BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

I’m sure you’ve heard this before:  When it comes to the Internet, Information is King.

That saying is true - not only for the search engines, but for your Internet visitors, too.  Home buyers and sellers are getting more and more sophisticated, and that trend will surely continue.  It’s important to stay on top of the types of tools and information that your visitors are being exposed to and may start to expect.

A few articles about buying and selling just aren’t going to provide the competitive edge you need to impress the search engines, or to make your visitors choose your site as their real estate research headquarters.

Take a Lesson from the “Competition”

Here’s a great example of the competition - consider the start-up firm, Terabitz.  Terabitz just launched its site on July 17, 2007.  It’s a “start-up” with $10 million in backing. Terabitz provides a range of real estate-related information in an easy-to-use “dashboard”.

In one of the many Terabitz articles published on July 17, the San Francisco Chronicle addressed the issue of the crowded field of online real estate websites:

“Steve Murray, editor of Real Trends, a 20-year-old magazine that tracks the real estate industry, says Terabitz has the advantage of providing more information from an even wider range of data sources.”

The article also mentioned that plans are in place for a paid version for REALTORS®.  So, this is one start-up that bears watching.  

Here’s a completed version of a Terabitz dashboard for our town, Peachtree City, Georgia.  Take a look.  Are you setting up your site to provide the type of information that you see there?

A lot of it is not rocket science.  And, you’re in the best position to help your visitors interpret information such as recent home sales.  By the time a paid version of something this slick is available, you may well be behind the curve.  Or, the pricing for it may not fit into your Internet marketing budget.

Keep Your Website Ahead of the Competition!

Start now to add the resources your visitors need to rate you and your site as their choice for professional real estate assistance!

Squidoo and the Spammers

If you haven’t seen the news around the Net, you should know that Squidoo is in a bit of search engine trouble due to spammers exploiting Squidoo lenses.

I already resent all the things that must be done to squash spammers and Internet thieves, and now it looks like Squidoo is suffering for the actions of the Black Hat SEO types out there who want to take advantage of a good thing.

As is typical with SEO issues, various blogs and forums around the web have various predictions as to what the long-term impact will be on the Squidoo platform.  I personally think it’s too soon to tell.

Other platforms have been penalized by the search engines, but then reinstated in the engines’ good graces after cleaning up the problems they have.  So, while some Squidoo lenses are reporting a huge drop in traffic, I think it’s too soon to tell if that situation is permanent.

Squidoo Fights Back

Squidoo has published two posts on their blog concerning the issue:  Update on Spam Part I and Part II.  It looks like they’re taking very aggressive steps to close the loopholes that have allowed the spammers to be so active on the site. 

I hope those efforts are successful.  Squidoo is a great platform for everything from promoting a hobby to promoting a business.  It offers a chance for people who would never otherwise participate much on the Internet to find their voice.

The situation will bear watching.  I, personally, have my fingers crossed!

When visitors land on your real estate website, they might be very familiar with your market area.  Or, they could be:

• Relocating from out of state
• Trying to find a home in a suburban area with easy access to their big-city job
• Just moving across town to an area they aren’t familiar with

In those situations, you’d really like to give your site visitors a map that shows an overview of your market area.   There are a couple ways to do that.

Custom Maps - UPDATE

Originally,  this post contained a link to a website that prepared very reasonably priced custom maps.  Having visited that site today, I was surprised (and chagrined!) to find a note on their contact page indicating that they are not accepting new clients.  Looking back, it’s true that I spoke with a representative of that firm last year, and they stopped working with new clients at the beginning of this year.

I will keep my eye out for other sources of custom maps.  If you know of one, please include it in a comment on this post and I will update this information.  Until I have a chance to evaluate other alternatives, I’ll leave this custom map area alone for now.

Google Maps

Another alternative became available with the introduction of Google Maps.  Google Maps look, of course, like Google maps.  So, you won’t be getting the upscale look of a custom map.  On the other hand, your visitors can use all the capabilities of Google maps to zoom in and out, obtain directions for traveling between two points, and so forth.

One of our clients serves a market area that contains bedroom communities for large cities such as New York and Philadelphia.  The area is also a place where people look for second homes in the Pocono Mountains.  To assist his website visitors, we created a Google Map that identifies the five towns his site visitors might want to look into for Pocono real estate.  And, as with other Google tools, Google Maps are free!

Providing maps is a great way to give yourself a bit of an edge over the competition.  Do you use maps on your real estate website?  If so, what kind of feedback have you heard from your site visitors?

We’ve been experimenting with new designs for our real estate marketing blog to take advantage of some of the newest Wordpress capabilities. There are so many designs, it’s really difficult to choose!

One of the basic decisions that must be made is which type of layout to use. Choices include a fixed-width design, which means that typically two columns fit easily, and the design is centered in the middle of the screen. You can click on the image at the left to see our most recent two-column design. Then, click your browser’s Back button to return to this page.

The other choice is a fluid-width design. That’s the design you’re seeing right now. It allows for three columns. The left and right columns contain links and “controls”, and because there are two of them, those controls are accessible higher on the page than with a two column design.

We’d like your opinion about which design you think is most user-friendly. You can vote for your favorite in a poll at the bottom of the left column, and leave your comments here.

Thanks!