outlawed by state law.  For everyone else, have at it!

There seems to be two distinct, diametrically opposed schools of thought out there among web developers about what agents should do with their listings information on their website.  In one corner is the group that advocates mandatory pre-registration before a visitor can see even a hint of listings information and, in the other corner, is the group that says, "hey, give it away because consumers will never register anyway."

I'm here on my soapbox to advocate for the Green Party.  OK, who could help dropping in a little political joke with all the politicos in the news right now, but I am perfectly serious when I tell you that there is another road less traveled in the online lead generation game.

As I've stated before, pre-registration is a turn off for consumers and a waste of your traffic generating efforts.  The big giveaway, on the other hand, is an utter waste of a unique opportunity to generate solid leads for your real estate business.

There is, I humbly submit, a middle ground.

A sophisticated IDX solutions allows you to "dance" with your visitors, keeping them on your site longer and ultimately getting a little contact information to start forging a stronger relationship.  These solutions let you give away a lot of great listings information, but they also let you trade a soft registration for extra value, like a place for the visitor to save his or her listings, the ability to get a listing's address, the opportunity to receive daily new listing updates by email, and so on. 

An IDX database is just that -- a database.  Databases can be manipulated in creative and enticing ways to serve information hungry website visitors and encourage registration with extras.  I talk about this more in What Has Your IDX Done For You Lately?

I absolutely agree with the giveaway crowd that an agent should be generous with information.  But I also believe that subtle lead capturing should be aggressively pursued wherever and whenever possible, as the fastest ticket to solid business growth.  Real estate agents have a unique online marketing opportunity because their stock in trade -- listings -- can be reduced to a manipulable database, and they should fully leverage this opportunity to grow their businesses.  Doctors, lawyers and other service professionals aren't so lucky.  Why would you waste this opportunity?

What do you think?  Join me on my soapbox for a better way?

Guestbooks have been around since the beginning of website time.  Originally they were used for visitors to volunteer that they visited a site.  I had one on my wedding website seven years ago.  Later, guestbooks morphed into a "lead capturing" tool by being placed over information with perceived value.  In real estate you often see these over listings information and occasionally still (perish the thought) over "free reports."

Why do you still see so many guestbooks in real estate?  For low tech website vendors, it's the best they can offer for lead generation and these vendors push them like crazy.  Don't be fooled by these illusory promises of new business.  As explained below, today's online real estate consumers won't fill out these forms.  But that's okay.  For realtors, another better solution is available.

Consumers Hate Registration Forms Masquerading As Guestbooks

Don't use a guestbook, even if it's cute!  They are a waste of time and bad for your brand for at least three reasons.  First, consumers are more sophisticated these days.  They know that listings information is freely available on the Internet.  If a consumer got to your site from a search engine, that consumer knows that he or she is only one back-click away from a hundred of your closest competitors and better, freer information.  If the consumer got to your website another way, they know how to find Google, if they are not getting the information they want or need from your site.

Second, guestbooks on top of listings information are the equivalent of meeting people at your office door and not letting them in until they sign your book.  Is how you conduct your offline business?  Of course not.  You need to demonstrate to your website visitors that you have something of value to them before you demand something valuable from the visitor (contact information).  The Internet is no place to brand yourself as a mememe taker.  You are a service professional.  Give a little service (like listings) before you demand anything from these visitors with whom you haven't even established a relationship.

Third, most guestbooks can be faked.  Do you really want to annoy your visitor (starting the relationship off on the wrong foot) and get fake information to boot?  Who wins there?  And don't tell me about services to verify the guestbook information before letting a visitor proceed.  Those are the epitomy of annoying for consumers.  You want me (as a consumer) to stop my search and go open my email application to retrieve some password or link?  No thank you.  I'm back clicking to the next real estate website.

A Guestbook Strategy Gone Terribly Wrong

I stumbled on an agent's website today where the agent employed not one, but two, registration forms.  I wasn't especially surprised to see one because her particular website vendor is notorious for pushing these worthless forms for "lead generation."  I clicked on "Find A Home" and proceeded to fake my way through the form.  What did I find on the other side?  Listings from another state!  Can you imagine being the Florida consumer who just gave up valuable contact information on this Florida branded website to get listings from two states away?  That would not be one happy camper.

This was bad enough, but for grins, I tried out her "Our Featured Listings" button and encountered the second registration form.  Wait a minute!  Why do I have to register again?  Didn't I just go through this exercise?  How annoying is that going to be to your prospective client?  And why, oh why, would anybody put a registration form over his or her own listings?  That limits exposure for your listing client.  And, if a consumer is interested in your listings, you're in the deal in any event.  Is this some lame attempt to grab both sides of the deal?  That probably isn't going to happen with this now totally annoyed consumer.

Now I don't want to hear from anybody who is going to defend their guestbook because they get a couple of leads from it.  Even if you have good, solid, relevant listings information behind your guestbook, you're still going to lose more and more visitors as consumers become increasingly sophisticated and either click off your site or fake their way through your form.  Jump off that sinking ship while there is still time.

What To Do Instead Of Ineffective Guestbooks

Fortunately for realtors, there is a better solution.  Your stock in trade (listings) is reducible to database format and you can leverage this database to do the marketing dance with online consumers.  You don't even have to create the database.  Your MLS has already done it with its NAR-mandated IDX program.  Show visitors listings.  Show them a lot of listings.  It shouldn't matter to you.  This is an automated process.

Only after you've provided value in the form of lots of listings, do you even start to think about asking for something in return, but guess what?  A good IDX solution can help you here, too.  Invite your visitor to save specific listings of interest on a private page, or register to get daily new listing updates by email or see the complete address of a listing.  All of these equate to extra value and consumers will be much more likely to give up legitimate contact information once you've already provided value and are dangling added value.  Daily new listing updates by email are a particularly strong incentive to give you a valid email address. 

This strategy requires a sophisticated IDX solution, but lucky for you these solutions are not expensive.  Yes, they cost slightly more than free, which is what your MLS might charge for their IDX solution, but how much are you willing to pay for legitimate leads that you can actually use to grow your business?  Sophisticated IDX solutions like the one described here will run agents about $40/month.  I don't know about you, but my Starbucks budget is twice that per month.  I'd give up a few lattes to grow my business.  How about you?

Do you know somebody that is still using a guestbook?  Be a swell** person and send them a link to this post!

To your unlimited online marketing success!

** Yes, I've been watching Mad Men on AMC and highly recommend it!

Calling all real estate agents using AOL, Comcast, Hotmail or something similar for email.

What are you thinking???

Not only is your email address part of your branding image, there can be serious technical implications for your business in choosing one of these providers for your email accounts.  Using these providers also means you might miss important opportunities to bring more people to your website.

Using Your Email Address To Support Branding 

Your email address can say that you're a serious business professional or it can label you as a hobbyist, novice or cheapskate.  Let's face facts.  Email is no longer new or novel.  It is a serious business tool.  There is no excuse for business professionals not knowing how to get themselves email accounts branded to their domain names.  Your consumers know this because they see branded email everywhere they look.  Is it any wonder that negative perceptions attach when a business professional uses any email address other than one attached to his, her or its domain name?

Branded Email Helps Drive Traffic To Your Website

Don't discount the opportunities you're missing to drive additional traffic to your website with branded email.  Branded email tells people exactly where to get more information about you, if they like something they've seen you write in an email or when somebody else has referred you and used your email address for the contact information.  If your email address is sold@bestagent.com, people know they can go to bestagent.com and get more information about you and your services.  If your email address is bestagent@hotmail.com, there is virtually no way anybody is going to go to hotmail.com and find one hint of information about you or your services.

Non-Branded Email Can Hurt Your Business In Other Ways

Have you ever read your Terms of Service for your AOL, Comcast or Hotmail account?  Those accounts are generally intended for personal, non-business use.  Maybe that doesn't sound like a distinction that matters to you, but consider this -- if you lose business from any of their service practices, they don't care and they are not contractually bound to care. 

Still don't think that matters for your business?  Think again.  These services are usually free or nominally priced.  To keep their hard costs down, these companies have to control the volume of mail that flows through their pipes.  How?  By setting extremely restrictive filters.  At first blush, you might think this is a great idea, but wait.  Do you really want Comcast deciding who you get mail from?  Their agenda is to send you as little mail as they can get away with.  Your agenda is to get every last email that has anything to do with your business.  You should be setting your own rules on what you discard without reading.  Don't unknowingly delegate this important task to an email provider with a diametrically opposed agenda.

Coming Over From The Dark Side

How do you get email branded to your domain name?  Talk to your website provider or domain name host.  They should be able to fix you up.  If not, move your name to somebody who can fix you up.  Just because you registered your domain name one place, doesn't mean that you're tied to that host for all eternity.  Unlike the old days with cell phone numbers, domain names are portable.  Take yours where you get the services you need.

If you absolutely cannot see yourself learning how to use Outlook or some other application for branded email, you might consider having your newly minted branded email forwarded to your existing unbranded email account.  This helps with the branding aspect on your other marketing materials, but does present additional issues to consider.  For one, when you reply to a forwarded message, your reply is coming from an account that the original sender may not recognize.  It's better to bite the bullet and learn how to use another email system. 

Think that the fact you've been using AOL for years and years on your marketing materials is a reason not to switch?  Forget it.  You're still being perceived as an electronic marketing novice by consumers and you're still allowing AOL to decide which mail messages you get.  You can keep your old account live for awhile to catch people who contact you there through old marketing materials, but you're going to be much further ahead by transitioning over to branded email.

As the nurse said to my five year old the other day while standing there with a big needle in her hand, "This will only sting for a minute."  Really, dump the free email service and come on over to the light.

Yesterday, we talked about the various sources of new business to grow your real estate business and the importance of marketing to search engine consumers.  Today, we look more in depth at two strategies for leveraging the search engines for generating new business.

Organic Ranking or Advertising -- One, The Other or Both??

Having defined your audience (just like with offline marketing), your next step is to define your strategy for reaching this audience.  There are two marketing strategies to pursue with the search engines - organic ranking and advertising.

If you look at the Google screenshot to the left, you'll see organic results for the query "ipod" down the middle of the screen under the blue box.  The blue box and the right-hand column represent the "sponsored links" or ads.  People also generically refer to these sponsored links as "pay-per-click" because the revenue model is based on advertisers paying for the ad only when consumers click on the ad. 

Incidentally, for you agents out there buying leads from third party lead generators, these companies get their leads to sell to you through search engine advertising.  You can do your own advertising for a fraction of the cost per lead that these companies charge you.

Everybody has an opinion on which strategy they think works best, but smart agents do both, and here are a couple of reasons why.

The Case For An Organic Strategy

There is a perception that coming up at the top of the organic results lends credibility to a site.  The perception definitely exists, but it is not necessarily grounded in fact.  A substandard company can have a superior web marketing consultant and be at the top of the results.  Longevity of a site, solid content and steady traffic are not reserved for only the good companies.  Consumers will start to realize this and discount the perception.

Because this strong perception still exists, however, you will want to work on improving your organic ranking, but the process can take time and money.  Why money, you ask?  Because the search engines want to see steady traffic on your site to increase your relevancy factor (i.e., your ranking).  In competitive markets you need lots of traffic to be at the top of the relevancy heap, and getting traffic to your site generally involves money.

The Case For An Advertising Strategy

Sponsored links, on the other hand, have strong upsides, too.  In my mind, they are almost more important than organic ranking for a couple of reasons.  First, a strongly worded ad can distract consumers from the organic results.  In the screenshot above, what consumer could resist a result at the top of the page that says "Official iPod Store" in blue?  Or what about the ad on the right that says ‘ipod - cheap prices?"  The consumer who typed this query is most certainly not researching the history of ipods.  He or she is more likely looking for a hot deal.  A cleverly worded or placed ad can make a consumer forget completely about the organic results.  It only takes one click and the consumer has left those results.

Another huge advantage to the ads is that a good consultant can write you ads that have variables in them that get matched to whatever a consumer is looking for.  Let's say for instance that you sell real estate in Mytown.  To work on your organic search engine optimization, you need to think up all possible combinations of words and phrases that your desired consumer would likely put into a search engine query and then get those words and phrases prominently sprinkled throughout your site, including your content, title tags, meta tags and the like.  Well, you can't think of everything, at least not think of everything and keep it organized and productive.  Your best search engine optimization strategy is to come up with a list of the most likely candidates and optimize with those words and phrases, and then hope that you can connect with most of the consumers.

But what if I told you that you could put up an ad that seemingly "reads the consumers mind?"  For instance, maybe you didn't optimize for "Mytown lofts under $500,000" because it's not a typical consumer query in your area.  With search engine optimization, you're playing the odds, but why lose the prospect who puts this phrase into a search engine if you offer related services?  With an ad, you don't have to think of every possible combination of words because you can use variables. 

This is a paraphrase of the process (because more technical people than me create the actual algorithms), but if you had an ad with variables that contained (city = Mytown) + (property type = lofts) + (price = under $500,000), your ad will appear when the consumer types in the query "Mytown lofts under $500,000," even if your site is not optimized for this phrase.  Your ad might also appear for the consumer who types in "TownNextDoor condos under $300,000" if your variables support it.

The point I want to make, is that you can reach a much broader, relevant market with ads than with straight search engine optimization for organic ranking.  And, the search engines can also put your ads in other relevant, online venues besides search engine query results screens.  For instance, if you send a Google mail message to your brother about homes for sale in his neighborhood, guess what appears next to the body of that email message?  An ad for a realtor offering homes for sale in that neighborhood.  While this starts to sound a little Orwellian, you can't argue with the broadened exposure that ads offer over straight search engine ranking.  And before you get up in arms over the fact that you may not know where your ad is going to appear, I believe that you can opt not to have your ads appear on the sites of the search engine's marketing partners.  Check out the options for yourself or ask your search engine consultant.

Long Story Short

So that, in something of a nutshell, is a description of your search engine marketing options.  My central point is that the search engines are where you should be focusing your marketing budget because this is where you can most easily connect with consumers who need you and your services now.  Two strategies exist for marketing in the search engines and both should be utilized for different reasons.  If search engine marketing is still greek, read this post again and find yourself a consultant.  You don't need to know all the details to effectively oversee a consultant.  You just need a big picture understanding.

Two last important notes about search engine advertising.  It does not have to be expensive and it can really help your organic ranking results.  There are some tricks to keeping your advertising costs down, but please know that if Google is quoting $5.00/click for a search term, there are ways to get that same term for $.50.  Regarding organic results, one measure of relevancy of a website in Google's mind is the level of traffic on a site.  Aggressive advertising can bring you significant traffic.  Significant traffic makes you appear relevant to consumers and search engines will start moving you up the ranks.

Tomorrow -- what to do now that your marketing machine is generating the leads faster than you know what to do with them.

Yesterday, we discussed the branding dance and I advocated that the primary brand for all agents should be that of a resource for information hungry consumers.  Not just any information, but the information that online real estate consumers really want -- listings information.  Today, it's getting those consumers to your website in the first place.

Where Do Your Prospects Come From?

It goes without saying that all the best lead capturing, incubation and conversion tools available are worthless if you don't have any traffic (i.e., prospective clients) on your website, but where do these visitors come from? 

Naturally your simple, clever, easy-to-remember domain name is prominently featured on all of your print materials, including your signage.  And of course this same domain name is referenced in your voicemail greeting as a place where callers can get immediate information about you and available listings.  You better be featured on your company's website, too.  These forms of marketing have all become de rigeur, but they don't represent the venue where your hottest leads will consistently come from.

Far and away, the the hottest, most qualified leads for you are consumers sitting in front of a search engine right this minute with a great need for your services.  Why is this?  It's simple.  A consumer doesn't sit down in front of Google and type in "homes for sale in mytown," unless he or she has is highly interested in homes for sale in Mytown.  Better yet, the consumer knows that once the query results come back, he or she is only a click away from getting the information desired. 

Print advertising, by contrast, requires the consumer to find his or her way back to a computer to get more information about you from your ad.  Simply put, the search engines represent a huge population of potential clients who have an immediate need and will get to you (ideally) with one click.  With the right tools on your website, that prospective client will stick around your site longer and return often.

So, how do you put your name and web address in front of search engine consumers looking for services like you offer?  It starts with you defining what your highest value, most qualified prospective client looks like, and then defining a search engine marketing campaign to attract this exact prospect to your site.  It's not rocket science, but none of us grew up with the search engines, and if you're like most of my clients, you'd rather focus on real estate than search engine marketing, a discipline that requires constant attention and training.  That's when a solid search engine marketing consultant can be invaluable. 

With or without a consultant, there are two important strategies to consider with search engine marketing -- organic ranking and advertising.  Tomorrow, we will talk about the pros and cons of both strategies.  Some of the pros and some of the cons for each strategy will likely surprise you.  And, while everybody has an opinion on which strategy they think works best, smart agents do both, and tomorrow we'll see why.

The Federal Reserve pumped $62 BILLION dollars into our financial system this week because the rate on bank-to-bank loans is significantly above the Fed's benchmark rate.  Do you know what this means?  If not, take a look at this excellent, short article I saw in the Los Angeles Times business section this morning called A primer on the Federal Reserve. 

Is this week's action significant?  As the article points out, the second infusion on Friday ($38 billion right after Thursday's $24 billion dollar infusion) was the Fed's biggest corrective move since its move right after 9/11.

If the Fed's actions make your eyes glaze over, I urge you to look at this article.  Our economy impacts world markets in significant ways and we as real estate professionals are sitting in the eye of the storm.  None of us can afford to not understand the basic mechanics of what is happening.