Most real estate and mortgage professionals use their web site to promote themselves, which is a mistake. A billboard or business card is perfect for promoting yourself; however, the Internet users are looking for one thing, to view homes! The primary goal for a real estate or mortgage web site must be to capture leads! Whether you are in real estate, mortgage, or any other industry you have value to offer your clients. For example, in real estate your value is access the MLS system. Giving potential clients access to the entire MLS in any local market is the absolute best way to capture a lead. Over 90% of all homebuyers spend at least some time looking for homes on the Internet. If your entire layout, design, and content are based around exchanging value for a lead, then you will obtain the most effective lead-to-traffic ratio possible!
The three key fundamental elements to any successful service-based web site are web site traffic, quality lead capture systems, and successful lead follow-up!
Obviously, the more people that see your site, the more opportunity you will have to capture leads and the more success you will have in your business. The most efficient and effective way to get people to your site is by ranking high on search engine results for keyword phrases of the services that you provide.
A keyword phrase is a group of words an individual uses to find a specific item or service on the internet through a search engine. For example, someone searching for a home in the Tulsa market might type the keyword phrase "Tulsa real estate". This method of obtaining the highest possible level of search engine rankings is also referred to as Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Optimization is quickly becoming one of the most competitive and largest Internet-based industries in the world. With so many opinions, faulty articles and unreliable information on the Internet, it's very difficult to find truth. The real estate industry is the most competitive Internet based industry in North America. This makes search engine optimization especially difficult for our industry.
Simply one of the most important factors in search engine optimization framework is the foundation, starting point, and platform for your web site. It is absolutely crucial that you have framework that search engines can navigate properly. Search engine friendly framework is simplistic, light in coding (the amount of coding used to obtain a specific result or action), and uses certain types of web site coding for certain actions. Search engines are designed to index web pages according to their usefulness. Search engine designers attempt to replicate as many human attributes as possible through math and logarithms into search engines. However, because search engines could never be human there are several ways to trick the search engines into thinking that your web site is better than everybody else's web site. The designers add logarithms to catch and penalize anyone who is trying to trick a search engine. It is crucial that you do not buy into “guaranteed search engine results” or ridiculous link campaign scams. These businesses are typically con-artists or using unacceptable search engine practices to obtain quick and short-lived search engine placement.
Choosing a domain name can be very helpful when it comes to search engine optimization. The domain name is the first item search engines will consider when indexing a page; therefore, it would be wise to choose a domain name that contains some or all of the words in your most popular keyword phrase. For example, if Tulsa, Oklahoma real estate is the most popular keyword phrase pertaining to Tulsa real estate, www.tulsaoklahomarealestate.com, would be the ideal domain name. However, www.tulsaoklahomarealestate.com is a long domain name for publication use (business cards, billboards ect.). A solution to this problem would be using a shorter domain name for your publications that simply redirects to your web site. Although some search engines, such as MSN, will index your page faster and easier with a relative domain name, many web sites have successfully ranked in search engines with an unrelated domain name!
The design of the web site greatly affects the way a search engine will be able to index the web site pages. For this reason, it is extremely important to have a design that does not interfere with the search engine's ability to index the pages properly. Avoiding certain designing languages and designing methods such as iframes can mean the difference between first and last page results!
Unique content is quite possibly the most important factor in search engine optimization! Surprisingly, the search engines know if the words on your page are found on any other web site in the world! The more unique the information on your site the more value the search engines will assign to that site. Content is king, and unique content is absolutely crucial to succeed in any local real estate or mortgage market!
Keyword research allows you to effectively capture the largest amount of traffic possible. It is important to know what the most popular keyword phrases in your area are. Through specific local market research we are able to determine which keyword phrases will bring the highest amount of traffic to your web site!
Search engines use title and header tags as a reference point when indexing a page. It is important to take full advantage of these reference points. For example, when creating a page for a specific keyword phrase make sure that you put the keyword phrase in your page title and your H1 tag.
Meta tags and Meta descriptions were originally created as web site summaries to help search engines properly index pages before the search engines were as advanced as they are today. Web site designers and programmers started taking advantage of these site summaries in order to obtain unfair high-ranking results! For this reason, search engines today put very little value on Meta tags and Meta descriptions; however, some search engines still use them, and others such as www.google.com use them as a web site description. The web site description appears under the page title on the search engine results page.
The idea of effective lead capture systems are simple, the layout and design of a web site needs to keep visitors on the site long enough to capture their information; However, obtaining this level of success is a bit more complicated. In fact, many of the real estate related sites do not have a lead capture system at all.
One the most important factors when dealing with lead capture systems is a simple, clean, and practical design. Studies show that busy sites are far less successful than clean and simple sites. Many photos, digital images, and flash (moving items and elements) are simply unnecessary and therefore distract the visitor from the purpose of visiting your site. Using a simple and slow-moving slideshow is an effective way to add design qualities to your site without creating unwanted and busy results.
Obviously the easier it is for the visitor to find what they are looking for, the higher your success rate will be. Layout has a lot to do with an effective capture. You want your primary target to be extremely visible and easy to get to. For example, in real estate most people are on the Internet searching for homes; therefore, putting a large banner in the center of your page that says "search all local homes click here", would be an extremely effective way to capture leads.
As a Realtor the value that you have to offer is your access to the MLS system. It is amazing to me how many realtors give away their access to the MLS without even asking for a phone number or e-mail address! The chance of ever getting to speak to any of your visitors without a capture system is greatly depreciated. Exchanging the value of your MLS system for a lead needs to be the focus of your web site, everything about your web site needs to revolve around capturing that lead.
This theory is quite simple, the fewer times that a web site visitor has to click on his or her mouse to get to a desired location the happier they will be. You need to make sure that the focus of your web site can be found from any page of your web site within one click. In other words, if you have created a page for a small surrounding city in your local real estate market, that page still needs to have a banner that says "search all local area homes".
Lead follow-up must be approached delicately. We must keep in mind that an Internet lead is different from any other kind of lead. It is important to plant the seed quickly without making yourself seem desperate or annoying. You must quickly identify the needs of the home buyer or seller. Explain the importance of your services and the need of an experienced and qualified Realtor. Establish the amount of desired communication and continue to plant seeds.
This is the most important aspect of successful lead follow-up. The hour of power refers to the amount of time you have to get the client out of the market. The faster you respond to an Internet lead the higher your success rate will be. Because there are so many Realtors who are lackadaisical about Internet leads, the fact that you respond almost immediately to their request will impress them. Also, if they do not hear response from their request, they will keep searching until they find what they are looking for! If you respond quickly, you will convince them that you seriously want to help them and that you are responsible and prompt. In fact, five minutes of power would give you a much greater level of success!
Sometimes Internet leads can be quite vague, and identifying the real needs of the home buyer or seller can be challenging. However, the sooner you identify the needs of your client the more helpful you can be to them.
Educating your clients is extremely important and difficult. Most home buyers and sellers don't understand the need for a real estate expert. They view Realtors as unnecessary but mandatory fees. It is our job to ensure their understanding of the real value that we can bring to a real estate transaction. Sometimes it is a lot easier to educate a client through e-mail than it is over the phone. However, meeting with them in person is the necessary and the most efficient way to for educate your client.
Instead of trying to figure out how often to communicate with the client, just ask. They will always tell you what level of communication they prefer whether it be by phone or e-mail and how frequently.
A typical drip campaign will continue to plant the seed of your business; however, taking it a step further is what I recommend. If you can somehow continue to add value to their home search, they will have that much more reason to use you instead of a competing Realtor. For example, if you were able to find one home per week that was a great deal in your current real estate market and send it to all of your clients you would be adding value. Make sure that the information that you are providing in the e-mail is extremely helpful. If you cannot find something helpful for that week or month, do not send anything. The last thing you want to be is annoying. Starting a successful drip campaign is a huge commitment. It takes a lot of work and research on a weekly basis to provide quality and helpful information to your clients.