As the year end draws near, there will be plenty of days when you (or your staff) have more time on your hands than you expect. There are a number of things that you can do to sharpen your company's online strategy while you have a breath of fresh air.

Are you IDX compliant?

Real estate brokers are responsible for the broker website and every agent website that displays IDX listings. You can absolutely presume that some of your agents have websites that are out of compliance. Over the past 10 years, we have never found a single broker who had every site in compliance.

Get a fresh copy of the rules from your MLS and highlight the principal rules. Next, get a list of every agent website. Agent website is typically correct on your broker website, but you may want to go the extra mile and Google each one of your agents. Many of the problems are with agents who have moved over from another firm. They either did not update their site with your information, or in many cases, the old broker is still marketing that agent on their broker website, or broker-branded agent websites.

Check Your Office Directory

Many enterprise brokers have moved offices, but the online thumbprint of the old offices are still all over the internet. There is a service called YEXT that can fix that. They have relationships with all of the online directories and can automate the task of updating the office address and phone number on all of them. Of course, if you only have a few offices, you can do this yourself. You can simply use the list of online directories from the YEXT website. While you are at it, check the office information in your MLS(s) and, if applicable – your franchise or broker network sites.

Check Your Agent Directory

Aside from property listings, agent profile pages are the most viewed pages on your broker website. Have you looked at them? Do all of the agents have photos? Do all of the agents have (spell checked) biographies? Do they need to be refreshed? Are the agent's contact information and social media connections accurate? Is everyone there? Are people there that shouldn't be?

Check Your Syndication

Go to every website where you syndicate your listings online and look at the way your listings are displayed. It is very important that you look up a large portion of your listings on every site. Third party websites have a trumping order in how they display listings. The biggest problem we see is agent marketing trumping broker syndication. Often an agent's feed from a print publication, or Postlets, or a virtual tour vendor will trump your syndication efforts and compromise your online strategy.

Moreover, check your sold listings. Look at the way that they are being displayed on third party websites. Should they have been taken down? Are they still displayed as available for sale? Who is being marketed on your sold listing?

Check Your Lead Routing Solution

Become a lead on a variety of websites including your broker website, agent websites, virtual tour sites, franchise or network websites, and third party websites. Is your lead routing solution working according to your business practices? Are agents responding? How is the quality of the response?

What are you spending?

Pull a report on all of your online spending. Compare the prices to the traffic and leads you are getting. Make sure that everything is in line. Make a note of your renewal terms and put that note in your calendar. Many of these agreements automatically renew unless cancelled by either party. Kill any expense that is not paying off. You can always restart it in the spring when revenue returns to your business.

Be Calm

Trust me when I tell you that you will find many things that you do not like when you do this audit. Don't lose your cool. The systems that support your organization need to be tuned from time to time like anything else in your company. Online marketing is not pretty, but taking a little time to observe the entire picture will allow you to gauge your situation.