30 Ways to Improve Real Estate Websites for 2008

Real estate industry and especially selling real estate is very competitive, well known fact. Real estate agent websites attract new leads, visitors browsing information on your state, county, country and specific areas where you live and promote real estate. The following short list of ideas is not exhaustive and is nothing new to most of us, although a gentle reminder does help at times.

Attracting visitors to your real estate website is difficult as there are so many websites competing for the same web surfers. Visitors are looking for different things from real estate websites, although some common features can attract and keep browsers on your website for more than 3 seconds.

1. Good quality website design that is user friendly: Visitors to websites like to easily find what they are looking for and good layout and navigation could keep browsers on your site longer.

2. Quality Unique Content: Content of your website is very important! Website visitors are looking for specific properties & property information. Write specifically for your market, local area, types of property on your portfolio, services or products you offer.

3. Active Website: Who is going to keep visiting a website that has the same content for months. Add fresh content to your website daily if possible or at least 3 or 4 times a week. Visitors are looking for new information and this new information may well entice them be return to your website and mention it online or to a friend. Adding new content daily means spider returns to index your website much more often, resulting in quicker indexing of new content which also helps in search engine placement.

4. Link Building: Quality real estate and related website links help search engine placement for keyword searches.

5. Write about the place you live, add pictures and feature this on your website.

6. Article Writing: Write and submit articles about your real estate market or service. Works wonders for backlinks.

7. Write about specific products, services or after sales services you offer.

8. Online press releases. There are some good websites that provide a pr release or news release.

9. Offer a tool, article or useful information or report that you have written in exchange for a one way link.

10. Become active in your niche market online and offline. What about charity work?

11. Offer an affiliate program to attract more visitors to your website.

12. Submit a few good pages to Digg.com.

13. Optimize your website with relevant keywords searches and description. You are effectively matching keywords search by browsers to your website Meta Tags and content.

14. Periodically check that link exchanges that you host on your website are continuing to be hosted on the exchange website.

15. Back to Link Exchanges: Submit your interior pages url as this is specific information that people will search for and not a mass combination of your homepage.

16. Search for free property listing or advertise real estate free and submit a selection of properties from your portfolio. Why? This is free advertising, getting your name out there & client’s property exposure and gaining a free link in the bargain. Do not just look at locally free sites, think worldwide also.

17. Become an authority figure for your industry: Take part in new groups on line, forums and real estate blogs and clubs.

18. Introduce a forum to your website: Visitors will keep returning post and discuss relevant real estate issues. Just getting it up and running!

19. Monthly news letters to subscribers about yourself and what your company offers, portfolio and offers you have.

20. About You Page: Be yourself and give some background and what you can offer. Potential clients like to know who they will be dealing with.

21. Form strategic partnerships with other property companies and websites in other market areas and related services. Promote theses strategic partnerships on your website. All good partnerships of course.

22. Run a competition that you can promote online and offline.

23. Display awards on your website for excellent service, leader in the industry, niche real estate market provider.

24. Interlink your website pages with a sitemap.

25. Swap and add link resources to higher value inner pages and not just a link directory. When adding links to inner pages combine them in paragraphs are sentences in text so it looks more natural for the spider when it comes. Also looks better than seeing a few stray links on page.

26. Form alliances or get involved with academic, government, or leading industries. This provides all parties good contacts and great credibility.

27. Promote yourself, real estate agency and website at trade shows and conferences.

28. Offer article submission that could be from running a competition, paid are through charity work. Also related companies wish to promote real estate goods and services.

29. Keep building valuable unique content that is timeless. In turn this expands the content resources of your website, search engine exposures and a rich resource for visitors.

30. Last but not least: Know who you wish to target, form an online strategy and plan that compliments your real estate business and of course know your target market.

Not much here although valuable to follow to attract visitors to your website and keep them there. Locally, nationally and internationally the real estate market is becoming more competitive and global and we all require finding ways to increase our online exposure.