Hi Everyone,
I'm learning a lot about marketing properties on the internet through my husband's efforts to promote my web site. I have asked him to write most of this blog because he is my resident computer wiz. He has been working in the computer industry for almost 20 years.
Chris Writes:
If there is enough interest in my posts I'll be glad to continue contributing. Not knowing everyone's competency level on these topics I'm going to keep them very basic. I welcome any comments, I'll readily admit I don't know it all, but I'll always give it my best shot. Oh, and on another note, English Grammar was my worst subject throughout my entire schooling, I apologize in advance! :)
Did you realize that the NAR suggested that the number of people looking for real estate online surpassed those looking for it in news papers? NAR said this way back in the year 2003! Let's get with it folks that was four years ago! (see http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20030728_nar.htm)
Today almost all Realtors have web sites. How much new business is your web site generating? It should be generating as much or more than any other method of advertising you are paying for. But what is the point of having a web site if you can't get people to visit the site online? Not much! You can advertise it yourself and drive some traffic to it, but what about the millions of people going online every day browsing for products and services, how do you reach them? This is a somewhat controversial subject for all the tech heads out there but my experience has show me that to drive traffic to your site you need a site with content, page rank and link popularity.
Millions of people log on to the internet every day and I bet if you asked them what their ‘Favorite Search Engine' was, most of them would have a different answer. ‘Search what?' you ask. Search Engine. Get used to hearing term ‘Just Google it.' That is how I got this address for you to read about the term ‘Search Engine.' I went to http://www.google.com/, and in the search field I typed the phrase ‘Search Engine.' Try it sometime. The first thing that came up was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine.
Pretty cool huh!? Most of you should be REALLY bored with this concept and you're probably scratching your head. Believe me, there are some people out there still that have no idea what I'm talking about. Just last week this article was posted on yahoo's news site:
What ROCK has this guy been living under?
Right now there are thousands of search engines out there competing for you. That's right, you, they want you to come to their search engine ever time when you are looking for products or services. They are spending MILLIONS of dollars on advertising and marketing to make sure you do visit their sites. Some of the more well know sites are Google.com and Yahoo.com, but literally there are thousands of them.
If you want to drive more people to your web site you have to be visible on these search engines in order for people to be able to find your site on the internet. With Millions upon millions of documents and pages and web sites on the internet, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's where search engines come in. They catalog web sites by what is offered by each web site. In order for you to be found by someone searching for your product or service, you must be listed in the search engines catalog. Some sites will automatically find you, others will not. For some sites you'll need to submit your web site to their system so their engine can ‘SPIDER' your site. Another ‘Google it' phrase, try ‘Web Spider' it brings up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler.
Depending upon the search engine, it could take, days weeks or even months before you will see your site listed on the search engine. So be patient. Check often and submit your site to as many free search engines and directories as you can. Yes it's time consuming. But it's worth the effort.
Well I think I have bent your ear enough today, if you have any questions about this topic or need more information please just ask and I'll be glad to provide you with what ever answers I can. If you would like to see other topics, please email me cvetter@kiss-im-mee.com.
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