1. Optimize your site for geographic-specific keywords.

Depending on the competitiveness of your geographic region and industry, this is a quick and easy way for you to start ranking for various keywords that local shoppers are using to search in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. To do this, make sure that the Page Title, URL, H1 tag and page content of your web pages include your geographic keyword phrase and that you are consistent across all elements. For example, check out this page, which illustrates geographic keyword optimization done right. By doing this, this company is more likely to pull in consumers in Newington, CT who are looking for replacement windows and siding. Remember, if you have multiple pages for each town/city you service, make sure they are different enough so the search engines don’t tag them as duplicate content!

A Professional Realtor blog is a marketing tool like postcards, ads or word of mouth. A website is a tool to market your services, generate leads and convert them to customers. Dollar for dollar websites are a great place to spend your marketing budget. Each postcard costs $0.44 just for the stamp, sending 1000 postcards costs around $500. For each 1000 postcards you will usually generate on average five leads. Contrast that with a blog that given proper promotion can provide you with greater exposure, more leads and in addition create lasting relationships to help you convert them to customers. All for the same price.

Potential, past and future clients visit and return to your site for content you provide. As a realtor you can provide many interesting types of content either from sources such as MLS or from personal experience and knowledge. Most people will visit your site for up to date listing information and return to view updated information or newer listings. It’s important to make the listings easy to share since your visitors will be sending them around gathering their friends, family and spouses opinion. A link is much easier to share then making people enter write down and enter the MLS number. A second source of content for your professional real estate blog is local information about the area. When showing homes people ask you all sorts of questions about the neighborhood, write these down, then write a blog post about each question. If one person asked you the question chances are more people have the same question and probably searching for it on google. If you create a post about it they will find your website.

Your professional real estate website is a showcase for your services, invest time in building up your site. Make sure it looks like a site you would trust using. Keep the information on it current and targeted to your audience and when they are looking to rent or purchase their next house they will choose you.

Over 60,000 agents serve the New England area, all of them looking for new clients. Consumers now have many options when they search the web for a Realtor or property. They can visit specific brokerage websites like RE/MAX or Coldwell Banker, browse listings at Trulia or Redfin, search Google, and much more. Most Realtor website discussion focuses on SEO and being one of the first 10 results that come up for certain search terms. While this is good practice, it remains true that all websites have the same goals and that there are already plenty of resources out there that discuss SEO in depth. I will therefore instead focus on what happens when people reach your website and how you can influence their decision to choose you as their agent.

Web usability studies have shown that users care about speed, appearance, clutter, and content. For Realtor sites, this refers chiefly to listings: buyers want to look at listings, and sellers want to see you working their listing. Today, I will focus on the visual aspect of your site. If potential customers find your design unattractive, they will likely move on to the next site. In my research for ListingInjector, I have looked at thousands of different real estate websites. I can therefore tell you with confidence that most sites look horrible, making the ones that look halfway decent stand out. Sites are often cluttered, hard to navigate, and apparently more interested in selling mortgages than real estate services. When the web exploded in the early ’90s, people explored the medium by building sites in a simple text editor. Today, however, companies use teams of professionally trained engineers to design and build their websites. This has raised the bar of what constitutes an attractive website, and when you don’t meet your users’ expectations, it reflects poorly on your commitment to your customers as an agent.

With this in mind, here are some simple rules to follow when exploring your next site design:

1. Keep it simple and clean. In contemporary design, less is more. When people visit your website, they are seeking specific information: sellers are looking at how you promote your properties, and buyers are looking for user-friendly listings. A common mistake is to offer an IDX service that does not flow with the rest of the site, looks awkward, or is hard to use.
2. Know what you’re selling. Mortgage brokers and advertisers will pay you for ad placement on your home page. You should always ask yourself if $50 a month is worth the loss of commission on a potential sale. Think of your website cost as a part of your marketing: you would never put a mortgage broker’s ad on your marketing material. If you must sell adspace, do so only in a way that flows with your site’s design.
3. Create a cohesive look. I often seen agents spending money on a professionally designed site only to detract from their overall look with low quality images or a poor layout. Spend a bit more money and have a graphic artist clean up your images and integrate them into your design.

Next time I’ll talk about content and how not to become a slave to it.