Attracting Prospects to Your Real Estate Website

Before you begin attracting website visitors to your real estate website, it helps to think about the website. I've had a few websites in my career, and each has had varying degrees of success. But a few things I've learned apply to most any site. Regardless of how you get the visitors, the end result is to give them something worth stopping by for. The following four rules have held true for me with every web site I've launched.

Know What Your Site is for

The first rule to follow in attracting prospects to your site is to figure out why you want them there in the first place. Don't waste the time and energy to lead a group of people to your site for them to find nothing. Have your site serve a purpose.

Know Your Site's Service Area

The second rule to follow is to recognize your sites geographic limits. Most realtors work in a relatively small geographic area in terms of the web. Realtors in Des Moines have little interest in the San Diego market unless their working RELO.

Have High Quality Content

The third rule to follow is to make sure your site has some high quality content. The importance of quality content can't be overemphasized. The web thrives on content. Search engines have an insatiable appetite for new and original content. They crave it.

Keep Your Site Focused

The fourth rule to follow is to keep your site focused. Both people and search engines do better when the website deals in a specific area. Its okay for a real estate web site to talk about a great golf course in a local market area, but it's not okay for a real estate web site to become a course about golf!

Even if you follow the above rules your site will not generate any search engine interest at first. Part of the equation to get a page one search engine is to be around a while. Search engines want a site to be aged, and they want it to age with style. That means consistent quality content over time. So keep posting content, even in the face of search engine adversity.

In the time between your launch and when the search engines start ranking your keywords there are some things you can do to get traffic to your site. Some are cheaper than others, but they all work. Keeping our four rules in mind, let's start cheap and work our way up.

Business Cards, Signs and Flyers

Make sure your website address is on your business card, your sign and all your print advertising. Not only should you have the www.yoursite.com , you should write a little copy to go with it. Wherever you put something that has your name on it, make sure it also has your website address on it too. It's a good old school technique that's still got a few miles left in it.

Write and Submit Articles to Article Submission Sites

If you're a community expert, then share that expertise in the form of a well written article. Article writing is highly effective and it won't cost you a dime. For more information on how to write and submit an article head out to www.ezine.com for details.

Organic Search Engine Hits

Scoring an organic search engine page one hit is huge. Getting one is a combination of keyword optimization, traffic history, website age, link ratings and content quality. Chances are you'll get organic hits at sometime in your sites life, but don't expect them for a while. The search engines have complex algorithms that filter and index all the sites in your category. If you're the new kid on the block, be patient. It'll happen if you keep to the four rules, but it takes time.

Local Newspaper Advertorial

Promote yourself. Hook up with the local news paper and write an advertorial about a subject of interest and tie it to your site. If there is a blight of REPO's in your area, write an advertorial about it and link to your site with a marketing teaser.

Launch a Give Away on Your Site

People are always down with 'FREE.' So if you advertise a giveaway, people will be attracted to it. But if you do this one you may want to tie the giveaway to generating an opt-in mailing list. Have people register on your site by leaving their email address with the rest of their information.

Pay Per Click Campaigns

Pay per click campaigns generate sponsored links on the popular search engines. When users key in a string that you have reserved, your link is displayed at the top of the page. It almost looks like a regular search engine hit, but it's a paid advertisement. If a user clicks on the link, you pay. The rates vary based on the popularity of the search string you request. So the good news is your only competing with local realtors for the positioning. It's not as expensive as you might think and it's pretty effective.

Full Blown Marketing Campaign

Break out the check book and bleed money. This one is probably the least effective of all the techniques for a Realtor. The cost per lead would be outrageous.

Putting it all together

Internet and website marketing is complicated. Juggling listings, website content, lead capture forms, SEO, syndicating listings in other sites, and keeping up with Internet advertising, is not a small task. It is particularly daunting if these things must be performed separately. An integrated approach, like that of RealtySoft.com or other all-in-one website providers, may well be the only way to get good sales results from a real estate website and still have time left over to be a successful real estate agent.