Search Engine Optimization and
Lead Generation for real estate agents and brokers
by Vern Clinton
If you have come to realize that your competitors are doing much better at using
their website to generate leads and you want to improve your results, this
article will be valuable to you. It discusses the three main
aspects of a successful Marketing and Lead Generation Program on the Internet.
- Your Web Site
- Is it attractive and easy to navigate?
- Does it have the information you have promised to
provide?
- Is it well maintained so that broken links and other
problems are taken care of in a timely manner?
- Does it motivate visitors to contact you with well
designed "calls to action"?
- Bringing visitors to your web site
- Attracting visitors (potential prospects) through
traditional advertising
- Attracting visitors through Search Engine Positioning
- Attracting visitors through "Pay per Click" search
engine ads.
- Following up with the lead prospects who contact you
- Telephone
- Email
- Direct Mail
For the purposes of this article I'll assume that you have a
Silk Shorts, Inc web site so that all of the criteria listed in #1 above are met
and, for the purposes of this article I'll assume that you know what to do with
a lead from your site when they contact you for information as listed in #3
above. That leaves...
Bringing Visitors to Your Web Site
- Traditional Advertising, print, direct mail,
telephone, signage, radio, television
Think of your web site as a salesperson who is "on floor
time" 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, who can speak effectively to 100 or more people
per day and never lose her enthusiasm. In all of your traditional
advertising and lead generation wouldn't you strongly emphasize and push the idea of calling any
time of day with any question about real estate?
Your first and most lucrative use of your site is to sell it to your
targeted prospective market and your sphere of influence emphasizing how
much it can help them in their research into buying a homes or other
property. In other words: teach them that everything they need to know
can be found on your site any time of the day or night from anywhere in the
world. (More... Do's and Don'ts,
Losing Prospects,
Names That Work)
- Search Engine Positioning (SEO, Search Engine
Optimization)
SEO is concerned with getting well indexed for your best search phrases on
the "Free" search engines. Probably a week doesn't go by when someone
isn't offering to get your site to the very first page for a couple of hundred
dollars or so. Give me a break! What search phrase?
Think about it. Take a phrase that you'd think
gets a large number of searches and that would generate a lot of leads
like "Sacramento Real Estate". A quick search on Google will show that
about 500,000 pages are in competition to come up first on that phrase.
Wordtracker reveals that in two months and 300 million searches, that phrase
comes up less than 500 times. That translates to
perhaps 150 to 200 for all search engines per day. So if you want a shot at a few of those
150 or so
searches per day you've got to compete with 500,000 others. Obviously
there's no easy cheap way to do that. It's possible, but it takes
months of work, monitoring and follow-up to get there. That costs money
and time and that's why I chuckle at the name "Free" search engine.
Don't spend your advertising dollars on Search Engine Positioning (SEO)
unless you have a clear idea of what you will get for your money and what it
will be worth to you. You will get a lot of hype from most salespeople
trying for your dollars.
So SEO can be a part of your marketing plan, but it's long range and
not cheap.
- Pay per Click
Instant gratification. Of the three methods I'm discussing PPC is the
only one that can produce a reliable stream of targeted traffic to your site
within a couple of days and at a reasonable cost--if it's done right.
And, what is "right"?
The trick with PPC is to do it in a way that's cost effective. With
expertise and time it can be done very cost effectively, however, without
that and without an efficient web site it's very easy to spend a great deal
of money with almost nothing to show for it.
So, in a nutshell, what Real Estate Internet Marketing
Plan is for you? Let me summarize what I suggest.
- Don't waste your money on driving traffic to your
site until you have a killer site like a Silk Shorts, Inc. site.
(Ahem...)
- Spend some time to figure out what each prospect is
worth and what portion of your cost of sale should go into your total
monthly advertising budget.
- Analyze your past experience with various traditional
advertising media and decide how much of your budget should go to each of
those and how much you are willing to invest in PPC.
- Find someone knowledgeable to set up your PPC program
who can monitor it and give you constant feedback as you
learn how to make it
work for you. Start slow and easy and build on successes.
- Take a small portion (if any) of your budget to be used to
work on your site's SEO. This is a long range project and it can't be
counted on for quick results as you can with PPC.
Remember that search engines do NOT tell anyone how they rank sites and they
do, in fact, CHANGE their criteria regularly because they don't want to be
"figured out". They want relevant well designed sites and if that is
not what you have, you can forget about any long term web site position for
any useful search phrase.
- Above all, don't try to do it yourself. Go out
and talk to prospects and find someone else to run the nitty gritty of your
program. You're too expensive to hire to do that work. It may
not be easy to find the right person so don't be in too much of a hurry.
You don't necessarily "get what you pay for" so approach the problem like
you would when you hire an assistant to help you conduct your everyday
business of sales and follow up.
- And, oh yes, one more thing.... Make darn sure
that when those Internet leads come in that you treat them like GOLD.
They're among the best leads you'll ever see. They'll cost you
a lot and you should work them to make them worth
that cost.
