The Benefits of Notification Systems on Real Estate Websites
Notification systems are automated tools that allow real estate websites to notify clients about newly listed properties that match their preferences. With the help of an auto-notification system, clients can be kept up-to-date on new listings, price drops, and other updates in real-time. In this article, we will explore the benefits of having notification systems on real estate websites and how they can help improve customer experience. Real estate website notifications can provide numerous benefits for your customers: 1. Keeps Your Customers Informed With notification systems, clients can specify their search criteria, and the system will automatically notify them when a property that matches their requirements is listed. This helps clients focus on properties that are relevant to their needs. 2. Boosts Engagement Notification systems help to keep clients engaged with the real estate website. By providing clients with relevant updates, they are more likely to visit the website frequently, increasing engagement levels. This, in turn, helps real estate agents to convert more leads into sales. 3. Increases Customer Satisfaction Notification systems can improve customer satisfaction levels by keeping clients informed about new listings. Clients feel more involved in the buying process and are more likely to trust the agent. This, in turn, can lead to positive reviews, referrals, and repeat business. 4. Improves Conversion Rates Notification systems can improve conversion rates for real estate websites by enhancing the customer experience. By understanding clients preferences, agents can build stronger relationships with their audience, which helps to build trust between the agent and the client. As a result, clients are more likely to make a purchase, and agents can increase their chances of closing a deal. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

How to Migrate Your Website Hosting Without Affecting SEO
As your real estate website grows, it may be necessary to migrate it at some point. Unfortunately, the process of migrating your website to another host is not easy. It takes a great deal of thought and consideration to migrate your website effectively. For example, suppose you have invested significant time and effort into search engine optimization. In that case, you may be concerned that your efforts would be wasted if you transfer web hosting providers. Migration, while challenging, has the potential to open up new prospects while resolving issues that you were experiencing with your previous hosting platform, if carried out correctly. In today's article, we will focus on how you can migrate your website host without losing SEO value. When it comes to SEO, web hosting is significant since it influences crucial factors such as the speed at which your site loads and up and downtimes. Here are the three main changes involved when migrating your web host and how they affect SEO: Domain change Nameserver change, and Web host change Choose the Right Real Estate Hosting Provider You should not have to worry about your real estate SEO and search engine rankings if you migrate your web hosts the right way. You may want to switch web hosts to receive better service. Your real estate website will be hosted on entirely new servers, which will result in a change in the IP address of your website. If your new web host has a skilled support team, you shouldn't have to be concerned about losing traffic or experiencing substantial downtime during your transition. Before choosing a host, ensure that it meets all of your requirements. You can, for example, look at the following features: Low downtime Server bandwidth Excellent documentation and technical support The technical specifications of the server Changing Nameservers This is perhaps the most straightforward part of the website migration, but it can significantly impact your real estate SEO. If you simply change your nameservers, it is unlikely that you will see any changes in your search engine rankings. Furthermore, you can change your nameservers in minutes. However, using an effective hosting provider to streamline the process is vital. Domain Change If you change your domain name, you should place permanent redirects, also known as 301 redirect, on your website's old pages. This will route your users to the new domain name when visiting the old one. The 301 redirects in web development indicate a permanent move, and 302 redirects let Google know the move is not permanent. These are the commonly used types of redirects. However, a 301 redirect is used for most domain changes since it is a permanent move. Other Factors You Should Consider When Migrating Your Real Estate Website Carefully Choose a Real Estate Server Location Geographical advantage can be crucial in deciding your real estate website SEO. For example, if you were targeting the United States before relocating and using a server in the area, you'll need to find a similar hosting provider in terms of location. You should be familiar with the server on which you will host your real estate website. In addition to impacting your SEO rankings, your server location affects your target audience. Create Backup Make a comprehensive backup of your website before beginning the migration process. You can use plug-ins for effective backup. This step will ensure your return to the old real estate website if something goes wrong. Conclusion Follow these steps carefully to ensure that you don't damage your SEO while migrating your real estate website. Ideally, it should not affect your search engine optimization. However, to avoid confusion, it is advisable to maintain control of the old site for at least five months to ensure that the transition is done properly. Nevertheless, always use web developers to execute the migration effectively. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

The Importance of Domain Name for Your Real Estate Website
Let's talk about the importance of a domain name for your real estate website and how the right domain name can help improve your website traffic and SEO ranking. If you're interested in learning more, keep reading! Why Are Domain Names So Important for Your Real Estate Website? Your domain name is a vital part of your real estate website as it allows people to find your company online. It also plays a significant factor in driving more potential clients to your website and increasing your lead generation. Having the right domain name can help drive more traffic to your real estate website and increase your ranking on search engines. Additionally, it represents your company and adds credibility to your business, making your customers more likely to trust your services. Investing in a domain name streamlines migration, which means that you will be free to switch web hosts or change things up without it harming your SEO or ranking. How to Pick the Right Domain Name for Your Real Estate Website To ensure that you have the right domain name, you must consider the following: Keep the Name Short and Professional Something to consider is keeping your domain name short and professional. The key is to make it possible for your clients to easily remember your domain name. By making it short and professional, people are more likely to remember it. In addition, the name should indicate what you are offering on your website. However, the content of your real estate website still plays a significant role in how search engines rank you. It's not only about keywords but about choosing names that will connect you to your target audience. With a short and powerful domain name, you can make a more lasting impression on your clients. Pick a Unique Name Pick a unique domain name and not just go with your agent name. Unless you are well known in the industry, people are less likely to recognize your name, so it is better to use highly searched keywords in your domain name to make it more recognizable on Google and other search engines. At the same time, try to make it unique and professional to leave a lasting impression. Try to match your domain with your company name as it reinforces your brand and makes it easier for your customers to remember you. It will also help your customers pass it along to friends and help expand your business through referrals. Take Control of Your Domain Extensions To protect your company, make sure to purchase and take control of all the widely used extensions of your domain name, such as .com, .org, and .net. This will prevent your domain name from being resold online with a different extension. It can also help you outrank your competitors on search engine results by controlling over variations of your domain name. Other Things to Take Into Consideration Lastly, one more thing to take into consideration: Do NOT use "Realtor" in your domain name. Only the members of the NAR are authorized to use the Realtor mark to indicate their NAR membership. However, NAR members can purchase domain names with a .Realtor extension, e.g. www.agentname.realtor. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

Tips for Effective Calls-to-Action on a Real Estate Website
So you've built your real estate website, but it's seemingly not converting enough leads for you. There are various reasons that could trigger this undesired response. In case you've overlooked the possibility of adding calls to action throughout your website, let's discuss how you can fix that right away. What Is a CTA? First, we'll explain what a CTA (call to action) is and why it is important. The phrase explains itself: "call to action!" A call to action is an attention-grabber and the first step in the client's engagement with your site. Whether you were interested in learning more about a service or registered on a website through a bright pink colored button that said "Register today!" we've all seen (and clicked) on a call to action before. It sounds pretty simple, but knowing how to effectively use these calls to action allows you to convert more leads through your website. As a real estate agent, you can use a CTA to guide your potential leads into various actions like: Signing up for a newsletter Scheduling an appointment Receiving a home valuation In short, calls to action are a great way to engage your leads and introduce them to your retention funnel. What Should Your CTA Look Like? Now that you understand why you need a CTA in the first place, know that not all CTAs will convert. A good CTA is visually inviting. This can be done by using suitable color schemes and ensuring that the CTA is visible. The text needs to be as straightforward as possible and offer value to the target audience. Calls to action can also appear in different varieties, and luckily, this gives you room to target various sections of the page in more visually engaging ways. How Do You Use a CTA? You're getting closer to finally adding your most vital source of lead conversion to your website. Now the question is: How should you use a CTA on your website? The reason why it is vital to answer this question is that too many calls for action can risk confusing your clients. The most popular advice is to use only one CTA upfront on your landing pages as this provides clear focus and direction for the client. It's also best to focus on one CTA per page if your page is short; for longer pages, the same CTA can be repeated up to three times. Another rule is to make sure that the CTA is relevant to the content of the page. For example, if you publish a home-seller guide, the lead reading the guide would probably be more interested to move forward with a home valuation than an email update for new listings. Final Summary Each practice of a real estate agent is different, therefore there is no go-to catchphrase for all. Knowing the process of using calls to action to your advantage is a great way for you to get started. And drafting ideas on what you can offer your potential clients, whether it's a home loan or an end-of-the-year sale, goes a long way to get your brand ahead of the competition. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

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.

Establishing Digital Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT)
Before the evolution of real estate websites, smartphone apps, and multimedia messaging services, agents and brokers were the keepers and gatekeepers of listing data. Today, Realtors use real estate websites to share this information, generate leads, and communicate other useful information about their local communities and the home buying and selling processes. But how do you beat the competition when it comes to a Google search? It turns out, the experience you offer your clients can be easily transferred to your digital marketing strategy. As cliché as it may sound, remember the acronym EAT any time you add new information or make updates to your website or social media messaging. EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust and strategy built out over time. Expertise Expertise is evaluated at the content-level. Google SEO rewards subject matter experts who write authentic, original content in their subject matter areas. You know the ins and outs of the real estate industry. Write about what you know. Authority Authority is reputation based. When people leave online reviews on sites like Google Business, G2, Capterra, you grow your authority. Authority can also be given in the form of inbound links from news stories and other high-authority sites within the same (or complementary) industry. Trust As in real life, trust is about legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy. Trusted sites are ones that strive to have up-to-date and accurate content, use SSL (secure) certificates, and provide contact information and disclosures when using affiliate links and cookies used for tracking user behavior. SEO The next step in the EAT strategy is to monitor your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to monitor who is coming to your site, how long they are staying for, what they are reading, and how they are accessing the information (desktop, tablet, smartphone). You can review demographics such as age, gender, and location to better adjust your content and know what might be important to them. Match your content with the selling season and write ahead of time (so the information is there when the searching begins). And, of course, we recommend using a CRM to manage leads, keep-in-touch and stay organized to the needs and preferences of your customer base. To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.

ADA and Its Implications for Real Estate Websites
The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, and it has provided a series of rights for folks with accessibility requirements. Also, it has reshaped how businesses offer services to the public. Since 2010, when most businesses started to provide major services on the web, the focus has shifted a bit towards the online world. According to the WCAG 2.0 AA, websites that provide services to the public are considered places of public accommodation and are obliged to provide accessible services to people with all ranges of abilities. To make things more complicated, the Department of Justice has yet to offer clear guidelines on how online businesses should proceed with the ADA. Nevertheless, WCAG has been used as a source of measures for compliance with the ADA. Are Real Estate Websites Subject to ADA? Despite the lack of clear specifications by the DOJ, the consensus suggests that real estate websites offer products and services that are indeed aimed at the general public, and they must provide accessible features or be subjected to litigation. So the answer to this question is yes. If you stick around, I will provide some suggestions to help you start getting a hold of these issues. We begin with the most common shortcomings of real estate websites. What Are Common Issues with ADA Compliance for Real Estate Websites? As with any other website that interacts with the public, real estate websites should make sure that their web and mobile services are easy to use for people with disabilities. Here are some of the most common issues with websites in this regard: The website is not easy to navigate. Folks with disabilities cannot use their specific tools like screen reading, zooming, etc. to interact with the website. Videos do not have closed captions or transcriptions, and folks with visual impairments are unable to access this form of content. Not enough time is considered for the disabled to take necessary actions on the website. Not enough guidance is provided on how to take actions, and folks with disabilities might inadvertently take unwanted actions. What Can I Do to Avoid Litigations with Regard to Website Accessibility? There are so many things you can do to avoid being the next subject of a web accessibility lawsuit. Here are some actions to start with: Take Actions Now Don't wait for an official announcement or guidelines by the DOJ for web accessibility. Work on improving the accessibility features today. Create an Action Plan Based on the results of your assessment, or that of an expert service provider, you must create an action plan and start implementing what is necessary to maintain compliance with the ADA. Stay Updated with the Recommendations WCAG is subject to occasional updates and further recommendations. Make sure you are familiar with its guidelines, and check it every now and then. Add an Accessibility Notice on Your Website While you are assessing and taking actions, you can include a notice with regards to accessibility features of your website. This shows you care about the issue of accessibility, and you are dedicated to equal access for all members of the society. NAR has implemented this statement on their website, and you can freely use it on your website. Bottom Line Web accessibility is an issue you cannot ignore, so make sure you pay enough attention to it and consider that as part of your business growth online. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

9 Web Content Ideas for Real Estate Agents
If you are searching for content ideas for your real estate website or thinking of ways to spice up your blog, we've got you covered. In this article, we will list all the things you should include on your real estate website. Listings A professional real estate website includes IDX listings and a detailed description of your properties for sale. For example, include the number of bedrooms, the houses' interior and exterior appearance, and much more. Don't forget to add your contact information so that you can make it easy for your potential client to contact you. News Updates A good website should have a page dedicated to the latest trends and news in the real estate marketplace. If you want to attract more clients, post blogs about the latest news updates in the real estate market. Keep your audience engaged and up to date on all things real estate so that you can keep them coming back for more. Blog Posts Speaking of blogs, a significant aspect of having an informative website is dedicating time to your blog posts. You'll be surprised at how impactful blogging can be for your real estate business. Blogging helps you connect with your existing and prospective clients through written content. It also helps you build more trust with your clients and better your company's overall image. With a high-quality blog, you are on your way to increasing your website traffic and lead generation, as well as showcasing your expertise and knowledge. Home Tours and Guides Home tours have been immensely popular for years, but showcasing your home tour in an artificial 3D virtual environment will surely drive more traffic to your website. By using 3D virtual tours, your clients can have a unique experience while touring your property directly on your website. With the help of VR, a.k.a. virtual reality, your clients can easily take tours of your property in the comfort of their own homes, view everything at their speed and make adjustments based on their preferences. Clients can also take advantage of VR benefits by sampling ideas before committing to decisions. Client Reviews and Testimonials By posting your clients' reviews and testimonials, you provide your customers with information about your company. For example, what did your past customers like most about your services, or what you could have improved on? Testimonials give your clients a sense of comfort knowing that they are in trusted hands. So make sure that you include them to give your clients a better understanding of your work. Events It's always a good idea to include a page of upcoming events in your city. For instance, upcoming open houses, community events like festivals, or even city council meetings. You can also include videos and photos of these events for your audience to get a glimpse of what these events are like. Partnerships Another great addition to your real estate website is to dedicate a page to partners in your business. Share stories with your partners and dedicate a page to your shared work achievements. This shows that your company is willing to expand its horizons and form partnerships with those that share the same values. About Page The about page is an important addition to your real estate website. Why? Because it adds a hint of personality to your online presence. It gives your audience a peek into your personal life. Whether the website is personal or for your brokerage, it's always good to include an about page where your clients can get to know more about you and your real estate practice. A good website should include information about your business—the work you do and your expertise, how many years of experience you have in real estate, your core values and mission. Contact Page Last but not least, have a contact information page. We recommend that you have your phone number at the top of your home page so that your clients can easily reach you. Still, a separate page dedicated to your contact information is also very useful. Ensure that your contact page includes all the necessary information such as your email, phone number, location, etc. The more accessible it is for your clients to connect with you, the better the chances that they weill consider you as their primary choice. To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.

4 Tips to Increase SEO for Real Estate Agents
Time and time again, we've mentioned how difficult it is to stand out in the world of real estate. Computers have replaced flyers, digital ads have replaced newspaper ads, and websites play a huge factor in the homebuying process. In fact, according to NAR, in 1981, 22 percent of homebuyers read the newspaper to find a home. Fast forward to 2021, 41 percent looked for properties online first. This is only growing and growing. A home buyer's trust in a real estate agent is paramount. In 2021, NAR reported that 87 percent of home buyers worked with an agent to find their home. So, how do you stand out in the real estate world and how do you increase your SEO as a real estate agent? Keep reading. First of all, what is SEO? For all of those who come here with no prior knowledge of what SEO is, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of optimizing your website to get basic, organic, un-paid traffic. This is a fancy way of basically saying to get more visitors on your website. As simple as it may sound, it has to be handled with care and dealt with in a clever way. So, we've done the work for you. Here are four tips to increasing SEO as a real estate agent. 1. Your Website Needs to Be Mobile-Friendly and Responsive to Increase SEO Simply put, if you don't have a mobile-friendly website, forget about getting most of your leads. Potential home buyers, or any website visitors for that matter, will be more inclined to look at your website on their phone or tablet rather than on a desktop or laptop. Most people are on the go these days and are looking for their potential real estate agent while at work or in line at the grocery store. Your website should also be responsive because your prospects wont have to adjust their screens to look at your site. The website will automatically be set up to view on a smart device. Your website should also have the ability to capture leads automatically so that you don't have to worry about that aspect. 2. Create a Real Estate Blog Once your real estate agent website comes with a blog, it adds credibility to you, as a trustworthy real estate agent. As a potential home buyer, would you want to go on a website of a real estate agent and find that you see nothing personal? No, you wouldn't. You would feel overwhelmed because, prior to meeting them, you would feel overwhelmed and nervous that they would be too pushy or not understand your needs or requirements. Having a blog on your website will also increase your chances of ranking on search engines. Having a blog with neat, real estate articles relevant to your visitors will also pop up on Google, which will also increase the chances of your website appearing on search results. 3. Promote Your Website through Local SEO According to an article published by Blue Corona, having your real estate website targeting your local geographic area makes a difference. Blue Corona states that more than half of your audience is searching for a home on their mobile device, which means you need to focus on your local SEO tactics. A good example of this would be creating content that has keywords and search terms containing your city name. This will make the prospect more likely to come across your website during their search process. Even if you can get your past clients to write reviews that have your name and city, it is already increasing your local SEO by a longshot. Simple keywords and terms go a long way. Having localized content is also a bonus. Featuring local events, seminars, a map, and any other information relevant to your community will also help increase your organic viewership. 4. Videos and Photos Make a Difference The heading speaks for itself. Once you have professional looking photos and quality videos on your website, viewers are more attracted and are inclined to talk about you. According to Blue Corona, 70 percent of homeowners prefer to list with an agent who uses video marketing. Additionally, 89 percent of potential home buyers find it useful to have photos of listings. Keep in mind, these should be strategic as well. If you need help with photos and videos of your listings, read up on these tips from a previous blog of ours. Having sharp photos is a must. In fact, Blue Corona also reports that 44 percent of listings with crisp photos sell at or above list price. In Conclusion We just went over four tips to increasing your SEO as a real estate agent. If you didn't know what SEO was, we hope you came away with a better understanding of its true meaning. Yes, SEO is a marketing term, but you don't have to be in marketing to apply it to your business. Just by making a few strategic changes, you will already see the difference. Not only will you get more organic visitors to your website, but you will be able to turn leads into listings. On top of that, you will be the star of the show in your community. To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.

You Have an Online Reputation (In Case You Didn't Know)
Your real estate website is your digital first impression. Today's buyers are more likely to meet you online than through a showing or other face-to-face event. This is only growing more true as Millennials and Generation Z buyers enter the market. Technology is essential to the lifestyles of younger buyers. No matter whether you're a solo agent or work within a large brokerage, you already know you need a website. But is your website actually producing the business value you expect from it? For many in the industry, the answer is no. The website isn't making the strong first impression you want and deserve. When agents first get started, it's not out of the ordinary to post a simple website as soon as possible and hope for the best. But your website is more than just a brochure that introduces you. It draws the right people to your door and helps turn visitors into customers. Even if your website isn't doing much for you right now, it's never too late to change your strategy. Done right, your website has the potential to work for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even while you sleep. It is the key to growing your practice while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Your Website Tells People What to Expect from You – Is It Sending the Right Message? Your website communicates more than just what's on the page. Yes, visitors are looking through what you have to say about yourself and your business. But they are also reading between the lines, making decisions in seconds. They judge your digital brand based on your website's user experience. User experience is everything that impacts a person while they use a website, yours or anyone else's. It includes the look, feel, navigation, speed, ease of use, and how well the website helps someone to meet their needs or answer their questions. Some of these factors can be very subtle. Developers and designers spend thousands of hours figuring out how to deliver the best user experience for a given website. Luckily, because user experience incorporates so many different elements, there are always plenty of ways you can improve it — even if you don't have dazzling technical skills yourself. Let's look at some of the biggest elements that influence your digital reputation: Ease of Navigation The most important topics on your website should be reflected in the top navigation bar, where they only take one click to find. It's wise to avoid having any information that takes more than three clicks to reach. If you can't avoid having some "buried treasure," make sure your site has a good search function. Mobile-Friendliness An increasing number of people use a smartphone as their primary or even only method of going online. A truly mobile-friendly site is responsive, meaning it changes to fit the display size and inputs available for a smartphone or tablet user. Even older websites can often be made responsive in a few clicks. Professionalism What does it mean for a website to "look professional?" Professionalism is communicated by things that are easy to take for granted: The site has a consistent layout, color scheme, and fonts, relevant imagery is used, and everything is organized in a way that makes sense. Trust Markers "Trust markers" are things that help frame you as a credible and established expert. In real estate, the most important are seals and logos you're entitled to use as a member of a professional organization or holder of a recognized certification. Helpful, Informative Content Content is anything you publish with the goal of helping others make more informed decisions. Blogs and video are the most common forms of real estate content. They provide a reason to explore your website in detail. They can also help you capture traffic from relevant online searches. Information About You and Your Practice You are your most important brand asset — the star of the show. The best way to make an introduction is with a video message first-time visitors can use to learn about you. Answer their big questions: What makes you different? Who do you help and how? Easy Ways to Get in Contact When someone contacts you for the first time, seconds count. Make it easy for them to connect by phone, email, social media, or text. Alerts from your website can help you respond more quickly. Your Current Listings Last, but certainly not least, your listings should be reflected right on your own website. MLS gives you plenty of options to incorporate your active listings. When visitors can browse listings directly from your website, they are much more likely to reach out to you or subscribe to your email marketing list. To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.

Where Most Leads Come From -- and How You Can Cover Your Bases
Are you covering all of your bases with real estate lead generation? With so many different ways to generate leads, it can be easy to overlook some of the valuable, reliable tools that can help keep your pipeline stocked to the brim. Diversifying your strategy can help you reach a wider pool of potential clients and give you the confidence that you're leaving no stone unturned when it comes to generating leads. That's why it's so important to understand where most leads come from and how you can ensure that you're maximizing your lead generation opportunities. Start with Your Real Estate Website Your real estate website should be one of your best sources for leads online, but simply setting up a website isn't enough to guarantee success. For your website to become a lead-generation machine, it needs to provide a seamless experience with the right features and design elements. This is important both for attracting prospects to your website in the first place and turning them into qualified leads once they arrive. IDX Listing Integration - Many of the prospects who visit your website will be coming to look at listings first and foremost, so it's important to make that process as easy as possible for them. IDX listing integration makes it simple for prospects to search for homes in your markets, and those listings will be a key source of leads. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - While SEO doesn't generate leads directly like some of the other items on our list, it's a critical factor in attracting traffic to your real estate website. Over time, SEO helps you achieve a higher search engine ranking, which leads directly to more traffic. And more traffic to your website ultimately means more leads. Real Estate Content - The content on your real estate website helps you build trust, establish your real estate expertise, and show prospects how you can help them achieve their goals. Whether it's in the form of video content, blog posts, or both, your content helps convince prospects to take the next step. Social Proof - Social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials is one of the key factors in the decision-making process of modern real estate prospects. Integrating social proof throughout key areas of your website is a must for maximizing your lead generation. Lead Capture Forms - Once a prospect has spent some time on your website and seen what you have to offer, the goal is to have them fill out a lead capture form. This is where they'll provide contact information, outline their real estate needs, and take the first key step toward becoming a client. Social Media Marketing and Relationship Building The biggest social media platforms continue to rank among the best sources of leads online, so it likely comes as no surprise that social media marketing is so popular in real estate. Whether you're showcasing listings on Instagram, building relationships on Facebook, or sharing your best video content on TikTok, building your social presence is a must for generating leads in 2022. Referrals and Your Personal/Professional Networks The most highly qualified leads often come from referrals, and referrals are still one of the most dependable sources of leads for your real estate business. For individual agents, those referrals can often come from your personal and professional networks, in addition to your current clients. Building and maintaining great relationships still goes a long way toward generating leads, no matter who you're trying to reach. Virtual Tours and Open Houses More than ever, buyers are choosing to tour homes from the comfort of their current location with the help of virtual open houses and showings. Just like their in-person counterparts, these tools are key sources of leads — and not just for buyers! When sellers see that you're promoting listings with the best modern tech, they'll be more likely to choose you as well. Social Media and Search Engine Advertising Building your social media presence and boosting the SEO on your real estate website are both well worth the effort. However, it also takes time to see results. Paid advertising on social media and search engines provides more immediate results as a source of leads. Paid advertising is great for boosting visibility while building up your online presence and for supplementing your other lead-generation efforts. Covering Your Bases for Lead Generation in 2022 Whether you're interested in opening new avenues of lead generation or optimizing your existing strategy, achieving your goals is so much easier when you have the right tools for the job. With the DeltaNET®6 all-in-one real estate solution, all of the tools, tech, and resources you need to generate leads are always at your fingertips. RE Technology readers can try DeltaNET®6 free for 30 days. To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.

Landing Pages: Your Secret Lead Conversion Weapon
In today's hyper-digital world, agents need a winning online presence to sustain a successful real estate business. The best IDX websites are user-friendly, attractive, and filled with fresh listings. But agents that want to take their websites to the next level to supercharge lead generation need to be leveraging custom landing pages. A landing page is a standalone page on your website. Think about your "About Us" page or each one of your online listings. Landing Pages Are Super Powerful Lead Generation Tools Besides giving your website more pages — which boosts your SEO performance since you're generating more searchable content — custom landing pages roll out the red carpet for leads. Landing pages allow for a more personalized experience when people visit your website. Landing pages offer something valuable to your website visitors in exchange for contact information. Creating landing pages gives agents the opportunity to include more contact forms and CTAs. While you're introducing a neighborhood that you service or highlight listings that are coming soon, you can prompt leads to submit their contact information to convert more online traffic into leads. 15 Examples of Landing Pages to Add to Your Site Home Valuation Page Neighborhood Guides Local Market Report First-Time Homebuyer Course (or eBook!) "Coming Soon" Listings Home Improvement Guides for Sellers Contact Information for Municipal Service Providers Credit Repair Program Seller Lead-Specific Page Encyclopedia of Real Estate Terms Blog Contact Client Reviews Buyer/Seller FAQ Agent Career Highlights Mortgage Information Guide Get creative with your selection of landing pages. This is your opportunity to directly speak with potential leads and show them why you should be their agent. Think about creative landing pages and content ideas that out-do what competing websites have to offer. More Landing Pages Means More Conversion Companies that create 30 or more landing pages get seven times more leads than those that use fewer than 10. #ProTip: Using videos on landing pages can improve conversion by 86%. When building your landing pages, include high-quality video content to accompany your text. These can be a visuals-only neighborhood tour or an agent-guided tour of the area. When sharing basic real estate advice and tips, agents can use video to introduce themselves to their clients. Recording short videos where you introduce yourself and discuss the topic of the landing page further can be a great way to create and share new content. You can also use these videos for your social media, blog, and email marketing campaigns. Landing Pages Are the Bridge Between Site Visitors and Leads A landing page is the final stop before a site visitor becomes a lead. With your robust marketing campaign, you're casting your net across a variety of channels — such as digital advertising, social media content, webinars, and billboards. You need those marketing efforts to drive lead traffic to a "landing spot," where you can get their contact information and make a superb first impression. [Source: Unbounce] How to Get Leads to Take the Leap: A Simple and Customized Experience When you finally drive leads to your landing page, how do you get them to engage with your page and ultimately submit their contact information? Here's a Marketing 101 Crash Course: The consumer holds the power. They can leave your site, or they can provide their name and email. Being able to accommodate consumer demands is critical for activating the power of your landing pages. In today's market where instant gratification wins, your site visitors want your website to exceed their expectations. Internet users are used to targeted ads, gorgeous landing pages, and interactive apps. It's your job as an agent to meet those demands and build a seamless, enjoyable experience. This is what will allow you to stay competitive with the "Zillows" in the industry. Providing a simple and customized experience is the key to getting leads to follow your calls-to-action and submit their contact information, consenting to open communications with you. When you're building your landing pages and expanding your digital presence, ask yourself the following questions: Am I delivering a simple and customized experience? Is my site providing value beyond my competitors? Does my site invite visitors to browse more landing pages? Happy Website Building! To view the original article, visit the BoomTown blog.

Do You Need a Real Estate Website?
As a real estate professional, you know searching for real estate-related information on the internet has become an important part of the home buying process. Whether it's to find an agent, view listings or educate themselves about real estate, home buyers are exploring online content more frequently to find what they need. According to the NAR's 2021 Real Estate in a Digital Age report: 43% of prospective buyers looked online at properties for sale as their first step in the home buying process 89% of buyers that used the internet found photos to be very useful, and 86% found detailed information about listings to be very useful Having a real estate agent website makes it possible to supply these potential clients with information they are searching for and establish a connection in doing so. However, if that is not enough, here are four specific reasons why all agents should have a personal real estate website. 1. Agent Websites Are a Resource for First-Time Buyers As previously stated, 43 percent of home buyers start their journeys with an online search to learn about the overall home buying process. A personal agent website is a great channel to attract and educate potential clients who are new to real estate. Specifically, agents should try to include a blog on their site. A blog is an ideal platform for sharing helpful content. It can also help you generate top of mind awareness with your website visitors. For example, first-time home buyers might conduct searches based on the following questions: What are the benefits of buying as opposed to renting? Why should I consider using a real estate agent? What costs do I need to consider when buying a home? Which type of mortgage makes the most sense for me? Providing thoughtful answers and advice in these areas can help establish your credibility, which is crucial to building relationships with potential home buyers. Those who are still browsing may not be prepared to commit to an agent or a property just yet. This is where your shared expertise will come in handy. In other words, it will keep you "top of mind" with potential clients. Once they are ready to move forward in the home buying process, they will have you in mind. 2. Agent Websites Help Leverage Local Searches One major advantage of the internet in relation to real estate is that it allows home buyers to quickly and easily seek out agents and/or properties by location. Having a personalized website enables you to optimize for any local searches home buyers choose to conduct. For example, a person looking to buy a home in Orlando, Florida might opt to narrow down their results by doing a search for "real estate agents in Orlando" instead of just "real estate agent." By making sure your website content includes the city and state in which you work, you will be better able to attract clients looking to purchase a home in your area. 3. Agent Websites Help Establish Your Personal Brand While it is important to share your industry expertise, it is equally as important to share your personality or personal brand. This is a great way to differentiate yourself and connect with prospective clients on a deeper level. For example, home buyers with children are likely to relate to agents who have families of their own. Individuals looking to downsize may gravitate toward agents who express their passion for working with "empty-nesters." A real estate website offers a great platform for sharing everything about you. Develop an "About" section to display: Personal information you would like prospects to know. How many years of experience you have in real estate. What your core values are. What makes you passionate about real estate. Who your ideal home buyers are (e.g., first-timers, families, singles, empty-nesters). A photo of yourself. In addition to the above information, you can also post testimonials from past clients to help verify your reputation, as well as links to your social media channels. 4. Agent Websites Can Support Automatic Lead Capture In addition to attracting prospects, a real estate agent website is ideal for efficiently capturing high-quality leads. This is made possible by incorporating online contact forms for buyers or even sellers who come to your site and are interested in learning more about your services. Each time a form is completed, you will receive an email notification so that no lead goes unnoticed. Capturing leads through an integrated website also enables you to automatically add new contacts to your real estate CRM or assign them to a relevant email nurturing campaign. Takeaway Points: From connecting with first-time home buyers, to showing off your personality, to CRM and email marketing integration, it is clear that having a personalized agent website holds many advantages. In fact, not having one is likely to put you at a great disadvantage. It is likely that your competitors already have a digital presence. By having your personal website, you will: Provide important resources for home buyers Build trust with your prospects and clients Be able to better optimize searches and improve your SEO rankings Establish your personal brand Effectively capture leads To view the original article, visit the IXACT Contact blog.

How to Capture Leads with Your Real Estate Website
Many agents believe that simply having a real estate website is enough to capture a sizeable number of leads. But while that may have been true in the early days of the internet, relying on your average, run-of-the-mill site today is a surefire way to miss out on new business. So, if you're finding your website is doing little more than taking up space online, you're probably guilty of a few of the below. Why isn't my real estate website capturing leads? Your website looks ancient If your website looks like you haven't put any care into it since it was first launched in 1996, you're not going to generate any leads. It's that simple. The majority of today's homebuyers and sellers, spurred on by the pandemic, are seeking out digitally adept agents. If they're a seller, they know that getting the best deal depends on effectively advertising their home via both traditional and digital (e.g., digital marketing, virtual tours and walkthroughs, etc.) channels. If they're a buyer, they're looking for assurance that an agent will be able to locate (and close) on the best home for them, however and wherever it's listed—especially in a sellers' market where a sizeable number of properties are for sale for less than a week. An archaic website screams you're not with the times. You've ignored the back end for too long Maybe you built your website yourself and weren't altogether sure what you were doing. Maybe you hired your nephew to handle the design a few years back. Regardless, your site isn't functioning like it once was. Links are broken. CTAs don't work. Pages take forever to load—if they load at all. And your once-beautiful property photographs now fail to populate. As much as we'd like to think that websites are static, set-it-and-forget-it solutions, they're not. Websites need maintenance. And one in disrepair will not only frustrate and deter prospective buyers and sellers, but Google will push it down search rankings, believing your business may now be defunct. You don't offer property search There's no shortage of sites consumers can use to conduct their property search. So without the ability to do so on your website, what are the chances you'll win more business? What's more likely: They use another agent's website and then come back to your website, contact, and hire you? Or they work with the agent whose site they've already found helpful? Exactly. You don't have any effective lead capture Not all CTAs are created equally. Many agents mistakenly believe they can place a "Contact Me" button somewhere on their website and that alone will drive interested prospects. But it won't. The most effective lead capture forms are those that offer value to the consumer. CTAs tied to an offer have been found to increase conversion rates by as much as 121%. Examples of these for real estate agents include newsletter signups, market reports, and free home valuations. How to Capture Leads with Your Real Estate Website Assuming you've corrected the aforementioned issues and added effective lead capture forms, your next step should be to include your website in any and all marketing materials. If you're promoting your business via paid advertising—social and search—make sure you've included a link to your site. If you have a Google business profile, a necessary digital marketing tool for any real estate agent, make sure your profile links out to your website. Promote your website on all your social media platforms, and don't forget to include it on any offline print collateral you produce. Beyond promotion, keep your site updated often with fresh, new content, such as photos and market insights. Showcase your recent successes, and if you've had any business that has been particularly noteworthy—such as a home selling fast or for far beyond its listing price—make sure to highlight that on some of your pages. Don't be afraid to brag. It's your website, after all. To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.

Is Your Website's Branding THAT Important to Home Buyers?
Here's an unpopular view I'd like you to consider. What if the branding on your website doesn't matter as much as you think? What I mean by this is that your logo and what your logo represents doesn't mean much to the average online consumer. Keller Williams, Berkshire Hathaway, Century 21, whichever brokerage -- it's all the same. To be fair, Gary Keller is an amazing salesman and marketer and his book The One Thing is one of my favorites, and Warren Buffet is a brilliant entrepreneur and investor plus who doesn't love Dairy Queen? But that doesn't really matter to the average online consumer. In this article, I will examine NAR's 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers report and share information from the report that shows the branding on your real estate website doesn't really matter to the average online consumer. 1. What Matters to the Average Online Consumer? According to NAR's 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers report, the top ten most popular website features that home buyers valued were: Photos: Very Useful (87%), Somewhat Useful (11%), Not Useful (1%), Did Not Use (1%). Detailed Information About Properties for Sale: Very Useful (85%), Somewhat Useful (14%), Not Useful (1%), Did Not Use (less than 1%). Floor Plans: Very Useful (52%), Somewhat Useful (32%), Not Useful (7%), Did Not Use (9%). Virtual Tours: Very Useful (46%), Somewhat Useful (34%), Not Useful (10%), Did Not Use (11%). Real Estate Agent Contact Information: Very Useful (42%), Somewhat Useful (31%), Not Useful (16%), Did Not Use (11%). Detailed Information About Recently Sold Homes: Very Useful (41%), Somewhat Useful (42%), Not Useful (9%), Did Not Use (7%). Neighborhood Information: Very Useful (39%), Somewhat Useful (44%), Not Useful (9%), Did Not Use (8%). Interactive Maps: Very Useful (37%), Somewhat Useful (33%), Not Useful (13%), Did Not Use (16%). Pending Sales/Contract Status: Very Useful (36%), Somewhat Useful (35%), Not Useful (15%), Did Not Use (13%). Videos: Very Useful (25%), Somewhat Useful (35%), Not Useful (16%), Did Not Use (24%). As you can see, photos, detailed information about properties for sale, and floor plans topped the charts while contact information ranked fifth. This tells me that the listings page is the by far the most important page on your website. If you're able to include and optimize these top website features on one listing page, you can compel more website traffic to want your contact information and convert them into a lead. 2. The Consumer Buying Process The statistics above paint a picture that is reflective of the consumer buying process. The consumer, for whatever reason, realizes it's time to buy a home, then they look for homes online (photos, property information, floor plans, virtual tours). Next, they look to see who they can contact to help them learn more about the home or see it in person (your contact information), then they look for relevant information about you (your past sales), and/or the home (its neighborhood). 3. Why Does Less Website Branding Matter? In digital marketing, the most successful websites focus on the consumer's experience and their needs. By focusing more on the consumer and less on your branding, you can provide the best experience possible. Making the most important features of your website clear and easy to access with minimal distractions will increase your conversion rates. How? When a consumer enjoys your website and finds it easy to use and navigate, they tend to spend more time on it, view more pages, and use more tools. They tend to trust the website if they find the information valid and valuable also. Do not forget to add lead capture forms to your most valuable content. The information should be valuable enough to make a consumer want to exchange their contact information for your content. Less branding doesn't mean no branding on your website. It just means it's not as important as you may think because it's not a priority for the consumer – the listing is. When a consumer wants to learn about you and your brand, they will, but it's not their primary focus. To view the original article, visit the TORCHx blog.

9 Reasons Why It's So Important to Have Your Own Domain
Not all websites are created equal. Just as no two real estate agents are the same, each agent's website highlights the differences between other agents vying for the marketplace. Though content is king, it's important to understand that even your website's domain name has a significant impact on your performance and perception. Here are nine benefits and advantages of having a custom domain name: 1. It's a No-Brainer Why should you have a custom domain name? Why not? It's simple, especially when you're trying to encourage clients to access it. Instead of asking clients to remember a confusing web address, simply adding a ".com" to your business name makes engagement effortless. It also makes it easier for clients to find you passively, for instance, when they search for you online. If they search "John Smith" and find "johnsmith.com," they'll know that they've found the correct address. 2. It Gives You a Leg-Up on the Competition Do you know how many of the other agents in your market have their own custom domain names? Chances are high there are many which simply use web addresses provided by a hosting site. By locking down your custom domain name, you have another leg-up on the competition by demonstrating your legitimacy. 3. It Demonstrates Legitimacy How does having a custom domain address demonstrate legitimacy? First, it shows that you're using the latest technologies. Though websites are nothing new, you'd be surprised how many agents still do not use custom domain names despite the relative ease of obtaining one. It also helps a user feel more comfortable following your link. "johnsmith.com" appears much more legitimate than "johnsmith.domainhosting.com." 4. It Increases Your SEO Ranking SEO. Three letters your small business needs to know regardless of which industry you serve. If you're online, Search Engine Optimization is essential to your success. With so many other agencies selling homes in your area, you need the best search ranking possible on Google. Having a custom domain is one way to increase your SEO ranking in the eyes of Google's algorithm. 5. It Enables Custom Email Addresses Similar to your web address itself, your email addresses are small yet important elements of how your business is perceived. Sure, an @gmail.com or @outlook.com address will work just the same, but having an @johnsmith.com address will once again enhance your legitimacy and reassure customers that you're the real deal. 6. It Elevates Your Brand The brand you've cultivated in the real world can be easily integrated into the digital world with a custom website address. It also helps your brand consistency to have a legitimate domain name that matches your other online profiles, like your social media accounts. 7. It Enhances Your Branding "Branding" is different from "brand." Your brand is the business; your branding is what your business does. For instance, you may be a luxury real estate agent, but the content you supply that highlights your listings is an act of branding. A custom domain name is an investment. When clients click that link, they're taken to your website to interact with you through your branding. If you're trying to wow your luxury home market, for example, your domain name is the doorway to these interactions. 8. It Opens Potential for New Leads You don't need an open house to generate new "walk-in" leads. As you strengthen your website's content with a custom domain, you increase the chances that new customers will organically visit your site when they find it through a search engine. With the right tools, you can convert these visits to potential leads by continuing to engage them after they've left your site. 9. It May Be the Future of Virtual Businesses Thousands of new websites are created each day, which means many domain names become unavailable every instant. It's clear that more and more agents are adopting custom domain names. Keep in mind other agents may also scoop up domain names that you're interested in. Delta Media Group's digital marketing platform will easily integrate your custom domain, ensuring you reap the maximum benefits from your online presence. If you lack a custom domain name, we encourage you to consider these advantages and discover how quickly a new website address can benefit your agency. RE Technology users can try DeltaNet 6 FREE for 30 days. To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.

Common Misconceptions Agents Have About Real Estate Websites
When it comes to real estate websites, there are a few complaints that we hear more often than others. This is typically due to misconceptions or assumptions. We are here to clear all that up. Here are common misconceptions about real estate websites:

How to Optimize Your 'About Me' Page for Conversions
In this article, you'll learn the elements of a successful, lead converting "About Me" web page that will increase the page's conversion rate. If you analyze the data on your website, there's a good chance your About Me page is one of the top five most visited pages on your website. I've visited so many poorly constructed About Me pages that I felt compelled to write a blog article about it. If your About Me page receives views but no clicks, form fills or any other engagement, it's time to revamp and optimize it for conversions.

The Top 10 Ways to Drive New Traffic to Your Real Estate Website
As a real estate agent, one of your primary goals and constant challenge is driving consumers to your website. Your real estate website is like your online store, so it's vital to your success to explore strategies that increase traffic to your website. Real estate is a numbers game. More traffic to your website means more opportunities to convert a consumer into a lead. The more leads, the more opportunity for clients, and the more clients means more income and more referrals. When you brainstorm ways to drive more traffic to your website, think of ways your target audience consumes information and how you can intercept their attention. In this article, you'll discover 10 marketing tactics used to drive new website visitor traffic to your website.

How to Get Search Engines to Come Crawling Back
In this article for Delta Media Group's real estate industry publication, Real Estate Marketing and Technology Magazine, Aaron Geh discusses how SEO helps your real estate website attract more traffic and better quality leads. Whether searching for a sales associate or going on a house hunt, most people start their search online. Search engine results are a huge potential source of traffic for your real estate website, which leads to fierce competition for the top positions in search rankings. That's where search engine optimization (SEO) enters the picture. SEO is one of the most powerful tools for growing your real estate firm online, but SEO's complexity means that not everyone understands it. Let's look at these SEO tips to help your business attract more traffic and better quality leads.

Website SEO Tips
Bondilyn Jolly, VP of Marketing at Elevate, interviews CJ Hays of Agent Reputation on his top tips for driving amazing SEO on Google. If you are looking for your website "to be found" on Google searches, tune into this discussion on tactical blogging, original content, IDX indelibility, reviews and more. CJ packs TONS of great tips into 14 minutes, so be ready to hit the "replay" button! Want MORE great website SEO tips? Download Elevate's FREE "Website SEO Guide" at: TryElevate.com/websiteseoguide/

Answering Your Questions About SEO and Your Real Estate Website
I have spent over 20 years helping a wide variety of companies grow their businesses on the Internet. Here are two of the most frequently asked questions I receive and their answers: What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Why does SEO need to be approached differently within the real estate industry? What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? First, let me define what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is from my perspective. SEO techniques are used on and off websites to make a site more appealing to search engines. The more search engines like a website, the more they visit to index its pages. The result of SEO work done correctly--search engines push your website higher in search results for specific key phrases associated with your products and/services. Traffic generated from SEO is called "organic traffic." SEO in the Early Days Over the years, SEO has evolved, but I'd argue the core fundamentals have not changed that much. Early on in the infancy stage of SEO, it was the Wild West (late 1990s). Many people resorted to keyword stuffing or paying link farms to create thousands of links back to a site. While this process resulted in short term gains for these companies, any advancement made was quickly replaced with penalties once search engines caught on to their spammy techniques. Even during these Wild West days, savvy developers and online marketers understood it was all about designing sites for the end user. Eventually, search engines started publishing best practices, many of which still apply today. SEO Best Practices You need to build a site that is easy to use and navigate. The website needs to be technically sound. It needs to perform well speed-wise. The website needs designing with the end-user in mind, not the search engines. It needs to have unique and engaging content. You need to research high authority 'complementary' sites and obtain links back to your site. It needs to be trustworthy Add on-page optimization and internal linking throughout your website to help search engines better understand what the site is about and to navigate it easier. This last point is evolving a bit as the search engines are becoming smarter and don't need as much assistance. There are different approaches to SEO if you are a B2B or B2C company, but at the end of the day, the goals for any SEO campaign should be to increase traffic and leads/sales. Why Is SEO for the Real Estate Industry Approached Differently? Within most other industries, whether you are B2B or B2C, you are dealing with information that does not change often. For example, if you are a carpet cleaning company, your services will not change much over time. Or if you have an online store, products are added or discontinued over time, but generally speaking, your offerings stay pretty consistent. The consistency in these two examples allows the marketer to focus more intently on specific products and/or services, building out valuable content and links over time around the core services or products. The most significant difference with a real estate website is the lack of consistency with the products: homes, buildings, land, etc. Each property has a unique SKU number, so to speak, so it makes things even more challenging; the properties are only online until they sell. In major markets, we are talking thousands of property listings turning over quickly. Instead of trying to optimize each listing individually, many marketers in the real estate industry will focus on areas--states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, school districts, subdivisions, etc. For example, if you are a real estate firm in Sarasota, Fla., you may create a landing page with listings for Sarasota. And from that page, you'll drill down and create additional pages for neighborhoods within Sarasota. Consequently, you would use SEO tactics on all of those pages. This process is a fairly common practice within the real estate industry. The downside to this approach is that you will be missing out on visitors searching for a specific home for sale. Surprisingly, we have found that single address property searches equate to a significant amount of monthly traffic. Some of our clients see nearly 50 percent of their traffic originating from single address property search--i.e., 123 Main Street, Sarasota. Moreover, when it comes to recruiting and retaining, a firm with real estate listings displayed on the first page of Google has a distinct advantage over local competitors who cannot. To stay ahead of the curve, you should review your current website from two different aspects. 1. Technical Aspect of SEO The technical aspects of SEO (the how and why behind search engines crawling and indexing a site) are even more important with real estate sites than other industries because of the sheer amount of data processed daily. Clear paths for search engines need to be created to crawl from page-to-page, gathering pertinent information throughout your site. I have found that many real estate websites struggle in this area. To determine if your site has technical issues, look at how many pages you have indexed in Google (example: type site: www.hpw.com into Google search). Based on the number of listings and other content throughout your site, if the number of indexed pages seems low, there may be underlying issues. 2. Content Aspect of SEO Within the real estate industry, content is essential given the industry's competitive nature and some of the previously mentioned challenges. Blogging is a popular way to grow your site's visibility in search engines. As a rule of thumb, blogs should support the site's overall SEO strategy. However, in many cases, blogs are the only area where SEO is leveraged. For example, if your website is not ranking for the markets you serve, a blog may be your only avenue to publish optimized content for better visibility. Unless you are willing to invest significantly in time and money to make an impact, this option may not be ideal for you. Some companies do it and are successful, but having a better understanding of the website's shortfalls and correcting them will save you time and money in the long run. Taking a Look at the Competition I also wanted to touch on the industry's competitive nature and attempt to set proper expectations if you are a local firm engaging in SEO. The real estate industry is competitive, REALLY competitive. You have portals led by Zillow, corporate franchises, and then all of the local firms all competing for the number one position within the search results. The more competitive the market is in general (e.g., Dallas or San Francisco), the bigger the hill is to climb because there are even more online competitors. Realistically speaking, most local firms are not going to outrank the portals or even corporate franchises for phrases like "Dallas real estate," for example. These sites have an enormous amount of content because they have a national presence and all of the listings and associated content to go along with it. That is a big deal and one that is tough to beat. It's not impossible to outrank bigger players because many of our clients do. The clients that do tend to be very large and have spent years investing in SEO and content strategies. A realistic approach is to focus on less competitive phrases and ensure that your listing shows up on the first page of results. Less competitive phrases revolve around neighborhoods, subdivisions, and school districts. If you are successful and climb to the top for these phrases, it generally produces better quality traffic and leads. Also, visitors using these types of search phrases have narrowed their focus and are a bit more qualified. With SEO, Patience Is a Virtue... Really! A word to the wise: SEO is a long-term play, meaning don't expect immediate results. My rule of thumb is that if you don't at least stick it out for a year, look to invest your marketing dollars elsewhere. We are fortunate that we can move the needle fairly quickly for most of our clients. However, we run into some cases where it takes a bit longer, and that requires patience. Many factors determine SEO success. Every market and every company is different even though we are all in the real estate industry. So be patient and look at it as a long term investment. If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Probably Is Be cautious of companies making wild guarantees like: "We will get your site to the first position in Google for 'real estate.'" This sounds great to someone that is not too familiar with SEO, but realistically, most have no shot. When communicating with a potential partner, you need to feel like you can trust them, know what they are doing, and have your best interest at heart. If it doesn't seem logical or feel realistic, you should probably be concerned. Finally, just because a company claims "to do" SEO, be highly skeptical, especially in the real estate space. It's vital to understand precisely how these companies "do" SEO, and what success looks like based on data they have collected over time. Remember, SEO is about increasing traffic and leads. If they cannot provide you data on how they have helped other firms–run! It's also essential to understand the retention rate for the clients they currently serve. If they cannot retain clients, they are not providing value. So do your homework. Aaron Geh is a featured content contributor for Delta Media Group's industry magazine, Real Estate Marketing & Technology. Sign up today to receive your free subscription to Real Estate Marketing & Technology. To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.

Social Media Ideas Certain to Bring Love to Your Website
Social media marketing is one of the leading ways to connect with your community as a sales associate. Studies have shown that experts in real estate are consistently among the most active professionals on most social media platforms. Used correctly, social media is an unbeatable tool for driving traffic to your website and turning those visitors into leads. It also helps you cultivate long-term relationships with current clients, past clients, and future referrals within their network. The right social media can show people to your website right when they need you.

The Power of a High Functioning Website
This is a digital age, where the minute a prospective buyer learns of your name, they rush to Google to plug your name in--and what comes up will ultimately determine their next steps. Eighty-four percent of homebuyers use the internet as part of their home search, and you only get one chance at a digital first impression. So if your website is representing you around the clock, are you making it count? Here are essential items to consider for an agent website that converts on its clicks.

Real Estate Website Tips: Why Page Load Time Matters
Today, time is one of the most precious things. The world is moving forward, the technological revolution has made life easier and faster. Every website user expects to receive information as fast as possible. Google Research shows that 33% of smartphone users in each market have a negative view of a brand if mobile experience is slow. In this fast-paced world, you have to think to stay notable and discoverable. Having a good real estate website is a must in order to have a successful business. When talking about the website and its functionality, we take into consideration different things like what kind of design it has, if it's responsive or not, which tools it contains, add-ons that differentiate it from other websites and, of course, page load time. The time it takes for a page to load has a big influence on the bounce rate of your site.

How to Promote Yourself and Stay Connected with Clients
The weather outside is cold, but that doesn't mean the market is! With more Americans planning to buy or sell their homes, it is critical to not only catch the client's attention, but to stay connected once you have it. Here are some helpful tricks and tips you can use to build long-lasting relationships and a positive reputation.

Who is Your Ideal Real Estate Customer and How Does Your Website Serve Them?
How much time have you spent identifying your ideal real estate customer? When it comes to real estate websites, the vast majority use a kind of shotgun approach to customer acquisition. The typical residential real estate agent wants to list homes and work with buyers too. When you can do both in one deal, it's a party.

10 Things Google Loves About Your Website
There's no doubt about it: you don't just want Google to like your real estate website, you want Google to LOVE it. Why? When Google loves your website, you get a higher ranking in search results for real estate businesses and topics in your area. Most prospects don't look past the first few links on the first page of results, so a higher search ranking ultimately means more leads and more business. Fortunately, this love story doesn't have to be complicated.

Building Effective Real Estate Community Pages
Most real estate professionals are familiar with the concept of community pages on real estate websites. With a single click into one of these pages, visitors can start exploring listings in a given community. Links to the pages are typically provided in the site navigation menus and/or provided on the home page, often with photos of each community. Community pages are always a good idea because they provide the option for immediate access to listings without requiring the use of a property search form.

How to Boost Your Real Estate Website Traffic 10x with Pinterest
Every single real estate agent should be obsessed with finding new ways to funnel traffic to their site. More traffic means more potential leads, which in the long term, means more clients. The question is, "What is the best way for a real estate professional to drive traffic to their website?" The Top Methods for Driving Real Estate Traffic If you are striving to become one of the top agents in your area, you need to funnel a large amount of the search engine traffic to your brand. Some of the typical ways agents accomplish this are: Real estate blogging Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, etc) Video Marketing (Vimeo or YouTube) Paid Advertising (i.e., Google Adwords and Facebook Ads) Email marketing These are all extremely effective ways to increase the amount of traffic you are receiving. So what else can you do? The Forgotten Platform that Homebuyers Are Using We know from our lessons in SEO that the forgotten areas of content are often the places where it is easiest to quickly stand out. There is a social media tool that most real estate agents have forgotten. Bypassing this platform is a big mistake if you are looking for new website traffic sources. The forgotten social media tool we are referring to is… Pinterest. When most people think of Pinterest, they conjure mental images of DIY crafts and delicious cupcake recipes. Pinterest is a great place for finding new craft ideas, but it can also be a powerful tool for real estate agents. Why Real Estate Agents Should Consider Pinterest If your go-to social media platform is Twitter, you may be surprised to learn that a "pin" is 100 times more spreadable than a tweet. What about Facebook? A pin has a half-life or is active 1,600X longer than your average Facebook post. What does this mean for you as an agent? A well-crafted piece of content on Pinterest may be highly visible online for a week whereas a Facebook post has about 90 minutes to gain traction. Pinterest Statistic for Agents to Consider Pinterest has about 175 million active users that use the social media platform at least once a month. 81% of all Pinterest users are females, with the median age of 40. We know what you are thinking, "But how much do they make?" Thirty percent of Pinterest users earn over $50,000 per year, while 10% of users have a household income of $125,000 or greater. That sounds like a large group of social media users who could easily qualify for a mortgage to us. First Things First: Sign Up for a Business Account If you are not active on Pinterest right now, simply signing up for a business account and regularly submitting content on the platform should give your traffic a massive bump. However, if you already have a personal account that you wish to use for your real estate business, be sure to switch to a business account. This will give you access to Pinterest analytics so you can see which pins are the most popular and who is viewing those pieces of content. Make Your Real Estate Pictures Pinterest Perfect There is an art to creating pictures and other forms of media for Pinterest. First of all, your image has to be the correct size. Pinterest is all about vertical imagery due to the fact that over 80% of Pinterest users browse their feed on their smartphone. Aim for an aspect ratio of 4:5 or 2:3. Example of Pinterest Image What does this mean in terms of height and width? Let's say you took a picture of a "dream home" to share with your followers. If the width of this picture is 500, the length should be 750 to achieve the 2:3 ratio. As a general rule of thumb on Pinterest, longer is better. Why? When a user is scrolling through their feed, a longer image will be on the screen longer, increasing the chances that they notice it. Pinterest Picture Tips for Agents If you are new to the platform, here are a couple of tips to keep in mind: Use the highest quality images you can find. If possible, work with a professional photographer or invest in a full-frame DSLR camera. Utilize text on your images. This attracts the user and helps them instantly understand what your pin is about. Not comfortable with Photoshop? Find a designer in your hometown! Don't show your face. Images without visible human faces tend to receive about 20% more repins. Make the background exciting. A pin of an object floating on a plain white background will receive less attention than the same object on an aged wood table. Regardless of your political opinions, red is better than blue. On average, images that utilize red tones get twice as many repins than those that use blue on Pinterest. Use Pinterest as a Funnel for Prospects As a real estate agent on Pinterest, you have two main objectives. First, you want to attract the attention of Pinterest users who are interested in buying or selling their homes. Your second objective is to take this attention and funnel it back to your website. There are many ways to achieve this, but the most common method is linking to your site in your pin descriptions. If you have created a valuable piece of content such as an infographic, offer further related content if a user decides to visit your site. For example, your infographic might be about the top five mistakes first time homebuyers make when selecting a home. At the bottom of your infographic, link to a blog post where you explain 10 further mistakes that a new homebuyer should avoid. Attention Is the Currency of Real Estate Pinterest is a valuable tool, but it is just as complex as the other social media platforms. Don't get discouraged if you don't have success immediately. Just like anything else, it will take time to learn the ins and outs of the platform, but if you stick with it, you will have a new source of valuable website traffic to enjoy. To view the original article, visit the Parkbench blog.

How to Create the Perfect Neighborhood Guide for Your Real Estate Website
The top real estate agents in the industry offer so much more than basic buying and selling services. The agents that become leaders are those who provide a continuous stream of value for their core clientele. Bring Your Prospects Value If you want to increase your number of commission checks, start thinking of ways to educate and support your community. Of course, you can pass on tips relating to the core elements of real estate like everyone else. But maybe there are other areas that you could provide insights on as well?

17 Common Real Estate Website Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
While WordPress is by far the best website platform available, mistakes are commonly made when setting it up. This guide will walk you through the most common mistakes made when setting up a real estate website using WordPress and how to fix them.

The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Keywords
There's no doubt that online search is one of the most important tools for helping prospects find your real estate business. According to the National Association of REALTORS, 50 percent of real estate customers find the home they eventually buy through online search, and plenty more use search to identify the real estate agent who helps them find the right home. So it's important to make your website as search engine-friendly as possible—which starts with using the right real estate keywords. Today, we're going to take a closer look at what real estate keywords are, how they work, and what you can do to leverage the power of keywords for your real estate website.

Know Your Numbers to Get Analytics Working for You!
At a recent real estate event, a question was posed to the audience. What do you get paid for? The answers were varied. Negotiation, marketing skills, and value were words commonly mentioned. Then someone said "my experience" and the speaker's eyes lit up. "What does experience mean?" she asked. The room quieted for a moment as the attendees contemplated the answer. "Experience," she said, "means that you are bringing to the table all of the things that your customer doesn't have without you."

How to Spring Clean Your Real Estate Website
Even the best website is a work in progress. To be effective in real estate, a website needs to reflect the latest trends. Recent information on the market and how it may affect customers is essential. Leads will trust your expertise only if they see your website is helpful, informative, and up to date. However, even updating your site regularly won't do the job on its own.

Google Flags Websites that Are Not HTTPS as Not Secure
It's for your clients. It's for your security. It's for Google. Our team heard "rumblings" as early as two years ago from Google strongly "advocating" website owners move to HTTPS encryption to make the Internet secure and protect the privacy of your users. If you have not yet acquired an SSL certificate, you may have already noticed Google has flagged your website as "Not Secure" in Chrome.

Consider a Lifestyle Section for Your Real Estate Website
A huge chunk of our business is locating homes and facilitating their sale, and our real estate websites are a big part of our marketing. People have a great many requirements for what they want in a home, from size and bedrooms to neighborhood and amenities. People want to enjoy their time in their homes, but they also spend a great deal of time away from home engaged in activities other than their jobs. Concentrating just on the four walls and the home's features leaves a lot of buyers doing their own research into what they like to do or enjoy near prospective homes.

How to Do Keyword Research for Your Real Estate Website
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool for helping prospects find your real estate website and the content that you create. Many factors go into successful SEO, and keyword research certainly ranks near the top of the list. Understanding what types of keywords your audience likes, how to find new keywords, and how to integrate keywords into your real estate content will help you take your marketing to the next level. Let's take a closer look at how to do real estate keyword research, and put your new keywords to work for your business.

Your Website: The Key to Real Estate Success
The real estate company you work for has a great website, great social media channels, and other great communications tools for reaching and engaging with customers. After all, it's one of the reasons you're an agent there. However, you still need to market yourself separately; real estate is still a very personal business defined largely by the individual agent. The most successful agents understand the need to continuously update and innovate their business so they can connect with new and existing clients. Today's agents have found that the best way to do that is to go where their customers spend their time—online. They are the ones who have learned how to seamlessly blend an online presence with an interpersonal connection. Without your own website, potential clients will simply overlook you, and move on to the next agent. Here are some compelling reasons why you need your own website as an individual agent.

The Destination Real Estate Website vs. the Billboard Site
What makes a real estate website effective as a business generator? Here's a hint: it isn't just making it pretty and pitching yourself. The best way to illustrate the point is to compare a real estate website that's a billboard to one that's a directional sign to a destination. What is the destination?

Effective Real Estate Website Calls-to-Action for Lead Generation
For real estate lead generation, you run ads in the newspaper, in the homes magazine, and highlight your website in all of your other marketing. You've done a good job with this marketing in calling people to take action and come to your website. Now what are you doing for calls-to-action on your website to get your visitors to tell you who they are? If you're asking for them to "sign up for my newsletter," or "register for my guestbook," you're probably not very happy with leads from those calls. It's not that a newsletter isn't valuable, and we'll talk about that, but just asking them to sign up for it isn't going to grab their interest. So what can you do for calls-to-action around your site for real estate lead generation? And where should you place them?

How to Build Your Real Estate Company's Website Authority in 90 Days
There's no question that your real estate company has what it takes to flourish. Selling buyers the right home is certainly important, but it's pivotal to have a website that gains traction as well. Besides word of mouth, search engines are where people get their real estate leads and trusted sources from. Your website needs maximum visibility so you can get the clients you deserve. One of the best ways to gain a website's credibility is by building your website's authority score in search engines. It may seem like a daunting task initially, but within 90 days you can boost your authority score, and get more traffic towards your site. Here is how it's done:

Does SEO Make Sense for the Average Agent's Website?
If you own a website, it's likely you have heard the term SEO or Search Engine Optimization. If you're a real estate agent with a website, it's also highly probable a firm offering SEO services have solicited you. The challenge with SEO today, for many agents, is that the largest real estate companies who focus on the internet invest millions of dollars in SEO. They often have outside firms, or internal teams, whose daily focus is on perfecting the SEO of their websites. As a result, they often dominate even local real estate search results. Also, these companies buy a lot of local real estate advertising keywords, so these sponsored search results are always on top of the unpaid ranked search results below.

How to Get Free, Relevant Real Estate Website Content
The question is "How do we create good real estate website content?" NOT "Why do we need it?" As the Internet has become one of our most powerful marketing venues, the value of a comprehensive and relevant real estate website has become crucial. Even if you are out networking and marketing through print and other traditional media, once contacted, the vast majority of prospects will check you out on the web before making a decision. Another question is how to create or get good, relevant website content without having to create it all yourself or spend a lot of money. I'm sure you didn't miss the word "free" in the title, and I'll show you here how to get great and highly relevant content for your website for free, and in the process, you'll meet new people and build your networking effort.

Is Your Real Estate Website Outdated?
In today's hyper-connected, digital landscape, everyone is using the internet to look up information, check references and find the tools, resources and services for just about everything in their lives—including real estate agents and brokers. Homebuyers and sellers work with real estate agents because they provide industry and market expertise. A real estate agent's website needs to portray that same industry and market expertise. Your website should be an invaluable tool for your clients and prospects, and it should be a source of quality leads. If your website is not up to date, you risk missing out on those clients and losing them to other agents. Attracting new clients starts with providing the best information and the easiest and most pleasant user experience online as possible. If it's been several years since you've made any updates to your site (or you simply don't have one), it's quite possible your site is outdated and needs some TLC to make it once again a powerful tool for you and your clients. Take a look at our recommendations below and ask yourself whether your site falls into any one (or more) of these categories.

10 Must-Haves to Include on Your Real Estate Website
When it comes to building a real estate website, remember the ABCs: Always. Be. Closing. While you may not sell a home online all the time, an effective website can drive more leads and convert more users into clients. To optimize your website, include these key features that will not only attract potential customers, but also establish you as a premier agent with tremendous skills, knowledge, and command of the industry:

You Down With O.O.P.? Yeah, You Should Be...
Owned-and-operated properties are important because they ensure that you are creating the best user experience on the destinations you can actually control. This is a concept that is vastly underutilized by Realtors and significantly important if you want to be in business for the long haul. So because there has been so much worry about the changes Facebook is making to their newsfeed and the way it will impact advertisers, I've been wandering down a rabbit hole of articles for the past couple of weeks. I came across a very interesting article on TechCrunch about the Facebook changes and what marketers can do to retool to accommodate those changes. As far as what to do, their feelings are pretty much in line with my feelings. One interesting thing they did cover in their article, however, is the idea of Owned and Operated Properties (OOP). What are these, you ask? Specifically, these are online destinations that the brand owns and controls. For a Realtor, an example of this would be your blog, your website, or maybe the video channel on your website. Owned-and-operated properties are important because they ensure that you are creating the best user experience on the destinations you can actually control. So what exactly does this mean, and why is this important?

Use Your Real Estate Website to Boost Your Brand
There are ways agents can use their real estate website and online assets they already have to solidify their brand. Real estate PR is perhaps a lost art, but it doesn't need to be. With a little fine-tuning, your website and social profiles can boost your brand, improve social proof (your online reputation), and nurture leads right into your sales pipeline. Your brand shows the world that you are different from other agents and it inspires trust and whatever other emotion you hope to elicit from your potential clients. If done right, it also shows how you will solve their biggest frustrations and challenges.

How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Real Estate Website
A personalized website is an important marketing asset for real estate agents. Even before selecting the perfect template, adding images, and hooking up an MLS feed, the process of creating a branded website will always begin with selecting the right domain names. Today, we'll learn what a domain name is and how to choose the best domain names for your website.

How to Write a Neighborhood Guide
Home buyers may find the perfect dream home online, but they are unlikely to purchase that home until they understand the neighborhood it's built in. Therefore, as a real estate agent, providing a neighborhood profile can go a long way to giving your clients a better understanding of the surroundings. Neighborhood guides, or profiles, add rich content to your website, and you can use snippets on Facebook to drive that traffic. Furthermore, neighborhood guides provide a hyper-local aspect to your website which allows you to rank organically for neighborhood search terms. Just what content should a neighborhood profile have? Here are some items to consider to create a positive experience for your website visitors.