Author Archive
How are you feeling about the real estate market and your business these days? If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may be feeling great. If you’re like many real estate professionals, at least from time to time, you’re frustrated, unmotivated and in need of an attitude adjustment. Well, have I got a deal for you!
Michael Russer, otherwise known as Mr. Internet, is sponsoring a free webinar on April 7, 2010. It’s an opportunity to spend an hour with the speaker, Dr. Terry Paulson. Audiences from HBO, Starbucks, IBM and NAR have been inspired by Dr. Paulson’s presentations.
Dr. Paulson is often referred to as the 21st Century Will Rogers. He’ll discuss practical insights and common sense truths that produce real-world results.
I’ve registered. I think the timing is perfect for this topic.
Take an hour to energize yourself. Learn More and Register Today.
I have a lot of fun with the roads around my home in the foothills of the Georgia mountains. They’re curvy and fun to drive.
On the other hand, they do present some challenges. Like the time I drove over Blood Mountain. I left in the morning and didn’t have lunch. As I was driving home in the late afternoon, I munched on the Kit Kat bar I’d picked up to stave off starvation.
And, I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t eat chocolate on an empty stomach and drive down very windy mountain roads. After breaking into a cold sweat, I pulled over for a short break. After some deep breathing, I convinced myself I wasn’t really going to die - or get sick - and finished the last few miles to home.
I learned another lesson the other day. I was driving back over that famous mountain - on a full stomach this time - with two friends. We got a bit turned around trying to find our destination, and determined that we needed to turn around. While the road was a bit curvy, I chose a relatively clear area, stopped briefly, then started backing into a small store’s driveway to turn around.
The drive was a u-shape. Directly behind the car there were a few flimsy trees, then the drop off the side of the mountain.
About the time I was almost completely off the road, the person in the back seat screamed. Of course, my initial reaction was that we were facing impending doom, and I briefly accelerated. Then, of course, I caught myself, thinking of that “small” drop off behind me.
I turned to look at the road ahead and saw no immediate danger, so I asked the back seat driver what had happened. She had caught sight of a car that had appeared coming around the curve in the road and decided that we were about to collide with it.
So, she screamed. Swell.
If I’d been a bit more enthusiastic with the gas pedal, we’d have had a real problem. But, of course we wouldn’t have had to worry about it since we’d all probably be dead.
So, the moral of that story is: if you scream while in the car, you’d better be darn certain that any reaction by the driver isn’t going to get you in worse trouble.
You should also consider that the driver might just wring your neck if you all survive.
Do You Think Your Visitors Always Understand How to Use Your MLS Search?
If you have a full-featured MLS search (learn more about choosing an MLS search), you know how valuable it is for a visitor to establish their own account on that search. You know how much time a visitor can save by saving their favorite searches and listings. You know that saving favorite homes can help a visitor compare and contrast different homes for sale. But, do your visitors know? Do they know how to set up an account or login once they have one?
MLS searches vary in their user-friendliness. Some searches do a great job of explaining the advantages of establishing an account, and encourage visitors to do that. Some make it easy to register. Others. . . not so much. But, you have an excellent opportunity to promote your MLS search through your blog.
Kill Two Birds with One Stone
It’s always gratifying when you can find an opportunity to help Internet visitors and improve your SEO at the same time. Are you using your blog to promote the tools on your website like your MLS search? If not, you’re missing one of those opportunities. Here’s some ideas on how to do both.
Write a post titled something like “Who Doesn’t Want A Quick Way to Find Atlanta Homes for Sale?” Good start, huh? You’ve already got a title that uses one of your keyword phrases. In the post, explain how your MLS search works. Describe the advantages of and mechanics for establishing an account. Assure the reader that you won’t take advantage of them by driving them crazy after they sign up.
In the post, you can logically include a link to your MLS search page on your website. Naturally, you’d use good “anchor text” in that link. That means, rather than writing “click here for more information”, you’d write something like “search Atlanta homes for sale”. Using that keyword phrase in your link to your MLS page will provide a strong backlink to your main site.
Have you set up pre-defined searches for communities in your area? If not, you really should! You could then use the same principles to encourage readers to visit a community page on your website that includes a pre-defined search for a popular community in your area.
And, if you have other tools or compelling propositions that visitors would find useful, there’s no doubt you can find ways to write informative and useful posts to help people identify those things they’d really like to take advantage of – if they knew where to find them!
Examples of Hyper-Local Real Estate Blog Success
There’s a great post on Active Rain written by Donna Harris from Austin Texas. Donna does a great job of illustrating how her blogs are ranking well for long-tail search terms. As you may know, long-tail search terms are those search phrases that are related to your website’s main search terms, but are not as popular.
For example, in Austin, the main real estate related search phrase is probably something like “Austin homes for sale”. But, Donna is having success by focusing her blog posts on less popular search phrases that relate to communities or area names around the Austin area.
Make Your Post Titles Count!
It’s worth a trip to Donna’s blog to read her post for another reason. Her post includes links to several of her blog posts that contributed to her great ranks on long tail keyword phrases. Take a good look at how her post titles are written.
For example, one title is “Real Estate Hill Country Austin TX Homes Are Selling!” I know that many real estate bloggers might have written a title like “Local Homes Are Selling!”. That title might attract readers, but you’ll be hard-pressed to get readers to find that post! Using keyword phrases in post titles has a big impact on the ability of the post to rank.
It’s always a challenge to write titles that attract both search engines and readers. Another way to write the title could be “Hill Country Real Estate: Austin TX Homes are Selling!” As Donna mentioned in her post, her new approach may seem a bit more “robotic”. But, given the progress she’s made so far, I’m sure she’ll continue to find ways to satisfy both her readers and the search engines!
This guest post was written by Kevin Kaiser of Military Homes Realty,
connecting military home buyers and sellers.
Why You Need to Distribute Your Listings On Niche Sites
All real estate agents want people to see their listings. The more views you can get, the easier chance there is that they get sold. But still there are real estate agents who don’t worry about putting their listing on other sites.
What I can’t figure out is why? Is it to protect them from being taken by someone else? Seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?
The marketing and social media point of view is simple and straightforward:
- Get your listings to as large an audience as possible, while staying specific enough to your niche.
Looking to tap into markets for condos or foreclosure purchases? How about rentals or military homebuyers?
You don’t want to waste a lot of time or money spreading your listing to sites that have little chance of leading to conversions. But landing a few key niche realty sites could really increase the number of times your properties are viewed.
If you are in a hot region for military homebuyers, hunt down some military sites and put your listings on those.
Do you work with rentals a lot? Try listing your property with Rent.com or find a local site such as RentList.net in Atlanta. What about condos? There are some great sites out there for these as well. The key is to find local sites since people search local terms a lot more often than perceived from the outside.
Putting your listings on the MLS is a big plus as well since tons of different websites syndicate these listings, helping you get in front of a large national audience. After that, the key is to supplement an MLS listing by listing on targeted niche websites that will get your properties in front highly targeted buyers.
Paying $30 to get the listing on that San Diego homes for sale website will turn out to be a good investment!
