Just the other day, I was reading an article by Bryan Eisenberg and that got me thinking about how to apply the same concepts to marketing a real estate agent. He wrote -

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In the technology universe, two companies dominated most of 2007's headlines and lined many pockets. Writes Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, 'This has been a good year for Apple believers -- the stock is up a whopping 138%. In comparison, Google, the other stock market darling is up a mere 54%."

How Does Apple Do It?

Simply put, Apple understands people. It knows that people make emotional decisions, then use intellect to justify those decisions. Dancing shadow people with iPods aren't an intellectual argument for buying an iPod, they're raw emotional appeal.

At the heart of every successful Apple product, you'll find a deep understanding of what moves people emotionally at many different levels.

It makes sense. When you want to sell things nobody really needs, you have to know what they want. Apple doesn't create desire; nobody can do that. What it does better than any modern company is pour fuel on our desire with a frothy mix of surprise and delight to get our attention, then provides a simple, meaty, unique, and consistent experience whenever we engage with it or its products. And, of course, it delivers on its brand promise: "It just works."

Unexpected Marketing

While Apple uses traditional means and media to promote itself, it also markets itself in unexpected places and ways. Steve Chazin, former marketing exec at Apple, reveals that those little white earbuds are not white by accident. In "MarketingApple," Chazin writes, "Those white iPod headphones were not designed by engineers -- they are a pure Apple marketing trick designed to make the visible part of their product a status symbol. Wear white headphones and you are a member of the club."

This goes beyond packaging and slapping a good-looking logo all over a product. This is finding an unexpected place or way to set yourself apart without interfering with the customer experience.

People Attract People

People are at the heart of Apple's marketing, not technology or features. The iPod commercials are a perfect example. The audience is first attracted to the people, not the device.

The iTunes music store is another example. While the iTunes store itself has some conversion and customer focus barriers, it rarely fails to persuade people to click in a little further, to listen to a few more samples. It's a reason other online music stores still struggle. Here, Apple takes advantage of reviews and other customer-generated content.

In the iTunes music store, you're bombarded with input from other people, not music or video marketing. The reviews are front and center when you look at an individual artist or album, but you're also sucked in by "Listeners Also Bought" and the user iMixes and Top Songs. You can view celebrity playlists, even Apple staff picks. In iTunes, you're simply and easily persuaded by others, not by marketers or flash or some social networking technology.

Delight the Customer Consistently

Everything from Apple is designed with intent. Even the product packaging makes the product feel that much more valuable. From neatly packed cords to velvet lining, each step of the unpack is delightful.

Compare that experience with one from Dell: a plain brown box, typical Styrofoam, plastic bags in all sorts of colors, and so on. The experience feels messy. How does that affect how you feel about the product inside the packaging?

Apple is consistent along every touch point, from a Steve Jobs presentation to the Web site to the product itself. The brand feels neatly organized and clean. In technology this is a delight. How many of us have wrestled with devices, have read clunky manuals, or are just sick of beige? The recently redesigned Apple site has the look, feel, and elements people will find in the operating system.

Love Is Blind

For now, Apple's brand strength is unmatched among its competitors. Because it pays attention to people's needs, people return that attention with money and emotional (sometimes illogical) devotion. This emotional brand connection helps the company overcome some of its problems. That emotion helps customers forgive Apple when it screws up and buy anyway.
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Apple's marketing lessons can be applied in your real estate marketing too! As we all know, buying a home or picking a real estate agent to market a property is an emotional decision first - followed up by intellectual justification. In other words, people "buy" you first, and then accept the real estate company you are with. But it is not just enough to know that when marketing yourself. Here's some ideas to help you focus on your real estate marketing -

1. Do you really have an understanding of what moves your real estate clients emotionally? If not, then perhaps it is time to really study basic sales techniques again - needed in all types of sales, not just real estate. All highly successful real estate agents have one thing in common - they understand what motivates their client and they use sound sales techniques to call for decisions. They know that selling a house is far more than just being a chauffeur, opening countless doors until the buyer tells you to stop, or that listing a property is much more than mechanically filling out listing agreements, ordering up a sign and putting a lockbox on the door. In each case, it is listing people! Meeting or exceeding their expectations. So find more ways you can tap into the emotions of your clients.

2. "People are at the heart of Apple's marketing, not technology or features." And guess what? This is so true even in real estate today! It is still a people business, meeting with and talking with your clients or prospects face to face - not merely using cell phones, fax machines and email, which are just the technology. Over-use of these tools can actually be a barrier to successfully interacting and touching the emotions of your clients. Technology can not replace connecting with people.

3. Can you find "unexpected ways" to set yourself apart from your real estate competition? You can brain-storm how you can give more or better service that goes beyond just the basic requirements that all buyers or sellers expect.

4. How are you "packaging" yourself and your services? Determine what can or does makes you and your service "unique". Know why a client should hire you as their agent and then take a look at how you can improve your marketing materials to make them all more emotionally appealing so your clients feel they are part of "your club". Even pay attention to how you dress for your presentations or meeting, as this is part of your packaging too. Do you dress like a multi-million dollar agent who is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or do you look like your wardrobe came from Wal-Mart?

Sell the "sizzle" which appeals to the emotions... not merely the "steak"! Or again, to borrow from Apple - "Think Different"

 

Everybody knows PCs are cheaper than Macs, right? Wrong! (At least sometimes). I ran across an interesting article from Computerworld that I thought I would share with everyone who tries to sort out the reality from fiction that Macs are much more expensive.

Scot Finnie's conclusions in his article -

Assuming that you want a high-end notebook PC designed to work, play and be your everyday machine with style, the MacBook Pro is a surprisingly good value. The models that I compared it with, the Sony (for $3,150) and the Dell (at a whopping $3,459), had some extras here and there, but they were also more expensive. The key to the perception that Macs are more expensive is that Apple offers very few in-between models.

Bottom line: When you configure low-end and midrange notebooks and desktops, you'll find that except at the very bottom of the heap, Windows machines are roughly comparable in price to Macs. There are fewer Mac models, so if your needs vary from what Apple has decided on, you may find a Windows model that costs less for you. But Apple's choices make a lot of sense for most people, and when you do the point-by-point comparison, Apple is actually a better value for some needs.

In light of some of the problems out there with some real estate template providers these days, I have read with interest where some people are talking about moving their web site. So I thought this needed to be clarified. If you are using a template web site from one of the providers like Advanced Access, Point2Agent, and many others, sorry, but there is really nothing for you to move! You certainly own the custom content you wrote and put up inside their template, but you don't really own the entire site itself. They own the "look and feel" and even the copyright articles that they provide for you to display. In essence, you are merely "renting" your web site. (And we all know why "owning" is better than "renting".)

So again, this is something for you to think about. If that template provider just stops serving your template site because of long lasting internal problems, or merely decides to go out of business one day, there is not much you can do. Oh, you may have some recourse because many agreements might require a 30 day cancellation notice by either party. But your template site is gone and your real estate cyber-office is now closed to the public. Yes, you may have back-ups of your custom content that you first typed up in MS Word or any photos you posted, but that is about all that you have. And all of those hours and days you spent customizing and tweaking your template site just went up in a puff of electrons. Ha!

So what is your back up plan? If your real estate broker unexpectedly closed the company tomorrow, most of you already know where you might transfer your real estate license to get back in business in a matter of days. But what do you do if your template web site disappears?

Once again, not to harp too much on the reasons to have a custom web site, this isn't really the case when you own your own site. Two advantages are -

1. Usually your custom web designer would be happy to provide any client with a .zip file of all of the static pages and graphics (IDX pages or property databases are usually provided by outside vendors, so those wouldn't be included, but the hyperlinks embedded in your web pages to point to those IDX sections of your site certainly would). You own the site... not the designer - or at least you should check the fine print in your Design Agreement to make sure that you do! Or you could capture the site yourself with very easy to use free software from time to time to your own hard disk for safe keeping.

2. It is relatively easy to change to a new hosting company to now display your entire custom site (with some minor tweaks that may have to be made by the new company or your web designer to make sure the forms on your web site work properly on their servers - an hour or two worth of work), So you can pick up your "web house" and move it virtually anytime you wish. You may be out of action for a day or two, but usually no longer than that.

Again, when it comes to Internet marketing and your web presence, the old saying, "Penny-wise and pound-foolish" sort of comes to mind. While using a template provider for your web marketing may seem inexpensive now, in the long run, is it really? What do you really own? So what is your plan to keep your "web office" open and operating?

Did you know that the search engines place a great deal of weight in the title of your web pages? After the URL of a site, the first information a search spider records is the title of the site. The keywords within your title will likely be chosen as the title of your listing on the search engines and the title also plays a huge role in the relevance of your site. The topic denoted within your title will be compared to the content within the body of the web page. If the topic and content match, you will have a much better chance of obtaining higher targeted placements. So lets take a look at this important web page element.

Did you know your title tag is being displayed for all to see? Where can you see it?

 

Example 1. Title Tag (circled in red above)

It's right there at the very top of every visitor's browser window, up above the Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop & Home buttons and where you type in a web address to go visit. In the screen shot above, the title is "Page 1". What the heck does "Page 1" tell any search engine about this web site? Nothing at all!

Take a moment right now to see what the title is at the very top of your browser window for this Blog post. Now that you know where to look, do you see it?

Now let's look below at a web page that utilizes the title tag properly when the page is displayed.

Example 2. Title Tag (circled in red above)

So where is this title, "Fairfax County Real Estate - Suburban Virginia - Real Estate in Northern Virginia and Fairfax County", actually coming from? Right there in the HTML code in the "head" section. Below is a screen shot of the source code of the home page of www.suburbanvirginia.com.

Example 3. Title Tag (circled in red above)

This title tag is targeted, concise, and tells the search spider exactly what it needs to know to properly index this web site. We'll see the results shortly.

Unfortunately, it is far too common to be dealing with template web sites that don't allow for page specific title tags. These lower quality templates end up using the same title tags on every page within the website; this is the kiss of death for search engine rankings. If you are serious about obtaining top rankings, you need to either pressure your template provider to allow title customization OR switch to an alternative, more search engine friendly template design. You are just wasting your marketing money with these.

Let's see how having a clear title tag is used in the search engine listing.

Example 4. Title Tag displayed in Google listing

The title tag is actually the very first thing displayed in any listing in the search engine results. Compare what is in the HTML source code in Example 3 with the Google display to see where the search engine is getting this.

Creating Clear Titles

Titles should be written using the strongest keyword targets as the foundation. For example, ActiveRain's primary keyword target phrase is "Real Estate Network". A glance at their home page shows that phrase is used right in the site title. Some titles are written using two or three basic two-keyword phrases. A key to writing a good title is to remember that human readers will see the title as the reference link on the search engine results page. But don't overload your title with keyword phrases. Concentrate on the strongest keywords that best describe the topic of the document content.

1. It should contain less than 80 characters.
2. Uses important keywords and phrases unique to each individual page.
3. Uniquely describes what the page or site is about.
4. Make it be consistent with page Description and web page Body.
5. The first few keywords of your Title tag are given the heaviest weight by the search engine, so it is important not to dedicate these first few words to your Company Name if your name is not what customers are searching for the most.
6. Move your Company Name to the end of your Title tag.

The result of using the title tag properly (along with other good SEO techniques) is that Jeanne Littlejohn's site today ranks #2 in Google out of 1,490,000 possible results! This site is also #7 in Yahoo! and #2 in MSN/Live. Oh, by the way, her site is also using a reciprocal Link Directory to help achieve these rankings too (for those who have dismissed link exchanging as being useless). ;-)

Feel free to contact me with any questions you have about this discussion. 

Since you are in a service industry, you already have a great asset to help you understand how best to create a Home page (and, for that matter, the rest of your site) - yourself or other salespeople in your own real estate office. More than anyone else, salespeople interact daily with customers and understand what information is relevant and interesting to the types of clients you're courting.

Your Web site contains a lot of glossy sales information. It's more akin to the traditional sales pamphlet. It's like a book, and the Home page is the introduction and table of contents.

 

 

How is a book put together? The author doesn't throw every page on the floor in a pile and say "read whichever page you want." What a mess! Yet, some of you do just that in the organization (or lack of organization) of your web sites. There's order, storytelling, and narrative. Similarly, a Home page and a site need to tell various stories and explain your services in ways that make sense to your audience. Since, as real estate agents, you have multiple audiences (verticals), create micro areas that tell the right story, in the right order, for each audience - both buyers and sellers. The story omits unimportant details and highlights the important ones for that audience.

Salespeople do this every day. For example, some of you have a PowerPoint presentation (and some might remember "flip charts") aimed at home sellers or prospective buyers. If they're good, each presentation tells a specific story about what you and your real estate company do in an order that makes sense for that audience, with relevant details and even examples. It leaves out details that are unimportant to that targeted audience.

A good salesperson is a good storyteller. Your job is to tell your story to a prospect in a way that makes the prospect understand, in his own language, how you understand him, his needs, and his problems. And, of course, why you have the solutions.

Your Web site needs to do the same, and your Home page is the gateway for this. If your site is really like a salesperson, then many of the ones I've seen are a lousy one. If a salesperson went into a meeting armed with only your Web site and said to the prospect, "Click something," how far do you think the meeting would go?

Here's your homework:

1. Talk to your favorite buddy in your real estate office.
2. Ask him or her to try to give you a presentation for a buyer or seller client using only your Web site as a visual aid instead of that PowerPoint presentation or flip chart.
3. Make notes about the order in which the story is told and which pages on your site are used as a visual aid.
4. If the salesperson says, "There isn't really a good place on your site that shows...", note that, and create the page in question.

At the end of this exercise, you'll know whether your Web site actually has enough of the right content to be a good sales tool. You'll also have an idea of the narrative structure you need to use to introduce yourself to real estate buyers and sellers.

The next step is to create a navigation menu section, (take a look at "What's On The Menu?"), that puts all those pages in the correct order and ensures the major story points (the main things the other salesperson said) are clear and readable amid the rest of your content.

What About the Home Page?

Though I set out to address just the Home page, I ended up talking about what makes a real estate web site really work! This is important because a Home page can only direct traffic to site areas. Once the site areas discussed above are built or re-written, the Home page has a relatively easy job.

The Home page should:

• Provide a simple overview of you and your company
• Give them a brief description of the georgraphical areas or real estate markets you serve
• Let users self-select their category, and direct them to the customer-specific site areas that match
• Provide clear navigation that offers links to homes for sale, helping buyers, helping sellers, and other resources that you offer

If you are using a template, don't just use the canned text that comes on each of their pages! Re-write the content ... don't just use the generic text they provided. Most of these template providers may be good computer techies, but many of them have never sold a paper bag in their lives - much less a house! As the author of your Web "book", tell your story. No one can sell you better than you!

I know this is going to step on some toes, but it is amazing to me that when real estate agents are setting up their web sites in a template, they insist on putting in every menu item conceivable including "the kitchen sink", somehow thinking that "more is better". Oh, I understand template providers (like Advanced Access, Point2Agent, etc.) come up with every kind of content they can think of to offer their template subscribers. They do this so that their clients have a vast array of choices to consider selecting to fill in the web site pages without the agent having to do anything but "pick this and select that". But it reminds me of going to a cafeteria (which I use to love going to as a kid). I could put 4 different desserts on my tray (if my parents weren't looking) because there were so many to pick from. "I'll have one of those mortgage calculators, please." "Oh, the 7 Buying Tips look lovely! I'll have one of those too." Ha!

These template providers don't necessarily seem to advise their real estate clients to stick to the KISS principle. So these agent sites all end up with outrageous menus with 25 to 50 (yes... I have seen 50) buttons going down the left hand menu (some requiring a scrolling page of their own since they are so long) together with the cookie-cutter template content. For example, go to www.dchomes.com (I hope Andy doesn't think I am picking on him). Only 10 navigation links on the Home page. Not so bad. But once you click an item and go inside, the visitor is faced with a daunting 39 menu choices. Wow!

Does having all of those really work or does it merely confuse your visitors? Since many of you are playing "web designer", think about this -

Digital Web Magazine in Sept. 2004 wrote about Cognitive load and the rule of seven (or how many is too many)

Published in psychology journals in 1956, the rule of "7 plus or minus 2" states that people can easily process between five and nine pieces of information at a time. Think about the magical number 7. What about the 7 wonders of the world, the 7 seas, the 7 deadly sins, the 7 daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the 7 ages of man, the 7 levels of hell, the 7 primary colors, the 7 notes of the musical scale, and the 7 days of the week? And probably some of you real estate agents were taught to never show more than 7 homes at one time to your buyers.

A counter to this is made by James Kalbach in his article, The Myth of "Seven, Plus or Minus 2, where he writes, "Generally, the key to navigation design is a balance between breadth and depth with a clear presentation of navigation. Don't avoid broader structures to arbitrarily conform to the 7±2 guideline or to accommodate a pure design aesthetic. But also don't confuse users with information overload: Present only what is truly necessary for your primary target groups in the most understandable fashion within an attractive design."

So when creating your navigation, think about limiting the number of choices to between 5 and 9. It's not always possible, but it can help to have a reasonable number of choices at each level in your navigation. You'll have to carefully balance putting a limited set of choices with making too many levels and depth to your site.

Do you really need that "Testimonials" page? Most visitors don't really believe them anyway... since you are never going to put up the bad ones. ;-)

"I would never use him again. He almost financially ruined us at the closing!"
Bob and Mary

"He listed our house and gave us lousy service. We never got it sold! We wouldn't recommend him to anyone."
Tom and Sally

If you are going to show testimonials, maybe it is better to sprinkle them in on more appropriate pages like your "Helping Buyers" page or "Helping Sellers" page where they will have a greater impact. And on those pages, you can tell them more about yourself and how you can help them to buy their next home or sell their present house - which is really what the consumer is more concerned with anyway, rather than "I have been a Gazillion Dollar Producer for the past 15 years...". They only really care about what you can do for them tomorrow, not what you did yesterday. See, we have eliminated the "About Me" page and button as well as the "Testimonials" page and button already. 2 down, more to go!

You really don't need all of that extraneous content like "Lenders", "Mortgage Calculator", etc. to make a favorable impression on your visitor. Probably 97 out of 100 visitors are just going to go to "Properties" or "Search MLS" to surf through homes for sale. A succesful real estate web site isn't about just having tons of content requiring a vast array of buttons. You don't need to offer 5 main entrees, 4 types of rolls and 6 dessert choices. It is about having well-optimized content... and that is a completely different topic for another post.

When building your site or updating it, see how you can slim down the navigation menu to more managable choices for your visitors. They will find your site easy to use and far more useful. This usually translates into more inquiries for you.

One of my favorite spoof web sites is the "3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference" by a gifted humorist and blogger, John Walkenbach, www.j-walkblog.com. (All of us have received those junk emails, so I hope you'll click on the image below and get a good laugh today by reading through this 2 page site.)

3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

One of the break-out sessions at this "pretend" conference is titled -

Practical Discussion:
Mallam Mahmud Abacah answers the question, "Are 10 million emails a day too many?"

The same can be asked, "Are having dozens of domain names for your web site too many?" Absolutely! You only need 1 great one! Not 5, not 10, not 20, or even more. This is a very common misconception by real estate agents that "more is better" - "the more domain names I have pointing to my site, the better all of this will work." This is counter to making a web site search engine friendly. The agent with the most domain names doesn't win! It's the agent who gets their site found who can win. Let's try to understand why buying all of these domain names can just be a waste of your time and money.

Take a look at the image below to understand how the search engines display a site in the search results.

Here is a screen shot from Yahoo! showing the top results from a search for "dana point real estate" in California. Notice the 3 key elements the search engine is displaying. The hyperlink in blue is coming from the "Title" tag in the head of the HTML document. Then the listing's descriptive statement is primarily made up of the "description tag" or the actual text content from the page. Lastly in green, we see the domain name of the web site itself. So the domain name is the least important key for the search results and actually has little to do with it at all.

Does it matter if you use a geographical name in the domain name? Not really. Look above - www.jillmcgovern.com doesn't contain "Dana Point" and neither does www.realatrends.com. Yet both of them are in the Top 3.

From Ross Dunn, CEO of Step Forth Placement in August, 2006 - http://news.stepforth.com/2006-news/Ross-Dunn-Answers-SEO-Questions.shtml

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1. Question: Does a domain name play a part in SEO?
From: anonymous

Ross: Yes it can help but only marginally. If your domain name includes the primary keyphrase that you want rankings for it will help boost the perceived relevance of your website. I generally consider keywords in a domain to be a 1-5% advantage in the rankings war. The simple fact is that before keyword domains really help rankings your site must be well optimized. Theoretically if you were head to head with your competitor and both sites were equal in optimization and online popularity but only site #2 had keywords in their domain they would get a better ranking.

In short, domains play a role in rankings under only the most competitive of terms where every percentage of advantage is a welcome edge.
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You also need to be aware that the top search engines keep threatening to start banning web sites that have multiple domain names pointing to them. They haven't done it yet, but it could happen at any time.

Straight from Google's Webmaster Guidelines -

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site...

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

From Yahoo's Guidelines -

Yahoo! strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant web content in response to a search query.

What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of content that Yahoo! does not want include:

- Multiple sites offering the same content (note: just another way of saying multiple domains bringing up the same site)

Why do these search engines say this? Because search engines are there to help the visitor - not you, the site owner - (and of course to sell pay per click ads). They feel the consumer is being "faked out" if they keep seeing listings in the search results, but when they are clicked, these keep bringing up the exact same site, just showing up under a different domain name. Search engines feel this is skewing the results to the detriment of their visitor. And if the visitor keeps seeing the same site again and again, just under different domain names, the visitor might think that this search engine's rankings are all screwy and leave to go elsewhere. Thus, this search engine looses ad revenue due to a loss of visitors. So Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live are not necessarily trying to be the "Domain Police" - they are just looking after their own interests of providing a positive experience to their visitors so they can sell more advertising.

Get 1 great .com domain name - one that is easy to spell, easy to remember, and doesn't contain dashes ("-"). Spend your marketing budget on getting your web site found by visitors - not on buying a bunch of domain names. Getting found and capturing visitors to your business is what is really important... not how many domain names you own.

If you need more help, just email me and I'll be happy share other SEO ideas with you.

Does the ending of your domain name (.com, .net, .biz, etc.) make a difference to your visitors? It sure can!

Recently, Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media decided to setup a survey at SurveyMonkey trying to gauge people's feelings and impressions on the top-level domains such as .com, .net., .biz and so on. While this survey was informal, it was interesting to see how people responded.

Question 1: Imagine you visit a new site. Please rank the following top-level domains on the overall impression they give you of the site and company. (One answer per domain, please.)

"There weren't any surprises in the answers. Like a diagonal line through a chart, respondents ordered the domains as .com, .org, .net, .biz, .info and .name. The .com had the best ranking, with .name having the worst ranking." Rick reported.

Question 2: For each top-level domain name, please enter your initial thoughts on what they represent.

Rick went on to say, "This was an open-ended question, so I'll just share some of the results with you."

.com

• business
• established/well-established
• standard
• official
• commercial

.org

• charity
• non-profit organization
• trustworthy, non profit
• not a business (interesting)
• government (?!?)

.net

• internet related
• a business
• tech
• 2nd rate site
• second choice/first was taken

.biz

• business
• business selling online
• rip off
• not familiar with web at all. amateur (ouch!)
• couldn't get .com
• something new/entrepreneurial

.info

• info business/info/informational
• garbage
• last resort
• people actually buy these?

.name

• personal
• loosers
• if own name, classy
• non-business
• amateurish
• never heard it/never seen it

We all have had it pounded into our memory banks to go to "a site dot COM" for well over a decade now! "Visit us at Microsoft.com... Apple.com... MSNBC.com... CNN.com!", etc. So by habit now, we almost always type in someone's domain name and then type - .com - when trying to go right to that site.

By the way, humans don't think in hypens or dashes, "-", either when you verbally tell someone your web site address. If they loose your business card or your brochure, will they remember to include the hypens or dashes when typing your domain name? Not very likely. "Oh, just go to www dot houston, dash texas, dash real, dash estate, dot com." Ha! So stay away from those too.

With many great .com domain names still available, you just don't have to resort to ".net", ".biz" or ".info" yet, or domain names with dashes. By being a little creative and taking a few extra minutes of searching, you can find a perfectly wonderful .com domain name that is easy to remember and will work to get your web site easily found!

If you need any help, just email me and I'll be happy to brainstorm a good name with you.

Good search engine optimization techniques to achieve "organic" or "natural" rankings (being listed in the search engines because the they like your web site - not because you are using "pay-per-click" ads) are really not hard to understand. Yet they can be time consuming to accomplish. And they can be much more difficult to achieve in a template website vs. custom, depending on how much control the site owner has in putting these techniques inside the template itself. Some templates allow considerable customization, while others only offer the minimum ability to add these necessary techniques in order to achieve great search engine positioning.

In helping to get many of my real estate clients into top positions for Google, Yahoo and MSN, here is what I've found that you'll need to achieve top results -

1. Have well targeted and unique titles - the <title> tag - there is one for each and every page of your site. If you look at the graphic above in the Organic results section, the most promenient hyperlinked text in each listed web site in the search results (for example, "Alexandria Homes for Sale Real Estate in Alexandria Virginia") is really coming directly from the Title tag in the head of that web page's HTML code. This is also being displayed in your own web browser window up above your back and foward buttons and where you would type in the web address of a site that you want to go to. In my browser window right now in that area above my buttons, it says "Real Estate Blog - Is your web site being found?" - obviously the Title tag of this page when I finish writing this post.

2. Description tags - the <meta name="description"> tag - should be concise and to the point, used mostly to determine the topic of the page. The content of the description tag is used by search spiders to determine the topic and context of words and phrases found within the text of the site. It is also often used to phrase the short paragraph that appears under links from search engine listings - ( for example, "Find the Alexandria Virginia homes for sale that you are looking for...:).

3. Body text - One of the most important aspects of the site in relation to SEO is your body text. Search engine spiders thrive on text (they don't see your pretty graphics or your Flash intro at all), and it is important to have keyword rich, relevant text, as close to the top of the page as possible. A strong focus on primary and secondary target keyword phrases is essential in the text of the site.

4. Heading tags - <h1>, <h2>, etc, are important for increasing the strength and focus of particular keywords. Try to include instances of keywords within heading tags, but don’t over do it. I suggest a maximum of one instance of any given keyword phrase in a specific heading tag. For example, you should have only one instance of “(My Town) Real Estate” in an <h1> tag, but you may use this text again in other <h2> or <h3> tags. You should not have more than one occurrence of a heading one <h1> tag on any given page.

5. Alt tags - Placing keywords in "alt" tags is also important. Alt tags, used to describe what your graphic is, “create” the text that appears when a mouse is dragged over an image.

6. Backlinks - Relevant incoming backlinks are essential for top rankings, especially when it comes to Google. Although they do not place as much attention on links as Google, Yahoo and MSN rankings will improve with increased numbers of quality backlinks too.

By incorporating these basic techniques into your web site, you will achieve better "organic" search engine rankings to bring in more visitors to your site. Being found can generate thousands of dollars in real estate brokerage fees for you. With millions of web sites screaming, "Look at me!", it is important to be found if you really want to increase your business from the Web.

Win Singleton, CRB, e-Pro
Summit Web Design
703-536-7631
www.summitweb.com

This is a frequent question asked by many REALTORS today. There are so many choices out there, but how many of them are really going to bring you results?

Recently, I read, "...Template sites could be created in less than a week, but all looked the same. Custom sites were expensive and took a long time to build, but looked great and functioned extremely well. Today, the gap between the two is shrinking."

This is a common web marketing misconception about a custom site vs. template and the time it takes to build one. Custom sites can also be built very quickly - the amount of time is really a function of the designer the client chooses and his/her skill level. Having built over 125 custom sites for real estate clients over the past 10 years, we have had web sites up for new clients in as little as 7 to 10 days - with all the content they needed and with a custom "look and feel" that would impress any visitor. To build a wonderful custom real estate website usually takes us about 30 to 40+ hours of work, but like real estate agents, working at web design is not necessarily a 9 to 5 job.

Now as to expense, certainly there can be a difference! As a novice web designer, you can take well over 30 to 40 hours (or a lot more) of your time "customizing" an inexpensive template to now truly display you, your services and all the benefits you offer your real estate prospects... OR you can hire a web design professional who in the same number of hours or less can build you a custom site you will be proud to show to any of your clients... while you do what you do best - list and sell homes!

All of us are proponents of using a real estate professional when buying or selling real estate, aren't we? Frankly, I don't understand why fellow REALTORS don't apply this same concept to other professionals rather than trying to do it themselves. Agents and brokers instead insist on trying to be "instant" web designers and search engine optimization specialists. "Oh, I don't need a web designer. I can do this myself! I can get a template for under $100 and get started." Gee, isn't that the exact same thing the For Sale By Owner says to us? "Oh, I don't need a real estate agent. I can sell my house myself. I got this For Sale sign at the hardware store for just a few dollars, I can place an ad in the newspaper, and I certainly know how to show my own house." Ha! And just like many FSBO's who fail at achieving the results they hoped for, countless agents who thought they could customize a template by themselves in their spare time and then get it found on the Web will have their web sites fail too.

"Before making a decision, here are a few things to consider. First of all, remember that content is king."

Again, this needs to be "qualified". Certainly you want text content that is not only appealing to the human visitor to read, but is also viewed by the search engines to use for indexing your web site so that it begins to achieve search engine rankings as well. But having a ton of content really doesn't get the job done. Internet surfers have a different sense of "time". They want their information quickly and they tend to just scan through the text. So it is better to give them the "30 second sound bite" than to give them a major "term paper" on how to buy or sell a house and why they should use you. On the Web, shorter can sometimes be better!

But more importantly, you want well-optimized content. What does "well-optimized" mean? This is content that is relevant to the geographical real estate marketplace you are working in as well as to the consumers you are trying to capture. And the content needs to be laden with keyword search phrases that the search engines will pick up on and index when ranking your web site. This not only includes the text on the pages that humans read, but also the Title tags, Meta Tag Descriptions, Alt tags of graphics, etc. in the HTML coding of each page of the site. Unfortunately, many template providers just don't give you that capability. And even with those that do allow this, your success is going to be in direct proportion to your ability to understand these concepts and incorporate them into your web site.

So think about these issues when trying to decide whether a template or custom web site is right for you. Web marketing can be one of the least expensive forms of marketing a real estate agent can ever do. Where can you market yourself to the World for so little money?? Your very next client may be contacting you from Europe or Asia... not just down the street or around the corner.

Regards,

Win Singleton, CRB, e-Pro
Summit Web Design