Category Archives: SEO

How to make your customers fall in love with your website In the court of online real estate, your customers are judge and jury, but the testimony that you hear will take place out of earshot. The rules are unwritten but they are set in stone. Give your customers a really good reason to trust you, like you and feel like you can serve their needs and they will toss aside their inhibitions, along with their reluctance to part with their business. That’s because they … Read More »

[Pre-emption of syndication flack:  I syndicate.  Most brokers do.  Many value the additional exposure in the current situation.  This isn't a blanket condemnation of syndication.  It's merely an analysis of the SEO byproduct of that action.] The real estate industry is buzzing about Edina Realty and ARG pulling their listings from syndicators.  The announcement, one strong view, and a different response. Most of the arguments about syndication are ignoring the elephant in the room. Real estate brokers and syndication sites are battling for SEO. 9 … Read More »

We all need to make money from the activities we spend our time on. Social media is no different. Every so often, there is talk about social media being a waste of time and the ROI not being there since most agents can’t directly attribute transactions back to clients they received from social media. But, make no mistake about it — there are agents and brokers making money from social media. But not in the way that you think. You want to know how agents … Read More »

At a recent real estate marketing conference that I attended, they pushed the idea of building multiple community sites that are laser focused on one area to compliment your big central site.  I thought the idea was interesting and worth consideration but I am not totally sold on it.  There are two schools of thought on this issue. One says that it is smart to build smaller niche community sites that will help to further brand you in neighborhoods you are interested in.  They can … Read More »

If you are searching for a good domain name for your real estate business, give it some thought before you take the plunge. With millions of websites in the world, you need every advantage you can get. Here are a few things to think about when choosing a domain name. 1. Your name is great but maybe not for real estate Though you should own the URL for your name, that shouldn’t be the primary way people find your site. With annual domain name registration … Read More »

For many prolific real estate agents, SEO has become an essential facet of their lead generation, surpassing printed media, direct marketing, etc. And although algorithms used by search engines continue to evolve and place weight on different metrics, links remain a constant factor having a big impact on SERP’s. Up until Yahoo Site Explorer perished, it was a favorite tool among SEO’s for link analysis – particularly when researching competitor’s link profiles. Yahoo Site Explorer continues under Bings Webmaster Tools, but as it only provides … Read More »

The topic of last night’s #retechchat was WordPress SEO Strategies. Here is the text transcript that I saved for those who want to read through the entire discussion: Download it HERE (best to use TextEdit on a Mac from what I hear). Alternatively, you can view the discussion on TwapperKeeper under the #retechchat hashtag. Lastly, if you’d like to vote for next week’s topic – that can be done here. Hope to see you next week!

Tom West, the central character in the Pulitzer Prize winning book “Soul of a New Machine” once said: “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.” Back in the 70′s, Tom along with perhaps the finest company of computer engineers ever assembled sought to build Eclipse MV/8000. Under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure a group of computer engineers needed to design and build a next generation computer. A running theme in the book is the tension between engineering quality and haste: the engineers, challenged … Read More »

Here’s a 15 minute video on the topic of real estate video and website strategies from the Keller Williams National Convention. The panel discussion included Carey Sylvester, Kenn Renner, Ben Kinney, and Sue Adler. Kenn, Ben, and Sue are all driving significant business from their web efforts, so certainly a panel worth learning from. [Disclosure: Sue Adler is a client of Virtual Results]

MY WIFE WILL VIOLENTLY PROTEST, but is building and marketing a successful site not unlike half of the pain and time of a full term pregnancy?  It starts with euphoria (not always well thought out), it starts growing on you, it becomes a reality, you eagerly wait for any spark of life, you look at it every morning and evening, then… there it is…*gasps*..a very young offspring that needs further care, diaper-changing and baby talk. (I had client share her life story just before signing … Read More »