Microblogging on Real Estate Websites
If you Google "homes for sale" in any mainstream city, chances are high the top 10 search results page will return Zillow, Realtor.com, Movoto, Redfin, or a national real estate franchise. Unless you have had a dynamic website domain for 15 to 20 years, it's highly unlikely your website will pop onto the top 10 search page unless you have a large paid advertising budget with Google Ads.
So, how can you compete with the larger competition and get in front of new leads?
Beyond creating community pages with saved links and creating posts and videos about your listing ahead of MLS syndication, you can promote your brand and establish expertise and credibility as a real estate professional by publishing content on your website in the form of a blog—specifically a micro blog that highlights and showcases the benefits of buying a home and living in a specific neighborhood or community.
An effective and affordable long-term strategy for your real estate business, micro blog posts should dig deeper into the reasons why a certain community or neighborhood is attractive. Is crime low? Are schools receiving high report cards? Are homes close to lakes, parks, rivers, restaurants, businesses, golf courses, etc.?
Embedding Useful Content
Consider homes in Nashua, NH that share a property line with the Sky Meadow Country Club. In addition to feature photos and key details, the listing agent embedded a YouTube video originally published by the Country Club with aerial drone views of the golf course into a micro blog post highlighting the benefits of living so close to the putting greens.
Below the text and the video is a center point map and IDX widget with links to the individual properties. The combination of highlighting benefits, embedding maps and videos, and linking directly to featured properties is a great way to make your page more search engine friendly.
Another way to keep a site fresh with current and relevant content is to embed an RSS feed to another site. In this example, an IDX widget has been added to the top of a page featuring homes in the Nashua School District followed by an RSS feed that pulls in information published by Nashua.edu. As new content is published by the school district, the stories automatically update on the site.
Writing What People Want to Read
Without a specific property address, people typically search for homes for a specific area or neighborhood or community using search terms like "waterfront condos for sale in Palm Beach County." If you are using a CMS like WordPress, you can analyze how much visitor traffic your site is experiencing through Google or Bing and add to or adjust the content to highlight certain markets or homes based on what pages people are clicking on and reading.
Writing What People Like to Read
You can also micro blog about properties of notoriety, properties that are not necessarily one of your active listings. For example, if you are in Miami or LA, a property of notoriety could be related to a celebrity of some kind or a historically significant building. Or perhaps the property is unique in its construction, architectural style, or design. Frank Sinatra's Palm Desert home or Elvis Presley's honeymoon home, for example.
As long as the content you write is original, you add a disclaimer to the bottom, and add a link back to the listing agent, the story may bring extra visitors (and potentially a new lead) to your site. Be sure to include the property address and a link that says, "Click here for more pictures" that points to the syndicated property page directly through the MLS feed on your own website. Oftentimes your post can rank higher than the listing agent's own link on a Google search.
Learning More
If setting up a micro blog on your real estate website sounds appealing to you, but you don't have the bandwidth to set everything up, consider working with IDX Broker Developer Partner.
For more information on optimizing your real estate website using community pages, saved searches, duplicate content, micro blogging, and other essential digital marketing practices, watch the Content is King recorded webinar through the Elm Street Technology on-demand educational academy.
To view the original article, visit the IDX Broker blog.
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Why IDX Sites Are Better than Non-IDX Sites for Real Estate Websites
We understand it may be overwhelming having so many different companies pitching you their real estate website services. We get it. As an agent, you want a website that will bring you results. Something to consider when choosing a website host is if you want a website with or without IDX.
There are pros and cons of using any website service. Normally with IDX sites, you will have to work with the template they give you. With certain website providers such as Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly, you can create beautiful non-IDX websites, but need to find a third-party home search service. The aesthetics of a site aren't always equivalent to their results.
Here is why we recommend an IDX website:
Website Hosts Are Informed About Real Estate
If your website host has built-in IDX solutions, they have invested money and resources into building relationships with your local multiple listing service and integrating the data. This will mean that your website is more likely to be MLS-compliant. If you choose a website host that focuses on real estate branding, you are already in better hands than if you choose your college friend that designs websites.
Better for SEO
Website hosts that don't offer IDX solutions require you to "frame in" an IDX home search. This workaround will allow visitors to search for homes on your website. However, it will take more work to get visitors to your website in the first place, because they will not be finding it on their own.
Frameable IDX solutions are websites hosted by a third party that can be embedded into your website (a website within a website). People will be able to go to your site, and see the home search—but the home search is a separate entity from your website, and not indexed by search engines. Your site is less likely to show up in the search results of a user typing in "Homes for Sale in Birmingham" because the search engines do not index foreign aspects of your site. They will only index native content.
Built-in IDX solutions will have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages on your site for Google to index. Each search result will have its own page, and each listing will have its own page. This strengthens the search engine optimization of your website.
Easier Customer Experience
With built-in IDX solutions, customers will only need to sign up once. For many IDX sites, the lead capture can track the user's IP address to determine if they have been there before and allow them to do a few searches before prompting a capture form. Non-IDX sites that frame in their home search are not able to track if the visitor has already done a home search or not, because it is not tied to your website.
Most importantly, framing a third-party home search into your non-IDX site is not always mobile friendly.
Easier Agent Experience
Would you rather ask a lead searching for homes what they are searching for OR have your website tell you what they are searching for, so leads can continue to research?
Automated Lead Nurturing
With IDX websites, they'll help you maintain a database of leads. The best IDX web hosting services will track what your leads are searching, send them listings, and nurture them with emails to get them to continue searching on your website. This effectively babysits leads that are at the top of the sales funnel, while you can personally cater to leads that are ready to transact.
It is possible to be successful with a non-IDX website, but why would you put yourself at a disadvantage?
To view the original article, visit the Zurple blog.
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5 Essential Strategies for Your Real Estate IDX Website
The ability to stand out in an increasingly competitive market is a challenge. What can you do to compete online? Our new content series will be focusing on the unique value that a real estate website gives you and how to get the most out of it.
Just having a local real estate website isn't going to get you too far. It's like having a car but not putting gas in it. If you don't invest even a little bit of time and money, you'll probably not get the most of it. It's very easy to mis-spend, and just because you spend a lot of money on a fancy website, it doesn't necessarily mean you are guaranteed success.
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What Is IDX? A Comprehensive Quick-Start for Real Estate Agents
There always seems to be a lot of buzz about IDX in the real estate industry.
So what exactly is IDX? And why is it important to you, the real estate professional?
Okay, we'll admit it isn't the most interesting of topics. However, "knowledge is power" and who doesn't want to be a successful real estate agent?
Successful agents have goals, work hard and desire to learn everything they can to gain a competitive advantage. Because it is such a critical tool for agents, those who plan to succeed need to learn about IDX and all it has to offer.
So sit back, relax and find out how IDX can help you become a successful real estate agent, and a tool with which to manage and grow your real estate business.
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How to Get Huge Results with IDX Search Lead Generation
Can you improve your IDX lead generation on your real estate website? The answer for most real estate websites is a huge YES. We already know that the words "real estate" are by far included in more searches for homes than others, usually combined with a town or area, such as "yourtown real estate."
Dominating the top results on the search pages are the listings, most of which are now IDX search utility pages. People want to see home listings, so those IDX pages end up being the most visited areas of almost all real estate websites. When a home buyer or potential listing client ends up on your IDX search page, what will they find and what will be their likely actions? What they do is very dependent upon what you offer.
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Tips on Expediting the MLS Approval Process
Your local MLS provides direct access to every available listing in your area, so there's a pretty good chance you'll have to work with yours at some point. In general, access to MLS data is only available to those agents who are members in good standing and go through the necessary to steps to seek approval. How do you get approval, you ask? I'm here to help you with that!
The MLS Approval Process
Gaining MLS approval can be a long and tedious process, especially for new agents. Not sure where to get the needed paperwork? What signatures you need to acquire? How long the entire process take? After working with MLSs on a daily basis, we've developed some great relationships and have tips on expediting this process. Here are some key things to keep in mind when looking for approval:
Make sure you have the most up-to-date version of the data access agreement from your MLS. You get this from the MLS directly, or your IDX/VOW provider may have a copy on file, too!
Know your website address by heart and make sure it's accurate on your data access agreement.
Do you know your "Broker of Record" on file with your MLS or brokerage? This may be different than your own broker. Make sure to find out who this may be and obtain their signature on your data access agreement if necessary.
Submit your completed data access agreement directly to the person that handles each approval.
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Get More Targeted Leads with this IDX Website Feature
Do you want more targeted leads from your IDX website? How about on-site content that's more attractive and relevant to consumers?
Of course you do! That's why today we're showing you how to use an underappreciated IDX feature that can put both of these things within your reach.
We're talking about custom search URLs. Depending on the IDX solution you use, this feature is also known as "saved search pages," "IDX custom hotsheets," "custom IDX URLs," and more. Agents can use this feature to create links to specific sets of listings, such as condos under $200k, homes with pools in X neighborhood, etc. This is useful for driving website visitors to relevant properties quickly and easily.
Here's an example of an agent who's using custom search URLs to flesh out her website's neighborhood pages. Minneapolis area Realtor Jan Worthen has created informative pages for each area that she serves. In order to quickly get consumers in front of the specific type of property they're looking for, Worthen built multiple custom search URLs for different price points and property types (highlighted in red):
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Leveraging Google Adwords for Real Estate Leads
As we prepare for our upcoming buyer/seller lead webinar, we felt it important to dive a little deeper into exactly how and where these leads can be found. Today, we'll look at Google Adwords and how it can integrate with your IDX/website to produce real results through their PPC (Pay Per Click) program.
What is Google Adwords?
Some of you may have experience with Google's advertising option, which places strategic ads alongside a search made on Google. It's very simple: you create an account, decide on a budget (most users load credits to their account via credit card), create an ad, and start choosing keywords to attach their ad to. Let's back up a bit – what's that about keywords?
Keywords are the fuel that drives your ads.
The idea behind keywording is that you pick both a popular term that others will often search and one that pertains to your service and what you're offering. For instance, a real estate agent looking to market themselves in the Tampa Bay market might come up with a term such as "tampa bay real estate." The catch here is that the cost of these ads are variable, meaning that a broad search such as "tampa bay real estate" will cost more than a targeted term such as "south tampa waterfront condos." Here's a recent search of the term for "real estate tampa":
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An App Isn't Enough to Make Your Business Mobile Friendly
Is your business optimized to serve today's mobile consumer? If you offer buyers and sellers a property search app, but your website is difficult to use on mobile devices, you're missing out on a lot of potential leads.
There are several reasons for this. First, consumers are not using property apps exclusively. Many, especially those early in the search process, are still Googling "Mytown homes for sale." If their search brings them to your IDX site, how long will you think they'll stay before moving on to another site that's easier to use on their device? A few seconds, at best.
That's if they're able to find your site at all. In April, Google updated their search algorithm to favor sites that are mobile friendly. Termed "Mobilegeddon" by some, the update relegates sites that don't display correctly on mobile devices to the bottom of search results.
What Makes a Website Mobile Friendly?
So what is it that makes a site work well on mobile. In days past, some websites would actually offer two different versions of their content--one designed for specifically for mobile and a "full" site that works on desktop or laptop computers.
Today, "responsive" design has solved the need to build two sites. A website designed responsively can identify the size of the screen it's being viewed on and scale accordingly. This means that all devices and screen sizes--computer, tablet, and phone--can view the same version of a website.
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7 IDX Tips for Real Estate Website Success
IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, is how most real estate sites provide MLS listing search functionality for site visitors. All of the participating MLS member listings are able to be displayed on any site, a great improvement over pre-IDX sites with only the listings of the brokerage on display.
Recent surveys of real estate consumers, both buyers and sellers, show that the vast majority spend a lot of time searching home listings on websites. NAR found that last year the average time for buyers to search before making a purchase was 10 weeks. It is imperative that you somehow attract site visitors and keep them returning so you will be top-of-mind when they get ready to take the plunge.
To keep them coming back, you MUST have powerful IDX functionality. If you do, they'll bookmark your site and keep coming back for searches until they're ready. Here are seven tips to make that happen for your website.
Tip #1: Minimum IDX Search Capability
The visitor to your site, at a minimum, should be able to search the MLS listings using various criteria that they are using for home selection. At a minimum, they should be able to search by:
Price range
Bedrooms
Baths
Garage
Square footage (if allowed in your area)
City
Zip
Address
MLS number
County
Proximity (homes within a certain distance of a starting point, home or location)
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Facebook Ads, IDX and CRM to Generate Real Estate Leads? You Bet!
There was a time where you could not find a single agent that believed in Google AdWords, ad retargeting, or any online advertising at all. Real estate professionals would contend that the marketing vehicles were unproven, ineffective and other forms of marketing such as magazine ads, door knocking, cold calling, etc. were where they were going to put their focus.
Well, times have changed. What once was an unknown is now a known, and we're finding agents that have their hands in just about every aspect of online marketing possible. I say "just about" because, by and large, we see one amazing form of online marketing that is being overlooked by the majority of agents we come into contact with. So what is this one online marketing platform that I am describing? Facebook.
Why I Love Facebook as a Marketing Platform
1) Market Share: No matter how you slice it, it is impossible to say that Facebook isn't anything less than a force to be reckoned with. They have been around since 2004 (that makes them about 120 years old in dot com years). In all that time, many platforms have come and gone. Many more have sprung up, are hanging on, and still have yet to make a dent in their almost astronomical marketshare. For that one single reason alone, if you are ignoring this platform, you need to rethink your entire marketing strategy. You want your marketing messages out where the highest number of people are going to see them.
2) Demographics: In my opinion, one of the most appealing features of the Facebook advertising platform are the vast demographics that you can pull from to target prospective leads, and how you can save yourself from the typical "fickle lead that goes nowhere" that we frequently hear about from other online lead providers.
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IDX Websites 101
IDX or Internet Data Exchange is sometimes referred to as "broker reciprocity." IDX is a set of business rules that allows agents and brokers to display another participating broker's listings on their website. In exchange, they agree to allow other participants to display their listings.
IDX-enabled sites let consumers search local listings right from your agent homepage. IDX sites are by far the most popular option for real estate websites, perhaps due to their low time and effort threshold. Today, most solutions are "turnkey," meaning that they're already set-up and ready to deploy. Your only necessary involvement is to adjust the product to your needs--adding an agent or company bio, for example, or customizing email templates.
The cost of IDX lead generation sites can vary based on the solution you choose. Some products come with features like a built-in CRM, drip marketing, virtual tours, and lead capture capabilities to help you manage your leads more effectively. Decide which tools are most important to you before choosing a solution.
To help you learn more about IDX, we recommend reading the following articles. They're a good place to get started:
What is IDX and How Can it Help Generate Leads?
5 Strategic Areas To Publish IDX Listings On Your Website
Five Keys to a Stronger IDX Website
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Sold and Pending Results in IDX Searches?
Depending on your IDX solution, in your settings you can specify which properties will be displayed by default in searches--like Active, Conditional, Pending, and Sold.
The Con:
Unless you're doing a CMA, which means you can look up the sold properties to make that happen, let's talk about why you do not want to allow default display of sold properties in your searches.
Your prospective buyer is searching for a home, and they have a set of criteria, including features, areas and price range. Can they buy a home that just sold? Silly question, as we know they can't. Why would we want them wandering through sold properties matching their criteria? While we want them comparing active properties that meet their criteria, comparing active homes to ones already sold can bring problems:
"This home that just sold was priced lower, but has larger rooms than the ones I'm seeing for sale."
"Why can't we find an active listing just like this one that sold last month?"
"Three of these homes that sold three months ago were all priced lower, so maybe we can make a really low offer on the active home we like best."
We can readily see that they're using old information to make negative comparisons to the current market and homes available to them.
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Best of 2013: Introducing WebsiteBox
Here it is--our top article of the year. For the first time ever, the number one spot goes to a product review. That reflects just how curious agents were to learn about WebsiteBox's unique pricing strategy after the company captured attention at Inman NY last year. Learn more in our overview below. See article #2 here.
There are a plethora of real estate website solutions on the market today that are easy to set up. Tech companies have realized that most agents aren't technically minded, and that even those who are simply don't have the time to design and build a site.
While this is great for agents (we don't have to tell you that a website is a necessity, do we?), narrowing down which vendor to use can be overwhelming. As one of the newest challengers in this increasingly crowded arena, WebsiteBox has differentiated themselves in a way that's hard to ignore--by appealing to agents' wallets.
Their hook is powerful--for a one-time fee of $99, agents get a website, integrated IDX search, a CRM, hosting, and more--for life. Seem too good to be true? That's exactly what our readers have been wondering. Ever since WebsiteBox debuted at Inman in January, we've been fielding phone calls from RE Technology members who want to know, well, what we know.
The truth is, we didn't know much until recently. We knew that WebsiteBox had created a tremendous buzz in a very short period of time, but we hadn't yet peeked under the hood to see how everything worked. Thankfully, CEO Peyman Aleagha gave us a tour of WebsiteBox and answered all of our questions. Now, we can answer all of yours!
The Big Question
Before we dive in, we'd first like to address what's on everyone's mind--is this for real? The skepticism is understandable. Too many companies draw consumers in with one price, only to tack on extra fees (we're looking at you, airlines). People are accustomed to looking for a catch.
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Product Review: Inside Real Estate
Did you know that over 90% of consumers use the Internet during the home sales process? Most agents are familiar with that number, but how many have optimized their web presence to capture online leads?
From IDX websites to SEO optimized content to PPC ad campaigns, there's a lot agents to can do to attract the attention of potential buyers and sellers. Inside Real Estate (IRE) is one solution that helps real estate professionals do just that. They offer comprehensive marketing services that include:
Professionally designed websites
Integrated marketing plans
Customized media and video campaigns
Email distribution
IDX property search
Search engine optimization
Blogging tools
Social media sharing and integration
Today, we'll explore how Inside Real Estate helps agents and brokers put their best foot forward online.
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A Tale of Two Agents – The Importance of Lead Generation
This post comes to us from the Market Leader blog:
Here's a hypothetical lead generation situation for you. At the beginning of 2013, two agents, Productive Penelope and Struggling Steve, set their annual income commission goal at $100,000. This is a lofty goal – more than twice the median gross income earned by National Association of REALTORS® members in 2012 – but these two ambitious agents have their hearts and minds set on achieving it.
As their names suggest, the two agents experienced drastically different levels of success during the first six months of the year.
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Holiday Deal: Showing Suite HD IDX Search
The year may almost be over, but we're still finding great deals on tech products for your real estate business. Our latest deal comes from Showing Suite, who is offering HD IDX free for 60 days and waiving the setup fee when you sign before December 31st.
HD IDX is a turnkey IDX search solution that comes ready to fit right into your website. HD IDX packages include:
Customizable color schemes
Map search interface
Save listings and searches
User social sharing options
See which listings prospects are viewing with Lead Manager
Draw your own search area
Estimated commute time on all listings
Embedded Google street view window
Constant free updates directly from your MLS Intuitive
Easy to use interface
Learn more at Showing Suite's website.
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Friday Freebie: Win Facebook Services from N-Play
Our Friday Freebie series continues with two opportunities to win free Facebook services from N-Play. These services help consumers connect with real estate agents and brokers on the world's largest social network.
Win a Free Year of IDX Home Search from N-Play
IDX Home Search lets consumers search for properties directly on your Facebook business page. Visitors can view property details, photos, virtual tours, maps, and more information from your MLS without leaving Facebook.
To Enter: 'Like' IDX Home Search's Facebook page, then activate IDX Home Search on your own page to enter to win a year of free service. Click here to learn more.
Win a Personalized Facebook Advertising Campaign
The Real Estate Agent Directory is giving away 50 Facebook advertising campaigns valued at $100. N-Play will create, target, and manage the campaign in order to bring as many leads to your Facebook page as possible.
To Enter: 'Like' the Real Estate Agent's Directory's Facebook page to enter. Click here to learn more.
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4 Reasons We’re Excited About Immobel’s Global Listing Exchange
In the process of writing our product review for Immobel's multi-language IDX translation and REAL-Buzz portal, we learned about several other Immobel innovations. We had to keep a narrow focus for our product review, but we made a note to come back to these other features at a later date. We've decided that today is the day. We got in touch with Janet Choynowski of Immobel and she brought us up-to-speed.
Here are several of the features we found most exciting:
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What is IDX and Why Do I Need It?
Internet Data Exchange (IDX) is the voluntary sharing of listing data among participating brokers belonging to the same Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for the purpose of creating greater online exposure for listings. IDX permits a brokerage and its agents to display on a public website virtually every local property for sale, regardless of who listed it. IDX is normally presented to website visitors in the form of an interactive property search. Visitors are empowered with ownership of the search process, and may have the option to remain anonymous until they are ready to contact the site-owning agent or broker for more information.
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iHomeFinder IDX
iHomefinder is a well established IDX search solution available to agents in many of the largest markets in the United States. It is likely that they already have data in your market, so check with your MLS.
Their product offers all of the key features of property search that are important to REALTORS and their clients. Their base product offers search by city, zipcode, price and other standard form based criteria. Lead generation on their solution follows established paradigms in IDX services including save a listing to favorites, save a search, and registration for automatic listing alerts.
They offer a full service back office solution for agents to access their registered users, gain insight into their search behavior, property interests, and contact information.
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MLSFinder.com
MLSFinder is among the most commonly used IDX systems for real estate agents in America hosting more than 50,000 agent and broker solutions. All MLSFinder solutions include lead capture, allowing agents to turn Web visitors into potential customers. MLSFinder may be installed into your agent website with relative ease through smart framing. Standard services include two links, one for IDX Search and another to automatically pull your listings by a separate link. If you do not have any listings, the agent listing link will pull all of our office listings.
Lead generation with MLSFinder includes Save a Search, Save a Listing to Favorites, and Register for Automatic Listing Notification. Other standard features include the ability to map a listing, send a listing to a friend, estimate mortgage payments. Inquire about listing, request a showing and print a listing.
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Top Producer IDX
Top Producer IDX is a full-featured property search solution that allows agent to offer consumers access to the listings available from their MLS. Important features like Listing Notification, Save Listing to Favorites, and Save Search are all bundled with the service. Top Producer is a subsidiary of MOVE, INC and offers IDX in more than 235 markets. If they do not already have listings from your market, they will go get them for you.
Top Producer IDX automatically updates your website with the latest property information from your MLS, and offers visitors a password-protected section to save their favorite listings and searches. Top Producer' IDX’s prospecting tools, including PROPERTY ALERT LEAD and CAPTURE FORMS encourage visitors to enter their contact information and home criteria to receive automated updates and Listings Lead Capture Forms that encourage visitors to request property information and schedule appointments. The system’s lead tracking tools are designed to help the site owner to prioritize and strategically respond to their prospects.
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