If you are an agent that is trying to get more traffic to your website you most likely are working hard to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and/or you are working with Adwords or Overture pay-per-click campaigns.
Having been in this business for over 7 years now I have a fairly lengthy perspective on the challenges of getting more web traffic. Let's look first at SEO. Let's rewind five years and look at what was happening then. The number of real estate websites was 1/8 the number that are out there today. There were few people in real estate who understood what optimizing for a search engine even meant. If you were you were in the top 1% of real estate professionals. Therefore you had very little competition and the competition you did have was most likely another tech savvy agent. The number of indexed pages for the keywords you were targeting were likely in the thousands - still challenging but doable. With some effort you probably were able to achieve the results you were trying for.
Now let's fast forward. Today for a search term like Denver Real Estate the number of indexed pages is over 3 million. Two of the top ten? Realtor.com and Yahoo! Real Estate. Those aren't the competitors down the street you used to worry about - but they are your competitors now - at least when it comes to ranking your website.
What about pay-per-click? Five years ago I ran a campaign for an agent using Denver Real Estate as the keyword combination. The cost per click then was around 75 cents. Today the cost per click is around $3! Not an insignifant amount especially when you consider that is not a "lead" but simply an "eyeball" on your site. To run a campaign today using Denver Real Estate that was on page one could cost you well over $50 per day.
So to summarize - it's a lot more challenging and expensive today to get more traffic to your site than it was a few years ago. So what you say - I already knew that.
Is there another way to get traffic to your website? The answer is yes and is completely underutilized in the industry.
What is one of the major assets you have as a real estate agent? Not your signs, not your website, not your business cards, not your past clients. It is your LISTINGS. Leveraging your listings is one of the most underutilized assets that agents have especially when it comes to the web.
Well my listings are all online you say. Sure they are and they are online so many places right? Realtor.com has your listing right - so does Yahoo Real Estate - so does Remax.com - so does Coldwellbanker.com - so do another 50 or more other websites. What are they doing with your listings? They are leveraging them to help them generate more revenue. They are able to do this because of what is known as IDX (Internet Data Exchange).
Sure having your listings show up on more websites is a good thing right? More exposure = Happy sellers. But having your listings up on all these website will do absolutlely nothing to get more traffic to your website. But there is something you can do...
A virtual tour attached to those listings causes the buyers that view them to jump off of the website they are currently on - for example Realtor.com - to view that virtual tour. Once they are on that tour you have an opportunity to engage that online buyer in a furthering "conversation". By conversation I mean an online opportunity to start to offer value beyond just displaying your listing information.
This is a new underutilized strategy that is VERY powerful. Think about the average online buyer that is using Realtor.com (a national web portal). They go to Realtor.com usually because that the first place to start searching. But if those buyers are searching say in Littleton Colorado because they have a job transfer doesn't it make sense that they begin to "get local"? Start using a site that focuses on Littleton that has access to the Littleton Colorado MLS? Absolutely they do.
So how do you do this? You use a powerful virtual tour product that creates that online conversation and gets those online buyers over to your website.
That's what www.ListingsMagic.com does... allows you to quickly create great looking virtual tours that your sellers will love but that will also generate a great deal of traffic back to your website - by LEVERAGING your listings!
Take a look at a sample tour to see what I am referring to www.listingsmagic.com/3000 (notice that calls to action to get those buyers to the agent's website)
If you have any questions about how this all works I welcome them as this is my passion. I have helped hundreds of agents generate 1000's of leads through the leveraging of their online listings.
Feel free to call me any time - 303-618-0285.
Hans
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