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How do I get my Real Estate Website Found?

By
Services for Real Estate Pros with Collabrestate, Symbiosis Marketing

You and every other real estate professional, wants their web site at the top of Google for a search for ‘real estate your-city’. Now let’s get realistic. There are only 10 top ten spots on Google – and everyone can’t be there. You can assume in most cities that the top few spots will be taken by the local board, large brokerages, and pooled sites.

So, how do you win? The internet, by its very name, is an interconnected net of links. Creating links, anywhere on the internet, that connect back to your site, and including your name, profession, and brokerage everywhere you create these links, will increase your overall internet ‘weight’, or internet presence. You may never get to the top ten of Google, but there are many, many other ways to get traffic.

Get your name, profession and location showing up connected, in as many places as possible on the internet! Use YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, MySpace, your personal website, your brokerage web site, and your blog … anywhere reputable you can put it.

Use all of these on a professional level. Link them all together, provide the information you want your potential clients to know about you on each one. Just this alone will increase your overall ‘weight’ on the internet.

Do you have a blog? Writing a short blog on a regular basis is a great way to increase your traffic. In your blog entries, use words you think users would use to search for you. Work these words througout the article as you write, The search engines will find these words - real estate, home, house, commercial, waterfront, cottage, your city, your name, your brokerage – and this will improve your ranking.

Buy Google Ad-words. This works really well if you have a particular niche market that you serve or would prefer to serve. If for instance you want to focus on a certain lake, a specific area of town, a specific type of buyer or seller etc. Find words you think users would enter to search for that type of property or realtor and sign up for a Google Ad words account. Google will provide you with an amount they will charge to have your site show up as one of the sponsored links above the search results. This is a great way of getting your name recognized.

Make sure your website provider is helping you get traffic. Some sites are designed in such a way that Google isn’t able to read the information required to index your site. And if Google can’t find you, no one can. Some sites are also designed in such a way that they load slowly on some machines and not at all on others. If possible, test your site on a number of computers with different internet set ups and different software and make sure it displays properly – even on dial up. Using the newest hottest thing is great, unless it prevents users from accessing your site.

Another way your provider can help drive traffic to your site is by pooling your listings with other agents in the area, to create a larger volume of listings for the user. A large pool of sort-able listings is a very big draw for the public. This is NOT the same as showing all the listings from your brokerage on your site. The public does not want to scroll through hundreds of listings running down your page; they want to be able to sort or search a larger source of listings to find what they are looking for. This is what Collabrestate offers their clients: Their own personal website, as well as extra traffic driven to their sites from the pooled site.

real estate internet marketing, marketing, real estate canada, real estate professionals, realtors, social marketing for real estate, internetAd these up, and you will create traffic to your site, and traffic = business.

Comments (3)

Karen Monsour
Coldwell Banker Fort Lauderdale Beach - Fort Lauderdale, FL
REALTOR, SSRS - Sells FL Waterfront, Short Sale Expert!

Sorry, I have nothing to add, however, thies is a very nice interesting and basic post for people who do not have any idea how to get started.  Thank you.

Dec 16, 2010 01:44 PM
Jan Wood
Collabrestate, Symbiosis Marketing - Peterborough, ON

I've been dealing with realtors and the internet for over 12 years, and most struggle with just getting started on-line. So I have a number of articles I'll be releasing that are designed to help those who know they need to improve their online presence - but just don't know where to start. If that sounds like you, check back! And thanks for the comment!

Dec 16, 2010 01:54 PM
Fred Cope
Reliant Realty in Nashville, TN - Nashville, TN
Looking For Homes With A Smile

Jan, thank you for your work here--I was searching for this sort of information. You write with clarity, and offer some very helpful information. 

Merry Christmas to you and family...

Dec 16, 2010 01:55 PM