Sending Out Our *SOS*- Website Decisions We Need Your Advice With

Karen Ann Martin~ Fall River MA Real Estate Services

Thank you Karen- I am glad the expired package posts were of use to you. Yes, I must say I like the email service our MLS site provides.  I am leaning towards Rita's suggestion of making WorkPress a blog/site. But then I am thinking of setting the MLS site up anyways since when we send buyers the properties they click their email and see their props in our MLS site. I might as well fix it up and dress it up a bit so if they look around the site after they look at the props it looks like we know what we are doing! Thank you for your input and help. Katerina 

Jeff- I am going to email you today.

We were very successful before we even had a web presence. In fact our best years were all offline with no internet presence. The website has given us something to bring people to in our expired packages that we send out and I believe some people have listed with us because they see we have a website. But you will be very surprised in our area there are a lot of people who don't care about the internet, don't use email, etc. As high of a income as this area is that has always surprised me. They are not impressed with Realtor.com, etc. It is our driving people to the website not them finding us first. That is what I would like to switch around. We have always been heavy listers with or without websites. We also have lots of land parcels we represent through commission agreements that are not on the MLS because the landowners do not want everyone to know they will sell. When the market was hot, we put together some huge land deals for Pulte and Centex. But those days are gone for right now. We have between 20 - 40 listings and mostly in high end markets. The website, the internet have had nothing to do with this. But now I want to take it to the next level. 

I agree with you about having your own website. I was intimidated in Feb when we decided to go back online to do it myself. So I went with a system. I have been disappointed and should have trusted myself more. It is what it is right now.  I don't want to dump the site until I have the google position of another one. I have come to learn as well through my study on SEO that the Craig Proctor sites are not that spider friendly. Their system is driven by the agents directing traffic to the site. I want organic traffic.

I am leaning towards doing the wordpress blog and make it look like a website. I have the tools just have not implemented them yet. I did not want to start with another 6 month wait for google to index me.  Katerina

Fred Carver for Victoria Real Estate

Fred- thank you for the information. I have not decided what to do as of yet. And whatever that is will have to wait til I am caught up putting our listing on our current website, active rain and my other blog. Read my blog posts about expireds if you have not yet. Katerina 

Summit County, Colorado Realtor l Joanne Hanson

Thank you so much. This is really the way that I am leaning to go especially for the market I am in. I own lots of domain names that I could use that have been parked since the first of the year. I can do a lot of the design myself except the theme. I will need to get someone to do that for me. For all the plug ins and such, Hostgator is really good at helping and you can call them 24/7. Thank you for all your help.

I am still going to do my MLS site for the buyer reports. It is a great service that they love. Katerina 

Karen Ann Martin~ Fall River MA Real Estate Services

I am so happy that you got a call from your expired package. Keep it up because it works. The key is consistency. We mail out every day except Sundays.

Thank you for your feedback. I do not get the warm fuzzy feeling either. I have tried so many different formats that they have. You are stuck with what they have and there is not any customization offered. Thus the downfall. I can not just let it go because we are #4 for our search term and show up for many other terms.

I am thinking about doing the wordpress blog/site. Thank you for the tip on the tags. I know about not putting the comma. I have not used the broader terms as they are so competitive I was not sure if that would be a waste. But I will try it now and see what happens. We get great google juice from Active Rain. We beat out all the top dogs in our market for longtail terms.

I like the idea to have the MLS site for the buyers because it makes them feel special that they can click and get their own report. I like the look and feel of that for the buyers.

I will need to have another site that takes the place of the Craig Proctor site with the same placement and then I can cancel the site. It is expensive in my opinion. We get so many visitors but few leads. And they like to go to see our listings. So I can put IDX and listings on any site that I make. Thank you for your help.  

Lee Adkins RE/MAX Greater Atlanta - Roswell, GA

Thank you Lee. I know about pay per click but again that is driving traffic to your site and I want organic traffic. People pay way too much for real estate related keywords in pay per click. I am just not interested in doing that at this time. 

I do not have them sign in to search for listings, maybe I should have them do that. But then again, can't they just go to someone else's site and search MLS without leaving their contact info?  

Lee Adkins RE/MAX Greater Atlanta - Roswell, GA

Actually in our market very few people use the internet to find an agent. It is all in who you know, referrals. We have tried to use an online site to put our monthly updated for our sellers but they don't go online much at all. Some don't even check email and some believe it or not, don' t use email. We get all our listings through word of mouth and expired listing packages. We built up a name for ourselves here over the years and most people of any stature have heard of us or read about us in the news and press releases or on the radio. I am big into building a presence. I owned several small businesses and took them all to the top of their perspective markets through building notoriety. People believe what they read. 

Now we are teaching our sellers about the internet and they are impressed. But do they go and see all what we have done for them online? NOPE! They just want us to be their friends and that is what we do. In the high end markets it is like that if the people are truly wealthy and not wannabes. If they are jerks we don't take the listing.  

Organic traffic means to me that someone searches a key word and google puts you there in front of them. YOu do not have to pay to be there. We are first for all our key words now because of Active Rain. My blog posts are higher on page one than people's websites who pay big money to be there.  We have gotten a few good leads that are turning into sales through Active Rain and got a couple of referrals and given out a referral for a loan.

You are right about the privacy policy being obvious. I have other online business and I get lots of leads for and lots of people opting in giving me their contact info. I know how good those sites look and that is what I want for my real estate site. Of course for right now I can not dump Craig's site because of the placement and I need to make sure I have the same placement with the new site I build.

Thanks for your help and input. 

Margaret Woda, Maryland REALTOR

Well, I guess sometimes by asking your questions you already know the answer but you do not know you know until you ask. Make sense? I know what I need to do. Thanks. 

Lee,Thanks again. You have some great advise for Faina. As far a PPC she could choose longtail terms that are very focused. I would stay away from foreclosures and deals because it brings tire kickers and lots of energy is being spent weeding out the junk leads from the good leads. I just am not in a position timewise to deal with PPC right now. I have read all of Perry Marshall's books on the subject and when I do get into PPC I am going to do it the right way and follow his advise.

Faina- Lee does have a suggestion for you in your market. It took us 5 years in this market to work into the luxury home market. Now that is our niche. But it was not always that way.

Lee- I would rather have 30 - 40 listings in the high end markets where the economy does not effect that market that much as it does in the lower brackets. I would also rather one or two closings for $30,000 to $50,000 each then a whole bunch of work for $12,000 checks. But that is because over 25 years in the business I have earned this place through working it. I also have really built up our presence in the market, we are to the point like the EF Hutton commercial, "When Nestor and Katerina Speak, Seller Listen."  SO it works for us.

Faina- for you, you need to build up your presence in the marketplace. You read my expired package posts and you need to work your expired market. You are so right, that the high end people are just not into looking on the internet for real estate. All of our clients including big developers depend on us to bring them the info. They don't want to search online for it.

Melissa Wagner

Melissa- Thanks. I almost got a Close Realty site but it is a template site and I was afraid from an SEO point that spiders may view those sites as duplicate content. That happened to a bunch of Advanced Access sites. That is great if you are getting leads. How good are the leads you are getting? Any chance they will turn into sales?