When creating a website, the agent must remember that they are an extension of their broker and therefore must get approval for the features and how they choose to “brand” their site. For example, the company name must always be shown on the website with the agent’s own name.
The agent has the responsibility to not only be fair to the public, but to their competing agents and broker as well.
Mashup. Just the word sounds unusual and “techy”. Many ask what this term means. We find from Wikipedia the following definition:
“In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services.” In other words it’s a convergence or combination of several tools or widgets.
The most useful mashup is the use of combining the functionality of the IDX listing addresses with the Google mapping tool. This is probably the best of all real estate mashup tools. When doing a Map Search, after the search parameters are input, the map pops up with small balloons/pins indicating where each of the resulting matches can be found.
Before the you can even build your website, you need to know who your target audience is. This goes hand in hand with your real estate SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Is it buyers, sellers, or both? While the answer is both, the better answer is primarily buyers with some features for sellers. Why? Because it’s the buyer that originates the transaction, and it’s the buyer that is doing most of the searching on the Internet.
We’ve all seen our honest share of terrible MLS photos. It’s sadly not uncommon to see terrible real estate pictures include blurry images, dark rooms, people, animal, pets, the agent’s car in the driveway, reflections of the person taking the picture in the mirror, or my personal favorite of pictures showing a snow covered house in July. (And the agent is probably wondering why it still hasn’t sold!)
To help you take pictures that sell houses and have fantastic real estate photos you can use for your Internet listings, property flyers, the MLS and newspaper ads, here are some simple tips of ways to take fantastic real estate pictures.
Please help save our real estate industry. On July 21, 2010, our President signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It’s another federal statute responding to the financial meltdown of 2008 that occurred in part because the Federal government unwisely forced banks to take on risky loans.
In reality, this statute was nothing more than government taking over our industry with the most sweeping regulatory changes since the Great Depression. It’s just another regulation that says, “Government knows better than you how to run your business.”
It’s very important that you bookmark all of the websites that we mention in this chapter. To go to NAR’s website, you may do what I originally did, which was to guess that the site should be NAR.org. If you type this in, you’ll see that this is the National Association of Rocketry, which of course has nothing to do with real estate. You probably know that the best resource for real estate information is www.REALTOR.org. NAR also has many other websites. One of the most use in the country is www.REALTOR.com, which has a rich amount of information also, but is mainly a repository of listings from around the country.
Most people would say that the biggest technological leap mankind has made in the last century (or ever for that matter) has been that of flight. From that first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to the moon landing in 1969. This is our real flight history. In fact this technological leap was so huge that it is always held up as the defining line for any other achievement. “If we can put a man on the moon, then . . .” and you fill in the blank.
Remember in the ’60′s when you’d hear the slogan “Power to the People”? Well . . . it’s BAAAAACK! Only this time it’s not a revolution of chaos, it’s a revolution of information. Look in any newspaper and you’ll see the majority of major stories are from news sources such as the AP, UPI and other wire feeds.
The online version of this is the online press release, which is the very same as the printed news release except it is electronic and much more viral.
RSS feeds have turned the country’s most prestigious newspapers into gutter swilling money pits. They have also turned those who know how to use them into their own entrepeneurial news organizations. It use to be in the late 19th century and early 20th century owning and operating a syndicated newspaper had a great deal of clout and profit. Not only could you control information, but how it was presented. The larger the newspaper, the larger the power and clout . . . and profits.
Many people wonder why it is that some people seem to always be so high in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions). They may have just as many back links, the same Page Rank, the same quality content and maybe even similar keyword phrases. All things being equal (which of course they never are), sometimes it comes down to the domain name that the person chooses. If you are selling real estate in Denver, having a domain name like DenverRealEstate.com, MyDenverRealEstate.com, OnlineDenverRealEstate.com, etc. will many times flag the search engines that your website is really all about “Denver real estate”, which is the search term that was typed in.
Real Estate SEO to a great degree depends upon the knowledge of “The Long Tail Theory” from the book “The Long Tail Theory: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” by Chris Anderson. To briefly sum up this theory, you have to understand that websites are likely to receive most of their search engine visitors through a large variety of low-volume search queries instead of a handful of major keyword phrases.
Therefore focusing on developing the keyword phrases which receive lower volumes of search traffic will lead to an increase in the overall amount of visitors from search engines to your website. Tune in to this short “pocket presentation” to learn more.
Real estate SEO demands the choice of effective keyword phrases. If you’re interested in real estate website positioning, then listen up. Once you know that choosing effective keyword phrases is one of the most important phases in getting your website found, the next thing you need to know is that the choice of those highly competitive keyword phrases like “Denver real estate” or “Boston homes” are rarely the best ones to go after. Especially when you are just starting out. Why? This short video is a trailer of our full featured educational videos which will give you the full story.
When creating a website, the agent must remember that they are an extension of their broker and therefore must get approval for the features and how they choose to “brand” their site. For example, the company name must always be shown on the website with the agent’s own name.
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