If you have kids, or are under the age of 20, you know what thae OMG acronym stands for.  For those of us who remember learning how to type on Electrolux typewriters, it may be foreign.  For me, I had to look it up.

Regardless, I had the same feeling when my friends over at the RedX (Real Estate Data Exchange) offered an additional 15% off the first three months of their already economical membership, along with continuing to waive the $149.00 start up fee.  Essentially, that offer brings the daily cost of their service to below that of a bottle of water.  Not too bad.

If you are interested, here is the URL that they gave me, or you can use promotion code 14610 if you are signing up over the phone.  http://www.theredx.com/signup/4mysalespromo.html

Anyway, that’s not really the reason that I am posting today.  I really wanted to share what I have learned over the past little while on the topic of search engine optimization and getting the internet to really work for you to warm up leads and get them closed. 

What I have learned is that online, if your goal is to get traffic and convert that traffic to listings, there are two features of the online world that you need to be aware of and balance.  These are breadth and depth and what I mean by these terms is as follows:

The bigger your web presence, the better your chances of target clients finding and landing on your website.  Those real estate agents that have depth to their site, or a lot of optimized pages with good content that can easily be found by searching terms that target clients commonly use; and those agents that have depth; i.e. a lot of different micro-sites dedicated to specific search terms have the greatest chance of attracting web traffic from targeted clients and closing more sales.

If you think of the web as a literal highway, then the more billboards you have up as people cruise by, the better your chances of getting their attention and making them a client.  Unfortunately, web advertising is expensive and in many cases too broad to meet the needs of your average REALTOR.  Search engine optimization however, is not nearly as expensive, and if done right, will give you a much more significant return on investment.

How this is done is simply by choosing the list of terms that your ideal client typically uses when searching for a home online.  Then create three dedicated pages on your website for each specific term.  Because the search engines place a high priority on sites that include the search term in the URL, you may want to consider creating micro-sites that have your targeted phrase in the web address.  (A micro-site is simply a small website designed to drive a specific action from the visitors.)  After you have created your search term-dedicated pages, or micro-sites, simply get links back to those pages from as many sources as possible.   Publishing articles is a great way to do this effectively.

Over time, add more content to improve the depth of your site as well as to expand the body of terms that attract search engine traffic. Monitor your web traffic, and if a specific term seems to attract viewers, post more content targeting that keyword to improve your depth and traffic from that term.

The process may be a fair amount of work when you get started, but after you have established your site or sites, you can just sit back and let the leads roll in.