- How are you connecting with your past clients and COI on Facebook?

- How are you using business pages? How are you driving traffic to the business pages and then to your website?

- Are you advertising on Facebook and how?

- What Facebook apps have you been using and how effective have they been?

- What is the coolest thing you have seen an IDX vendor implement for Facebook and why?

- What kind of app would you like to see someone create for Facebook that would help your business and why?

- What SEO benefit have you seen from Facebook and how would one implement it?

- Do you think Bing is more relevant now since they power the web search on Facebook?

-    What questions would you like to get answered from Geek estate readers?
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Sharing ideas and networking helps us all grow plus gets us to start thinking out of our own little box. I am really excited to see what fellow Geek Estate contributors and readers have been doing on Facebook to take their business to new levels

Skitch is great because you can take a screen shot of anything, mark tit up with notes and share with fellow workers, clients or friends.

Some of the cool editing features are:
- Cropping images by dragging the inner frame.
- You can enhance your images with arrows, text, shapes and even sketch.
- Images can be organized with tags and sets online.

Sharing features include:
- Share your work fast & easy on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc..
- Free image uploading and sharing whether you have a make or use their online version.
- Online users get a blog-like profile page for showing off their screenshots and creations.
- Easily upload to Flicker, MobileMe and even your own server
- Drag & Drop allows you to drag right into an email or to desktop

I definitely would recommend giving Skitch a try. I found it the best way for me to communicate with my programmers and clients by quickly marking up a screen shot with instructions.

See an Example Below:

It would be great to hear your take on the market in your area. Where it is now and the direction you think it’s headed. It would also be great to hear what you think is going to help things get better in the future.

Good business people make adjustments depending on the market conditions. I would love to hear what you are doing to grow your business in these challenging times. Especially if it includes technology

Sharing is a great way to build friendships and help each other. I look forward to what you have to say!

Before the test, all three sites were not allowing the property pages to be indexed, but were using our integrated IDX solution that tracks all pages views of every property the user viewed while searching.  (Note: Most framed IDX solutions would not be tracking those pages a user is viewing as part of the sites traffic. That is why page views of a site that uses a framed solution and then converts over to an integrated one go up drastically.)  Once the property pages of the three sites were indexed most of property pages had top 10 rankings and the traffic increased dramatically.

Below are the combined average numbers and results after the property pages were indexed. You might be surprised, I was.

-    48% increase in new unique visitors. (major increase in traffic)
-    Overall site bounce rate increased by 25%. (30% to 37.5%)
-    Page Views per user dropped by 28% (9.5 to 6.84)
-    Number of sign ups or conversions remained about the same.

The tests we ran show that the traffic will definitely increase if your site has enough authority to get top rankings for the individual property pages, but the quality of traffic seems to be low.  The bounce rate on property pages compared to city/area real estate pages seems to be drastically higher and have a very low conversion rate.

SEO Advantage or Disadvantage? You be the judge. We did not see an increase or decrease in rankings on the city/area real estate pages or the home page for their keywords due to having the listings indexed. I have heard that search engines like Google are now comparing bounce rates as one of the many ranking factors.  I am not sure if they look at the overall bounce rate of the site, a specific page or combination. That may be something to ask an SEO expert.

I think there are much better ways to drive quality traffic that converts at a much higher rate than indexed listings. I don’t think they are going to hurt you and may actually help you get a few extra deals. If you have an IDX provider that offers index-able IDX listings, I would definitely take advantage of it , especially since we were not tracking phone calls that may have come in due to someone searching for a specific property.  (Having indexed listings is more affordable advertising than in a paper or magazines any day!)

I am going to continue to keep my property pages indexed even though the quality of traffic appears to be low.

I have come up with a list of different ways agents can drive traffic to their sites. I have put them in order of what I think are most effective and where I would spend my time, money and energy. I based my list on tracking the results through analytics of agents I have been helping. I would love for you to share methods you have had good success with and anything you think should be on the list.

1. Craigslist definitely is the best affordable way to drive a lot of traffic to your site and it is free. It has a pretty low average bounce rate (24%) compared to other methods. The average page views per user is 10, which is pretty good. Plus the conversion rate of sign ups is slighter higher from the Craigslist users than the Google CPC users.

2. Google Adwords is probably the most effect way to drive a lot of traffic to your site if you have a marketing budget. If the ads are put together correctly and land on the right page you will have a higher conversion rate. The agents sites I have been helping have been getting around a 20% Bounce Rate. The average page views per user has been 13 from the campaigns we have been tracking. Some of the agents I have been helping have also been using Homegains CPC product and the bounce rate has been running about 21%. The average page views per user is 16, but it is much more expensive than Google Adwords to get the same amount of traffic.

3. Syndicating listings through Real Estate Portals like Zillow & Trulia, Realtor.com, Listhub & others.  Although the traffic from these portals is not even close to Craigslist or Adwords, I would definitely still get your listings syndicated in as many portals as you can as long as they link to your site or at least have your contact information. The traffic from them was not significant.  Realtor.com drove the most traffic but had a higher bounce rate (48%) with a lower page view per user (2.3). Zillow was the next most effective source of portals with a bounce rate of 32% with 5 page views per user.

4. Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Activerain) can drive some traffic to your site, but the users appear to be less focused on buying or selling homes. Of the sites I tracked Facebook & Twitter actually drove more traffic then the real estate portals, but the bounce rate and page views were horrible.  Here are the stats:
FaceBook – 55% Bounce rate / 1.7 page views per user
Twitter – 78% Bounce rate / 1.3 page views per user
Youtube – 49% Bounce rate / 3 page views per user
Activerain – 44% Bounce rate / 3.6 page views per user

5. Directories like Yahoo, Dmoz and industry ones. These may drive some traffic, but  are more worth getting listed in for the link back to your site. It is a bonus if they drive some traffic.

The analytic stats used a combined average of the following 4 sites: St Louis Real Estate Today, Coastal Bay, The Desert On The Market & Home Sales San Diego.

It is very important when implementing any marketing campaign to make sure that you have some sort of analytics or tracking system in place. I prefer Google Analytics. It is free and you can set up goals to measure your results. If you do not have a way to measure your conversions, you will never have an efficient, effective & predictable way to drive traffic to your site.

These are the most effective ones I have been able to come up with that are track able through analytics. I am sure there are probably other effective methods of driving traffic to your website and would love for you to join the conversation & share them.

Site speed does make a better user experience Definitely something all website owners should consider when developing a site.

Is this just another way for agents to avoid actually making contact with the person to see if they can help them? Wouldn’t it be better to actually contact them to see what you can do to help?  Maybe then you can ask them if they are interested in getting your weekly or monthly emails. That might be a better approach before you start spamming them with email letters of how great you are and what an expert you are.

I also wonder how many of the users receiving these annoying drip emails are actually hitting the spam button?  If enough Yahoo, MSN or AOL users hit their spam button instead of just deleting them, all the mail from that server will start going into that email providers spam. Is it really worth jeopardizing the daily email alerts of new properties going out? I would say it is not.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

The goal here is to compare real stats to see how agents can convert more business from their sites. I would like to share some stats from my Hawaii site from goals we set up and we will hopefully get some agents contributing what they are doing and their stats.

Here is how my site works so you can get a better idea of the stats and what they represent: It allows the user to search easily and get results quickly. I then have it set up to load the actual property detailed page when they click on a property from the results to get more details. Then a light box sign up form is displayed to them. They can see what they are going to get. I think this is the most effective way if you are going to require a sign up.  (It can also be set up to let them view a few properties and then prompt the sign up process.  I ran A/B testing and found the way I am currently doing had a 4-5% higher sign up rate.)

Here is 2 months (end of last year) of stats with goals set up in Google Analytics:

Sign Up Form Displayed = 14,816

Sign Up Form Completed = 3682

Email Requests Submitted = 766

Actual sign ups were 26% and of those who signed up almost 21% sent in an email request about more information. That gave my team 3682 people to call and 766 to engage in further conversation about real estate. Plus we also had 3682 people now signed up getting daily email alerts of new properties, which will result in more contacts with the potential homebuyers and sellers. I truly believe the more chances you give yourself to make contact with your users the more sales you will be able to do.

I would be interested to see if anybody has some stats on either required or voluntary sign ups. I would really like to see some stats that somebody has been tracking on their voluntary sign up sites (Percentage of users to sign ups and percentage of those to email requests, etc….).

If you are not tracking these things you probably should start so you can make a business decision based on real stats instead of just feelings.

1. They focus more of their time on other ways of generating business.
This is great if you are able to have a more diversified approach mean while still converting a decent amount of business from your website. Some of the other ways of generating business (prospecting expired listings, FSBO’s, past clients and COI) are still highly effective if done consistently. If you are spending time doing any of these methods you may want to find a way to get them to start using your website as a tool. This could help convert more of those prospects.

2. They don’t have search engine traffic.
Possible Solutions: A. Educate yourself on SEO and either do it your self or hire someone to do it for you (focus on the low hanging fruit first). B. Think about doing some CPC campaigns, but only if your site is easy to use and set up to convert leads into business. C. Always promote your site through Craigslist ads, Facebook, Twitter and any other promotional stuff your are doing.

3. Their websites are too busy (noisy).
Possible Solutions: Try cleaning up your pages and not having so many widgets and clutter. You worked hard to get the user their for a reason (don’t distract them). Keep the page focused and clean. Make the property search the main focus not a hyper link to a search that is hard to locate.

4. Their sites are not easy to use.
Solutions: Make sure your IDX search is easy to use and gets the user into search results quickly.  If the user has to work at it, you are definitely going to lose a high percentage.  If you use a required registration make sure the user can see & knows what they are going get before you ask them to sign up.

5. Their follow up is weak.
Solutions: Follow up on email requests from the site ASAP. If you are not your competitors are If you require registration you should be calling them ASAP and asking them if there is anything you can do to help them. Most people really appreciate this and it will keep them using your site if it works well!

I am always looking for ways to get my conversions rates higher and new ways of generating business. Currently my team is generating about 90 – 95% of our closings from my personal site, which is well into the triple digits. We probably should be focusing a little more energy on other things as well to get a little more balanced. I would love to hear what you are doing to increase your business from your website and how others can increase their closings.

Bob Wilson has been a San Diego real estate agent since 1990. He has been a leader and student of the search world enabling him to stay ahead of the curve since 1998 when he launched his first real estate site. He also does consulting for other real estate agents across the country plus clients in other verticals.

Justin Britt is the Head-Web-Head over at Wasabi Marketing Elements and has been doing SEO consulting since 2001. Their clients are in real estate, travel, music, activities and sporting goods plus other spaces. He also over sees their online marketing and website usability for their clients plus is involved other online businesses. Justin is also a Geek Estate contributor.

Here are the questions:

What are the 3 most important things someone should do when starting out?
- Bob’s Response:
1- Read Steve Krug’s “Don’t make me Think” before they doing anything at all so they understand the importance of getting the information architecture right.
2- Get the information architecture right. If you get traffic, but it doesn’t convert, then nothing else matters.
3- Start with a small spend PPC campaign so you can get an idea of what traffic to target and have some results to measure and test. This will help you tweak not only your site architecture, but also the search queries you target. This will give you valuable info on terms that convert, and will generate some traffic to start with so you are not sitting around for 6 months waiting for that first lead.

- Justin’s response:
1- Before even thinking about building your website you need to get your SEO thoughts organized. Whether that means your doing the SEO work yourself or hiring a professional this is the first thing you need to do.
2- Get a solid keyword list going (using a small PPC campaign to measure and test traffic as Bob suggests is a tactic I use). Make a plan around these keywords for link and content development. Attack the long tail stuff first. Once your site is powerful enough, then go after the head.
3- Once you have your keyword plan, begin developing content. I’d say start with a minimum of 100 pages of original, useful content to launch your site.

What shouldn’t they do?
- Bob’s Response:
Do not start by making your plan all about going after the most obvious, most competitive terms, If your initial target is “city real estate”, it will be awhile before you see any traffic. The same goes for PPC. Starting off with the most expensive terms without first learning the nuances of how Adwords works is a fast and easy way to blow through a lot of money.

- Justin’s response:
Don’t start designing your site until you complete the first 3 tasks above. The first 3 tasks will help you understand the flow and architecture of your site. This will save you time and money because you won’t have to go back and change something that you forgot.

What questions should they ask before hiring a person or firm to do SEO for them?
- Bob’s Response:
1 – How long have you been doing this? Experience is huge. First hand experience with how the engines have evolved over the years cannot be underestimated.
2 – What is your experience in this vertical? Ask to see results for highly competitive terms. Anyone can rank for longtail.
3 – How will you get links to my site? What are your top 3 strategies? Show me examples. If they dont tell you because they think you will do it yourself, then move on.
4 – Will my links still be there when our contract is over? Many companies generate links within their own network of sites. Leave the company/network and you lose the links.
5 – Can you get me to #1 for “city real estate” during the contract period? This is not as absurd as iot sounds. It is a good way to see if they will blow smoke your way. Be very specific with your expectations. How they address these expectations will tell you a lot.

- Justin’s response:
This is a tough one. There are a lot of fast talking people who call themselves SEO professionals that are nothing more then spammers and scammers. I would make sure to ask…

1 – To see websites with successful ranking results for competitive keywords–preferably in the vertical you are interested in (in this case real estate).
2 – For references for the websites they’re showing you and make sure you speak with the website owners.
3 – How they plan to get you to the top of the SERPs. If the main strategy isn’t link building–don’t bother. Even if the main strategy is link building, you don’t want it to be spammy. So ask them about their link building strategies and how they will get links to your site. If it’s directory submissions, link trading and forum and blog posting only, be weary.
4 – If they’ll work on a performance basis. This will mean if the SEO pro succeeds you will have to pay them more then if you paid them up front, but if they don’t perform you pay nothing. I personally love working on a performance basis because I’m confident in what I do and like making that extra money or ownership interest for my hard work.

How important is the domain they are working with?
- Bob’s Response:
If its a new domain, then as close to an exact match for targeted terms is best. The domain name is less important if its older with authority and links.

- Justin’s response:
The domain you are using is extremely important. If possible you want to have an aged domain (with a history of backlinks and content related to your new site) to begin working with. Otherwise, if you start with a new domain you will most likely come across Google’s “sandbox”. Expect 10-12 months in the sandbox if you decide you go with a brand new URL.

When choosing a new domain, many people like to get keywords in their domain. While this does work I don’t think it’s as important as branding. With my site, I had the opportunity to use hawaiirealestate.com, but I chose hawaiilife.com because of the ability to brand “Hawaii Life” as a business and brokerage. Moving forward this will be important with Google. The more branded your business and URL are, the less likely it will be considered spam.

Would you suggest hiring someone to do SEO or do you think it is better to gain the knowledge to do it yourself?
- Bob’s Response:
It depends on the person. A top agent who spends most of their time on revenue producing activities and gets results from those activities would probably be ill-advised to do their own SEO. For them, a well managed PPC campaign may be the best strategy. They already understand ROI, and if they are not under capitalized, then PPC is probably the best fit for their business plan. The knowledge they can gain from the PPC campaign will give them a good base going forward if they decide they want to play on the organic side. If they hire it out, they need to have a good understanding of what will happen at the end of the contract.

If you have more time than money, then learning how to do this yourself is probably your only choice. The basics are out there and easy to find. The problem is that with over 5000 SEO blogs, there is also a lot of incorrect information out there. The folks that know what they are doing are generally not the ones freely sharing anything beyond the basics with daily blog posts.

My concern with most public SEO forums is that you often have the blind leading the blind. One exception to that would be WebMasterWorld. I would start there by reading everything that is written by one of the admins, Tedster. You will still see a lot of noise and garbage, but stalk the admins and mods and you will get good info.

There are a few private pay to play forums that are worth the money. #1 on my list is Aaron Wall’s SEO training program. It isn’t cheap, but it’s the best SEO training out there for the money.

- Justin’s response:
Personally, I think it’s better to do the SEO work yourself. This is because you love, live and breathe your business (or at least you should be). However, this is not a reality for most. If you’re a real estate broker or agent, the best thing you can be doing for your business is probably sales. If this is the case, I’d try and bring an SEO person in on a performance based / ownership interest contract. If the SEO has ownership interest and their pay is tied to the website’s performance, they will work harder to promote the website.

With the search engines always changing their algorithm, what do you think one should focus on going forward?
- Bob’s Response:
Quality content that will attract links.

- Justin’s response:
This really depends on where you are at with your website and the SEO of the site. The #1 most important thing (for the foreseeable future) will be quality content development which will attract natural links. If you already have great content but nobody is linking to you, consider a site redesign. You’d be surprised how much easier it is to get links when your site looks great. If you already have great link development then here’s what I’d focus on for 2010:

1 – Relationships – develop strong, long lasting relationships with related websites. These will pay off huge.
2 – Social Networks – This is not what everybody thinks so read on…social networks will not bring you nearly as much business as focusing your time and energy on search–but if you can get your website / business name mentioned often in social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter this could count as votes (like incoming links) in Google’s algo.
3 – Local – Google’s Universal search will often show up above their search results, so be sure to work on local.
4 – Site speed – Google has tools for this…use them.

Are incoming links or fresh content more important these days?
- Bob’s Response:
Fresh content without links wont rank well. Older content with links can rank extremely well.

- Justin’s response:
Fresh timely content can attract backlinks, but it’s hard to beat aged incoming links. Since you didn’t use the word “aged” in your question I’d say you need fresh content to attract new incoming links. So fresh content is more important.

Any closing words of wisdom?
- Bob’s Response:
Knowledge is power. A who’s who of search experts who know their stuff can be found here: http://www.pubcon.com/bios/
If you are going to read about this stuff, start with the ones on that list.

- Justin’s response:
Do not underestimate the time and budget it will take to rank in the natural SERPs. Work will likely take several years to really solidify your rankings. And unlike PPC’s where once you spend the money it’s gone, SEO work done on your website is an investment in your company.

I would like to thank both Bob and Justin taking the time to answer these questions. They definitely get it and have some great advise to share. Hopefully their answers will get an interesting and informative conversation going that can help you achieve great success!

If you would like to personally contact Bob or Justin you can reach them at:

Bob Wilson – 858-382-5820 or bobwilson@gmail.com

Justin Britt – 808-826-0026 or Justin@wasabihawaii.com