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 want you, the right website and the right business, the right broker to make their decisions easy. Not guilty by irrational reasoning. (i.e. crazy in like) Your customers hear every message you send – intentional or not. Your attitude is nearly everything. Customers want you to show a certain degree of eagerness, but not desperation. They want you to believe in yourself and demonstrate why they should believe in you too. They want you to be fun but also someone they can lean on for help. They want to trust you.

The web version of chocolate and roses in the world of online real estate is:

1. Build your site to answer your customer’s questions.
2. Know your niche and be the customer’s expert on it.
3. Get to know your customers and what their pain points are.
4. Make searching on your site an intuitive engaging experience.
5. Translate what you offer into solving customer pain.
6. Build your site from the users perspective.
7. Make it easy to gather and share what they came for.
8. Use photo and video visuals liberally.
9. Create interesting non-pitchy content and give it away.
10. Always deliver on what you’ve promised.
11. Provide absolutely impeccable service always.
12. Optimize for SEO, rinse and repeat.

At the end of the day, what we’re working to cultivate is trust in an environment lacking human interaction. These are a just few of the ways that you can cultivate that trust, forge new relationships and enhance existing ones. Falling in love is just the first step; you have to deliver even after the bloom is off the rose.

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 out of 10 home buyers today are online.  The first business to grab a consumer’s attention is likely to get that consumer’s business, or generate revenue through the online traffic.  Buyers and sellers create income for whichever business has the most-accessible presence online.

All real estate companies are in competition.

Brokerages, individual agents, vendors, and syndicators collaborate in many useful and productive ways, but we are all in competition for the consumer’s dollar.  Brokers owe a high level of professional representation to our clients, while maintaining a competitive and sustainable business model at the same time.  When we disregard the competitive nature of our business, we lose focus in our decision making.

When you give away your listing, you give away SEO.

Unique content online is king for SEO.  Own a unique piece of online real estate, and you own the traffic and revenue that come along with it.  The more times you duplicate and syndicate that content, the more diluted it becomes, and the less-valuable your share of it becomes, in terms of SEO.  An individual listing is a unique and valuable piece of online property.

Who is #1 when buyers search for [Your City] real estate or homes for sale?

Is it a national syndication site?  Quite possibly.  When buyers search for your listing, “123 Main St ,City State”, they also probably find the syndicator first.  Why?  Because you gave it to them.  Thousands of real estate brokers give their SEO to that site every day.  Brokers create thousands of links to syndication sites’ listings, and effectively encourage their clients/consumers to do the same.

Is diluting your listing’s SEO good for your client?

Who is best to receive the inquiry from a buyer?  Better yet, who would the buyer want to receive his/her inquiry?  Trulia doesn’t know where Seattle homes are in the neighborhoods of Inverness or Arroyo.  Realtor.com can’t find Newport Shores or Surrey Downs, because it doesn’t list homes for sale in Bellevue in those neighborhoods (yes, I am pushing my own SEO right now).  A local agent would know, but they’ve all given their rights to that traffic away through SEO dilution.  It doesn’t matter who is “best”.  All that matters is who is “seen”.

Listings create consumer traffic.  Consumer traffic creates revenue. 

It’s true that these large sites currently have far more national traffic than most brokers’ local sites.  That traffic comes from brokers’ listings. Listings are the holy grail of online real estate.  Consumers certainly like maps and research features, but in the end their #1 goal is to find a home.  Without listings, a website is just an informational resource, without a solution to the home buyer’s ultimate need.  [Zillow has an amazing real estate website.  It used to generated its revenue through beverage advertising.  Until real estate brokers' listings and corresponding agent ads grew the revenue significantly, this company was not in a position to have the big, successful IPO they they had last year.]

Who should consumers find when they search for homes in your neighborhood?

That’s debatable, and really outside the SEO topic.  Most real estate brokers know dozens of local associates that they respect for their knowledge of the local market.  Unfortunately for them, they all point their web traffic to a national aggregator who may or may not.  Collectively, they’ve told the consumer to ask a syndication site.

Real Estate SEO will determine the direction of our industry in the long-term.

The companies that are successful selling real estate online will continue to gain greater power and influence over consumers, brokers, and even legislation that affects the real estate industry.  As a handful of companies gain larger shares of the market, more brokers are taking notice, but far too few are focusing on the source of that power.

SEO is your real estate online.  It is much like real estate in the physical world. 

Those who own the best real estate have usually worked hard for it, paid well for it, and will protect it fiercely.  The more they acquire, the more powerful they become.  Those who disregard its value and allow their real estate SEO to be acquired by others will see their influence wane and, over time, fail in their efforts.

In the end, brokers will decide on their own what is in the best interest of their clients, and their business.  The answer is not as cut-and-dry as many might assume.  Page views, traffic, experience, local knowledge, and a host of other factors will determine what is best for each individual’s clients.

Bottom Line:  Buyers will search.  They will find listings.  If they’re not at the syndication source, they’ll find them at the broker source.  The key is not in pointing as many people as possible to just any web site.  The key is pointing the right people to the right listing source.

You want to know how agents and brokers are really making money from social media?

It’s not from the engagement. It’s not from the connections they gain.

It’s from SEO.

Most of those making money with social media are doing it by floating their SEO efforts (which means more traffic/conversions). I obviously don’t have access to the hard numbers, but I know someone like Jay Thompson is making money from the SEO juice his site, PhoenixRealEstateGuy, has gained as a result of his social media activity over the past 5+ years. How does that happen? A number of ways. For starters, posts like this link to his site constantly because he’s one of the most well known real estate brokers in the country in the social media world. Secondly, he’s met LOTS of people via social media. And anyone that knows search engine optimization knows the way to win is to know LOTS of other individuals who own websites (and can link back to you). Well, Jay knows a ton of them. Anytime I think of or hear “Phoenix”? I — thousands across the country and world – think of Jay. That’s worth it’s weight in gold when it comes to SEO. Why? Because anytime a conversation about Phoenix comes up, there is a good chance I’m going to link to Jay. Oh yea — and all those conference mentions he gets? They don’t hurt either.

You likely already know getting a site to rank well is hard work if you’re going after even a somewhat competitive keyword. But to succeed on the web, we all know you have to spend time or money on it. You should already know the cost of neglecting SEO. It goes without saying that SEO is certainly a long way from dead. It’s just shifted away from strictly links, links, links as Facebook Likes, Tweets, and Google +1′s are transforming into the more common voting mechanisms of the web. It’s hard to measure precisely, but I think it’s fair to say anyone with a strong social media presence knows their social media efforts are massively helping their own SEO efforts.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, certainly use social media to increase engagement with your current sphere and find new contacts to increase your sphere of influence, but the real money is made by leveraging your social media to improve your own SEO.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

**Photo via MarkVitorillo

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 also be used to push traffic to your main site or to convert leads right on the smaller community sites.

The opposite camp would argue that it is not smart to spend valuable resources (time, money, and link juice) on any secondary sites.  Also, if not done carefully, this strategy can appear spammy and can even create brand confusion for consumers.

Both arguments make sense to me.  I am curious as to what all you tech savvy real state people out there reading this post think is best so please share in the comments section.  I thought this could make for an interesting discussion.

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 costs running under $10, you should register your name and use it for your blog or point it to your site, Existing clients might be able to remember your name but it’s unlikely that anyone else will know the name of an agent they have never met. More realistically, the prospect will be searching for property in a particular area, e.g. Mendocino Homes, Mendocino Properties or Mendocino Real Estate.

2. Short URL’s are better than long ones

“Joeisthebestrealestateagent.com” may seem like a good idea to Joe, but it’s a lot to remember and type for your customers. Shorter is better, even if it can’t say exactly what you want. The only exception to this rule might be if the name of your city is long. Shorter names tend to be easier to remember and easier to spell. Think of all of the websites you can remember, how complicated are their names?

3. Make it easy to spell

Does it pass the phone test? Call a friend on the phone and tell them the name of your website. Do they get it without you having to spell it? How difficult is it for them to navigate to your site during the conversation? Try it and find out. Also, be careful of double letters like www.carterrealestate.com, this domain uses a double r. The two r’s look a bit strange without capitalization. If you must have a domain with double letters, consider buying both spellings and any common misspellings.

4. Local is really important

Real estate search is a local experience. People look for homes in places. Try to incorporate your city name or area into your domain name. This is also good for SEO. With a name highly related to the content of your site, you’ll fare better with search engines and real estate shoppers. The words “Rentals”, “Properties”, “Condos” , “Waterfront”, “Real Estate”, “Commercial” or “Homes” can be easily combined with the areas you target, creating a domain name that is both descriptive and contains the highly important keywords.

5. Dot-Com extensions are better

When someone is surfing the web and they know the website’s name, they will try .com to start. The shortage of dot-com domains has led to the creation of dozens of other extensions. .net, .org, .us, .biz, .tv, .ly etc… Most people remember the web as being about dot-com. Remember the dot-com bust. No one talks about the dot-net bust. Businesses usually register with a non dot-com name because the dot-com is already taken. But be careful, or all of your hard work advertising and promoting a non dot-com site could end up driving traffic to the owner of the dot-com you didn’t register.

6. Avoid hyphenated domain names

There may be some incremental advantage in your search engine results with a hyphenated URL, like neveda-condo-sales.com. But on the whole, get the non hyphenated domain name first, then the hyphenated one to help with SEO. The name without hyphens is easier for users, so it should be the main domain on your servers. Point the dashed domain for the search engines.

7. Try to be descriptive

A good real estate site name will describe exactly what the site is about. In most cases it’s important for a person to be able to get some sort of sense what the website is about just by reading the domain name. There are lots of very successful businesses that contradict this advise, but you probably don’t have the luxury or the budget required to build a brand like twitter, amazon or apple.

LinkDiagnosis

The first thing you will notice about LinkDiagnosis is the amount of information provided:. linking url and its PageRank/Page Authority (and added bonus, Domain Authority), number of outbound links, landing page, link’s anchor text, and other data that was simply above my level of understanding. As comprehensive as the data is, it requires quite a bit of time to run full reports, even under the fastest setting. Also, a Firefox extension must be downloaded in order to view full reports, which can then be exported as CSV files for further analysis.

OpenSiteExplorer

Powered by the SEO geniuses at SEOMoz, OpenSiteExplorer is an excellent tool . Data is broken down summarily, such as Title and Url of linking page, Anchor Text, Page Authority (which some argue is a better metric than PageRank when gauging a page’s value/trust), Domain Authority, and nofollow attribute. With a free account, information is limited to only the top 5 links. For those who are willing to shell out the money, sign up for a free 30 day free trial and memberships start at $99 thereafter. Use in conjunction with the popular SEOmoz toolbar and link analysis becomes as efficient as it gets.

Majestic SEO

Very well known among professional SEO’s, the Majestic SEO Site Explorer and Backlink History tools provide useful information in a very user-friendly format. Choose between the Historic Index and the Fresh Index (from the past 30 days). With over 20 Billion pages in their database, it is comprehensive and link data includes top backlinks (including anchor text), top pages, number of linking domains, referring IP addresses, etc. Paid subscriptions start at £29.99 but with the amount of information provided, it is worth it for those who are serious about planning and executing link strategies.

Blekko

Blekko is a search engine and signing up for a free account is required in order to access SEO information. Upon searching a url on Blekko, there is a ‘SEO’ link below each individual result, which provides a fair amount of information – including inbound links, crawl data, and duplicate content. Link information is broken down by State and Country of origin, linking domain (not specific url though), number of links from linking domain, and host rank. Upon clicking on the number of links from a specific linking domain, the results show the linking page, the anchor text, and the landing page. Although not the most efficient of set ups, the sheer amount of information is worth the time and effort. A caveat, their database is much smaller than those of Google or Bing and the SEO information provided is reflective of such, particularly for non-US based websites.

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of ALL available link-analysis tools, just a brief review of ones that have been used by the author since the demise of YSE. Comment away and share your favorites.

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 to bring a minicomputer to market on a very short timeframe, are encouraged to cut corners on design.

Tom West describes his motto as “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well,” or “If you can do a quick-and-dirty job and it works, do it.”

The super mini computer successfully launched in 1980.  Causing a miraculous turnaround for the ailing Data General.

Dear Reader, I give you the same advice in your online real estate marketing.  In the four years that I’ve been grinding my nose in front of the computer screen — blogging, link building, hiring, planning, brainstorming, writing…you know the drill — the path of  “quick and dirty” as long as it works, as long as it gives you a smidgen of new knowledge (therefore experience), will lead you a step closer to a profitable website.

Not a great writer? Set up a Google alerts on your keywords and fluff the s*&T out of the headlines that pop in your Inbox, until you reach word 300′th.  Do it every day.  Or every week.

Wanna learn about SEO? Choose one and one only — be it David Naylor, Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, Brett Tabke, Sugarrae or Aaron Wall — whoever you deemed in your best guess to be worth following, follow him (or her). And him alone.  Put on your horse blinders.  Not surprisingly, this will illicit naysayers, “Oh, you need a broad focus, blah…blah..blah..blah..blah…”

Listen to me: You don’t have time to listen to all angles.  In our field, you barely have time to eat.  Find the truth and stick to it.  In choosing who to follow, trust your gut instinct on who you think knows their stuff and get to know his strategies, his world view, his marketing — then own it.  Walk in their path as later on you will eventually find yours.  But you have to have focus at the start.

A Realtor in Oakland asked for advice on how to compete with big brand real estate brokers, I told her what I’m sharing to you now — train with the best. When I started in 2007, I wanted to be in the same cage with the heavyweights — the insurance lead guys, online college education affiliates, indefatigable e-commerce webmasters who compete with the Amazon ‘s and Ebay’s, even off-shore gambling lead generators — they were the best, most persevering online marketing misfits in the game (still are).  I desperately wanted to be in their league.  (I detest “pretty face marketing”.)  This gave me the edge in competing in Real Estate keywords.  It wasn’t a walk in the park, but with that mindset, I was a year or two ahead of my peers.

To be clear, I learned a lot from the Teresa Boardman’s, Dustin Luther’s and Hanan Levin’s (Brilliant. Unorthodox. I still ask for advice) — all online real estate trail blazers — but to truly get ahead of the pack you need to think outside real estate and systematically push yourself in learning through experience.  Start making mistakes, start experimenting. Test.

You will go farther than you planned.

(*You can follow me on Twitter)

Click here to view the embedded video.

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 the buyer broker.)

One of the hardest things about building a site is around the sixth month, after investing low-to-mid four figures in coding and programming, investing six-full-season-DVD-set worth of reading and writing, after essentially talking to yourself (otherwise known as first few months of blogging), you would hear some agent in another city (hopefully not yours!) closing $000,000 deals from his online leads!

The truth is it takes approximately 18 months to really see the fruits of your labor.  Why does it take that long? Here’s a rough overview (if you’re targeting organic rankings):

• Researching domains and keywords (plotting your on page SEO through content positioning.)
• Looking at other sites for inspiration and ideas.
• Coding and programing — even if you hire someone, it still takes time explaining, planning and guiding.
• Content creation and writing filler content/introductions for every page.
• Fixing, tweaking, improving bugs and implementing new ideas
• If you have a blog, content creation on a consistent basis.
• Link Building
• Promotion
• Site aging
• Rankings
• Leads
• Closing

Not too mention when you acquire a good link, say you get accepted at BOTW directory, it still takes about 2-3 months to feel its pull on your rankings.

And yes, you can go the short route of Pay Per Click, which is a viable path especially if you have no time and could afford tens of $6 clicks — could go significantly higher if targeting competitive keywords.  (Actually now that I think of it, a mixture of both organic and PPC is ideal once you feel more confident with your site’s conversion capability )

It takes time...but here is the paradox:  It gets easier and easier.  WHAT DO YOU MEAN?! You get rewarded for what you put in.  And the earlier you start, the better.  The primary example is how major search engines treat an aged site with good content.  In other words, search engines don’t treat all sites equally.  The older you are, the more trusting they become.  (If only that could bleed to real life, I probably would be a Justin Timberlake.)

Search engines, at the end of the day, follow people.

But make no mistake about it, you will need laser-like focus on the first year. Building and promoting a successful real estate site requires vision, endurance and commitment to see it through.

When somebody asks me if they should start blogging or do online marketing, I tell them that if you are serious in producing results, you cannot treat it as another advertising tool.  Online marketing is not just another tool you use; either it is your primary tool (along with sphere of influence) or it is not.  I have seen too many colleagues start and wither away.  Truth is, not everyone is willing to put the time and effort to succeed online.

But it is worth it.  Last month I closed my first five figure commission.  My biggest (from an online lead) since I stared in 2007.  Without the reach of the internet, she is somebody, as my cousin Bob puts it, waaaaay out of my league.  But she bit.

I want to encourage you:  Keep. At. It.  Incremental improvement is key.  Check and balance regularly.  Because it will come.  Hopefully sooner than mine.