Archive for Real Estate Blogs
The Secret to Writing Great Headlines
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If you are reading this post because of the headline, then you know the secret is working! When you write a blog post, you want something to attract attention so that people will actually read it. When you’re writing a landing page on your website, you want the same thing. So, you wanna know the secret?
It’s really pretty simple – you just need to know where to look!
If you’re not familiar with a website called Copyblogger, you’re missing out on a wealth of information. And, for writing headlines, you’ll find some very helpful information that has been written in simple English. The authors also include examples, which I find to be extremely helpful when you’re learning a new concept.
So, to find the secret to writing great headlines, visit this page at Copyblogger. You’ll find a list of 11 articles, all of which are great resources. Some of these will help you to understand why you need great headlines. But, if you look at numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10, you’ll find many ways to write effective headlines along with examples of how to make them work for you.
Enjoy!
Putting a calendar on your website could have a number of uses. You could note open houses, community events, seminars you sponsor, and I’m sure the list goes on. So, how do you go about that? I looked into two alternatives.
Google Calendar
If you’re a big Google Apps user, this would be a free alternative for you. I’ve never been a Google Apps fan. I’ve never found their applications to be intuitive to use, or even user-friendly. And, there is no easy support for the Apps, so it makes getting answers very difficult. But, that’s just me. If you like Google Apps, you’d probably have no problem. Here is an example I set up of an embedded Google calendar.
Keep and Share Calendar
I wasn’t familiar with the Keep and Share applications until I started looking into web calendars. I found their calendar to be very easy to use. In fact, it is so intuitive, that I didn’t need to spend much time at all to get a calendar created, add a couple events (with links to a Google map, even) and publish it on a web page. Check out this example of an embedded Keep and Share calendar.
Share the Knowledge
Have you ever used a web-based calendar? Do you know of another good alternative for creating one? Do you have any tips or can you share how you’ve used a calendar?
Let’s hear about it!
Two FREE Ways to Take Your Website Mobile
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I’ve been researching and attending webinars about mobile access to stay current with what’s going on in terms of mobile access to real estate websites. But, things are moving very quickly. If you have found a good way to provide mobile access, please leave a comment!
Hopefully, you saw yesterday’s post about mobile access to real estate websites in general. This post offers information about taking your real estate website mobile.
There are a couple free ways to create a mobile website. You can create a separate website using one of a group of free website builders, and you can convert your existing website to a mobile format.
Free Mobile Website Builders
Using a mobile website builder is similar to using a regular website builder at a web host. For example, GoDaddy offers Website Tonite as a free part of its hosting fee. It’s a pretty simple interface and a simple site, but it provides a solution for some.
There are a slew of free mobile website builders – just do a search for free mobile website and you’ll get a long list. For example, you can use dotMobi to build a mobile website and host it wherever you like. Or, you can use MobiSiteGalore, where the site builder is free, but you pay them for hosting.
There’s even a builder specifically for real estate, ClikBrix. Clikbrix, however, is a paid service and offers a bit more functionality including a mobile professional page and an application for putting your own listings into a mobile format.
Using this approach, you create a separate site that is optimized for mobile devices. It’s pretty easy to do, but you have to be patient while you recreate content that you already have on your regular website.
Convert Your Regular Website into a Mobile Format
The second option for going mobile is to use a service that converts your existing website to a mobile format. The only service I have found to do this is called Instant Mobilizer. That service works in conjunction with a number of domain registrars to provide a converted version of your website under a .MOBI domain name.
I set up a .MOBI domain name for our main site and our Point2 website. Since I have all of my domains at GetRealEstateDomains.com(a Godaddy registrar site we sponsor), I purchased the .MOBI domain names there, and it was a quick trip to the domain manager to click a link that sets up the mobile version of the site.
You can see what the conversion looks like at BRER.mobi (the main site) and BRERW.mobi (the Point2 website). Of course, it would be best if you looked at those sites on a smart phone. The other alternative is to use a telephone simulator. Some simulators require software downloads, but these are simply free tests on the Internet:
- For Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and W3C: Mobile Simulator
- For iPhone: Mobile Simulator
What I found is that the conversion isn’t perfect, and it works best on smart phones like the iPhone.
Now you have two ways to take your real estate website mobile. The next issue is what to do about an IDX search. First, you should check with your MLS organization. They may have a mobile version of the search they provide. If that isn’t an option, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on a way to make listing information available on a mobile telephone.
Get ready for some far out thinking!
Everybody’s talking about taking your real estate website mobile. And, as has been the case with every new technology toy, everybody makes it sound like your Internet presence is circling the drain if you aren’t catering to the mobile devices today.
The good news is that everybody often doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That being said, taking your real estate Internet presence mobile is something you need to be thinking about, planning for, and offering whenever possible.
When Should You Go Mobile?
You should go mobile as soon as it is feasible, but it’s probably not something that you need to lose sleep over, or spend lots of time and dollars trying to accomplish today.
You’ll know when you really need to go mobile when the following types of things start happening:
- You talk to prospects who indicate that they tried to look at your site online from their mobile, but couldn’t really view it well.
- Your traffic stats indicate that a critical mass of visitors are trying to view your site via a mobile device.
- Your competition goes mobile.
From September 1 through November 30, 2010, 2% of the visitors to our main real estate marketing site used a mobile device; 3% of the visitors to this real estate marketing blog were using a mobile device. At least according to Google Analytics. Should I go to extraordinary lengths to go mobile? I don’t think so. Should you? Check your traffic stats to see how active your area is with mobile devices.
Another comforting fact is that time is on our side. As the demand for mobile access increases, website developers and mobile device developers will undoubtedly continue to modify their systems to make mobile access easier. At some point in time, talking about “going mobile” will be considered a quaint old expression because everything will be mobile accessible without anyone thinking about it.
Mobile Access to Real Estate Websites is More Difficult than Most
If you have a real estate website, you know what your visitors want most. They want to use your MLS search to look at homes. If they’re buying, they’re looking for their next home. If they’re selling, they’re looking at the other homes in the area that are on the market and noting the asking prices.
While there are ways that you can make your website accessible to mobile devices, your mobile visitors won’t be really satisfied until they can use your IDX MLS search.
Over the next couple days, I’ll talk about a free way to take your website mobile, and a way to make your IDX MLS search available to mobile visitors, even if your MLS board or third-party vendor doesn’t provide that capability.
The Secret Behind Contemporary SEO
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your real estate web site or blog is an important part of your online marketing plan. Being found for the right keyword phrases in search engine results is an excellent way to drive traffic to your sites.
Clients have asked me to help them with SEO over the years, but up until now, I haven’t seen where SEO was really part of my core business. Certainly we help clients set up their websites to be attractive to the search engines (on-page SEO), but the ongoing off-page SEO wasn’t something I wanted to tackle.
Now, however, I’ve decided to offer Contemporary SEO because we’re approaching it from the standpoint of building long-term incoming links that correspond with contemporary thinking on SEO. The lastest thinking is that SEO link building needs to come from a variety of places, and it needs to be concentrated on content more than ever before. And, doing that kind of off-page SEO is right up our alley!
If you want to work with a flashy, famous SEO company that will guarantee you placement, then we’re not the advisor for you. Our SEO services aren’t flashy. There are no contracts and no gurarantees. We simply take the burden of doing the on-going tasks that have to be done to improve your rankings. If you want to work with a company that uses contemporary real estate SEO tools to build the authority of your website for the long-term, then we should talk.
Too many times I’ve heard clients complain that they’ve invested lots of money in SEO, but even with a guarantee, they’re not seeing a rise in their ranking for the right keyword phrases. And, when these clients decide not to pay the SEO firm any more, that firm “undoes” a good bit of the work that my client has paid for, which further reduces their ranking.
We don’t use “our own network of highly ranked sites” to give your rankings a boost. We’re doing the things that are necessary to establish your real estate website’s authority with the search engines – now and on an on-going basis.
- We’ll set up accounts for you on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and 9 other high-authority real estate websites.
- We’ll write blog posts, post articles to article websites, build directory links and make sure that all these things are SEO optimized for your chosen keywords.
- If you haven’t chosen any keywords, or if your website isn’t set up to be attractive to the search engines, we can help you with that, too!
Get your website ranking on the search engines. Call us at 888-716-2418 or send an email. Start the New Year off with a solid SEO plan in place!
