Generating a substantial portion of leads online is one thing, but what good is all those leads if you don’t have the skills to convert them?  Online leads are a different animal; there isn’t normally a fast turn-around time on them.  Conversely, you’ll find that it’s quite common for an internet lead to be at least six months away from buying a home in your city.

Intimidating?  You’ll have to muster more keystrokes than you can imagine.  Emails galore will be flying out of your box o’ lights into the vast void known as the internet.  It’s the life of an internet lead converter, and if you want to play in this ball game, you have to get used to it.

Converting an internet lead is about building a relationship with the person on the other end.  You’ll do this by exchanging emails, staying into curiousity, and asking for key milestones like their next trip to your city or a timeframe for their move.  Pushing for a quick sale won’t be your ticket.  It may in fact scare them away.

Businesses naturally want short-term leads, because they feel a need for immediate results. In the search for the quick close, however, some of the most promising leads can get lost.

This is unfortunate, since prospects who don’t respond immediately, or respond that they aren’t interested, often represent the largest base of potential new customers. In fact, companies that focus strategically on long-term opportunities realize by far the highest lead conversion rates. – Inside CRM

You’re not the only one that has to make the change.  Anyone who generates leads online has to work on cultivating relationships; it’s part of the game.  If you want to achieve the best results for your time spent generating the mass amount of leads you perspire to create, you have to spend quality time perfecting your long term, relationship building skills through email and phone alone.

Be sure to email your leads moving within 6 months at least once every two weeks.  Even if you don’t have much to say, email to say hello, and offer some help in searching for their perfect property.  When it gets within 3 months, up the frequency to once a week.

For those leads that are more than 6 months away, you should email once every few weeks and at bare minimum once a month.  Closer to their time frame for moving, bump up the frequency to once very two weeks so you don’t miss their “getting started” deadline.

Aha: The emails you send them of homes that fit their criteria qualify as a touch as well, so your first conversation with them should aim at getting their criteria for their perfect home.

Always remember that real estate is all about the relationships you build with those you meet on a daily basis.  Approach a lead with a push for a quick sale, and they’ll smell the pesky salesmen attitude from a mile away.

Focus on building long-term, win/win relationships, and you’ll have a client for life.

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Converting Internet Leads: It’s About Building Relationships is a post from: Technology For Agents

The etiquette I’ve sort of self-discovered among the online community is that you never share a link to a site that forces you to register.  You may get a few testy remarks for doing something like that.  A better way to get links shared among internet users is to not force them to register, thus not violating the etiquette.

Could open registrations encourage organic linking?  I believe the practice of only sharing links which do not require a registration is very common by today’s standards.  Having open registrations could create more of an open environment on a real estate site, thus promoting users to actively link to your site when sharing information to others interested in the same area.

You’ll normally find this happening on message boards and social networking sites, where users (not agents) discuss different parts of town in your market (every major market has a message board like this, I promise) and even share listings with each other.  If you lurk around for a bit, you might self discover that sharing a link of a site that forces registration is taboo.

So what do you think?  Could open registrations encourage organic linking?  Could those organic links help expand your SEO portfolio, therefore increasing your rankings in major search engines?

Could Open Registrations Encourage Organic Linking? is a post from: Technology For Agents

This is how I feel with the debate between forcing registrations on a real estate website vs. not forcing registrations. It’s a constant debate with myself and other real estate agents who generate a substantial portion of their leads online.

Forcing Registrations

Over the long term, you’re likely to see a trend in the number of leads you receive, and the quality of those leads.

• High number of leads.
• Lower quality leads.

For the purposes of this article, a high quality lead is one that is qualified and read to purchase now. A low quality lead is one that is not ready to buy for at least a year, and is not qualified to buy nor is ready to begin the pre-qualification process.

There are a few popular ways to force registration that I’ve seen agents try out. I don’t have proof that any is better than the other, so the results may vary from market to market.

1. Require registration to view search results.
2. Allow user to view search results, but require registration to view property details.
3. Allow user to view search results as well as a fixed number of property detail pages, then force registration after the user has exceeded their limit.

For the record, my site is currently using option number 2 with mixed results. I get quite a few visitors to my site a day, and I have a bit over a 9% visitor to registration conversion ratio. That’s not a bad number, given my target is set at 10%.

The issue I have with forcing registration is that I personally hate doing it. I hate having to register to view information that I can readily find elsewhere for free. In my mind, when a site offers information for free to me, they are building rapport and goodwill. The chances of me returning to that site are quite high; given I found the information I came looking for.

When you force registration, you are requiring that they fork over contact information so that you or someone on your team should be following up. From a real estate agent perspective, that’s not bad at all.

You can never have enough leads. – Gary Keller

Let’s put on our client hat for a moment. What if I’m not ready to buy a home for a couple of years? Do I really want a real estate agent contacting me for that long? I’d leave the site for sure; for the same reasons that I don’t frequent a car lot until I’m absolutely read to buy a car.

If you’re ready to buy right now, then an agent calling could be convenient, but not what you were expecting. We’re talking about a simple registration form that was filled out, not a request to view a home or a request for a pre-approval. In those cases, the user is undoubtedly expecting a return response almost immediately; definitely within the day.

No Registrations Required

Just like forcing registrations, keeping your site open will see a likely trend as well.

• Low number of leads.
• Higher quality leads.

This seems pretty logical; doesn’t it? If users are not forced to register when they are viewing properties, which is what 95% of them come there to do, then you’re likely to not get nearly as many leads than if you forced them to. The quality of the lead will also be higher, since a user that goes out of their way to contact you is probably going to be a high quality lead.

The problem with no registrations is that you’ve lost the opportunity to convert the lead 6 months ago. Chances are you didn’t even know that particular user was even there!

Think about this for a moment. John Doe is looking to buy a home in 6 months, and stumbled on your site. He views properties and is pretty ecstatic about finding homes in his desired area. 4 months go by, and by gosh, he’s ready to talk to an agent. At that moment, he realizes that Sue, his second-cousin, is a real estate agent.

You’ve just lost the lead. You didn’t even have a chance to talk to John. It’s for this reason alone I’ve opted to forgo the no registration strategy and force registrations when a user wants to view the details of a home. I want to have the opportunity to convert.

Many national real estate sites do not force registrations, and I think this is a trend we’ll start seeing more often. I feel consumers will eventually strive for an open, sharing community where they don’t have to check their baggage at the door. When you have some spare time, stop by Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia and be aware of the experience you have when browsing listings on those sites. Would you feel the same as if they forced you register?

It Relies Your Systems

At the end of the day, the only logical conclusion I can come to is one that is heavily reliant on the systems you’ve implemented in your business.

If you have a follow up system armed and ready to tackle any lead that walks through the door, regardless of the quality, then forcing registrations may be the way to go. If you still struggle to follow up with your leads, and notice that you lose track of those that aren’t ready within a few months, then no registrations may be your ticket.

What do you think? Do you force registrations or not? Why did you choose this strategy?

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The Registration Debate – Forced or Not? is a post from: Technology For Agents

If you have a blog, be sure to give some of them a try. Among the list, I personally use:

• All in One SEO Pack – This is the “jack of all trades” SEO plugin for Wordpress that was recommended to me numerous times.  It let’s you edit Title tag structures, meta information, and a long list of other useful options.
• Google XML Sitemaps – Submitting your sitemap to search engines helps them get to your content faster.  This plugin will help you create that sitemap faster.

Get the full list over at Mashable.

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SEO Plugins for Wordpress is a post from: Technology For Agents

Blogging is a great way to display you level of expertise with your neighborhood, city, or niche. Below, I thought it would be nice to share 10 real estate topics you could blog about today to get you in the mood to write.

1. Market Statistics For Your City
2. Market Statistics For A Neighborhood
3. Real Estate News About A Particular Market
4. The Home Buying Process
5. The Home Selling Process
6. Pricing A Home In The  __________ Subdivision
7. 5 Things to Look For During A Home Inspection
8. Getting Approved Versus Getting Pre-Qualified
9. The _____ Steps to Closing
10. 5 Things You Can Do to Stage Your Home

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course, but I think it’s a great start!  With the market statistics alone you could easily write a blog post every few days about a different subdivision in your market.

What kind of things do you blog about?

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10 Real Estate Blogging Ideas is a post from: Technology For Agents

If you’re looking to put yourself in front of these web surfers, you will eventually begin to consider search engine marketing within your lead generation strategy.

In this series of posts, I will share my knowledge of search engine marketing with you over the course of a few weeks; each post will get more and more detailed and precise.

Search Engines To Consider

In January of 2008, comScore tracked that Google has received 58.5% of all search engine traffic.  That number increased to 59.2% in the following month.  This tells me that a majority of my search engine marketing efforts should go to Google.

Coming up second is Yahoo at 22.2% market share.  What a big decrease!  Google has literally become a house-hold name; “Google it..” you’ll here ever so often.  I’ve personally found many agents still using a majority of their lead generation dollars (dedicated to online marketing) to search engines besides Google.

I’m not saying investing in Yahoo or MSN is a bad idea.  Rather, it’s just not the most efficient use of your marketing dollars.  Investing in Google’s marketing options is by far more cost effective.

Types of Search Engine Marketing

Generally there are two types of marketing you’ll consider.  In no significant order, you have pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search engine marketing.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engine Marketing

Pay-per-click is pretty much exactly what the name implies.  When investing in this type of program you will pay a pre-determined fee each time someone clicks on your advertisement.

Google PPC allows you to create an advertisement that is seen on the right side of search results.  Many other search engines follow the same system.

How do search engines know when to show your advertisement?  This is where keywords come into play.  When creating your “campaign” for PPC, you’ll choose which keywords you’d like to target and you’ll also choose a bid price.  This bid price is the amount of money you’re willing to pay when someone clicks on your advertisement.

The more competition your keywords has, the higher bid price it may have.  You’re always welcome to bid lower that the amount the top person is willing to pay, however your advertisement is likely to not be seen as it appears at the very end of a long line of people advertising for your same keyword.

If you want to appear first, you’ll have to pay for it.   When I was bidding for real estate keywords in my market, I’d ended up paying around $0.50 per click.  This can really add up after a while – especially if you’re in a big real estate markets.  This is where Organic search engine marketing begins to get attractive.

Organic Search Engine Marketing

When you search for anything on a search engine, you’ll be presented with the usual “top 10″ sites that seem to pertain to what you’re looking for.  These sites do not pay to advertise here; they are organically discovered and ranked by the search engines throughout the day.  Yes; this means rankings can fluctuate on a daily basis.

Free you say?  What an incredible idea!  I’ll rank top 10 for any term I’d like and essentially advertise for free!  Not so fast.

Organic search engine rankings are far more difficult to rank for.  This is especially true when it comes to marketing a real estate site.  Real estate sites are abundant on the internet; you’ll have plenty of competition in this area.

In search engine marketing and your business, I begin to take baby-steps into this area by discussing some of the key ingredients to creating a great site for search engines.  Optimizing your website for organic search engine rankings is often referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  We’ll get into SEO in a later post in this series.

Wrapping It Up

In this weeks post you’ve learned the type of search engine marketing you can pursue and eventually incorporate into your lead generation strategies.  Next week I’ll talk in more detail about optimizing your site for search engines, and great ways to begin building your search engine rankings.

Have you begun to investigate search engine marketing?  What kind of questions did you have?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by adding a comment below.  Remember – in the coming weeks we’ll get more detailed.  This post was aimed to get the ball rolling.

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Search Engine Marketing is a post from: Technology For Agents

Trulia ranking well doesn’t surprise me. Their site is well optimized to rank well in search engines, and their site is truly innovative in the tools it provides to real estate consumers.

However, what does surprise me is that real estate agents in Houston are actually helping Trulia rank better than them. Why? It could be a for a couple of reasons:

• They don’t really care about rankings, and are perfectly fine with intentionally doing this.
• They are uninformed.

I seem to feel that it’s more a matter of the agents being uninformed than them not really caring.

It Gets Worse

What I find in common with many of these agent sites is that they are all from one provider. Number1Expert is a firm that builds real estate sites for agents, and for a fee, the agents can use them to procure business in the form of real estate leads.

At the bottom of each of these sites/templates is a Trulia Widget, which also contains a backlink with the appropriate anchor text of “Houston Real Estate”. Guess where they point to? The link the Trulia is now ranking top 10 for! Did Number1Expert and Trulia form some kind of deal to get this done?

I found 8 real estate agents with a vast multitude of links per agent doing this, and they all had a Number1Expert template. The agents sites are linked below.

If an agent on this list would like their link removed, it will be done so immediately. Simply contact me to let me know.

• http://www.teamjudy.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.kaytownend.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.barbarastraty.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.donburns.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.shereechang.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.curtiswarren.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.countonchris.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=504611&P=20
• http://www.dianesanders.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=708956&P=20

This is a part of the reason why Trulia is ranking in the top 10 for the term “Houston Real Estate”; I promise you that. Do the agents doing this know what they are actually doing? Do they care about their own search engine rankings?

When it comes to the SERPS, it is my opinion that Trulia is a competitor. Agents in the top 10 rankings for pertinent search results get real estate leads from that ranking position.

So in theory, I suppose you could say that Trulia is also a competitor to that agent’s business, since they’re ranking position (if higher) could possibly take leads away from that agent and disperse it elsewhere. That’s a whole other debate of it’s own, but why help your competition?

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Houston Agents Help Trulia Rank Top 10 is a post from: Technology For Agents

Do you like helping your competition when it comes to search engine optimization? I personally don’t like to.

However, it seems that many uninformed agents looking to increase the nifty features of their website are inherently harming their chances of doing well in search engine rankings.

How is this so? Eric Bramlett, Austin Real Estate Broker has brought it to my attention that the widgets that Trulia offers also include a keyword targeted link back to their site, which intentionally helps improve their search engine rankings.

Why do many agents still use the widgets? I believe that it’s simply them being uninformed about the real intentions of the widget feature. That is why I’ve decided to increase awareness by posting about this here at TechForAgents.com.

Trulia is truly kicking butt in the SERPs (for big time terms, and for long tails) because they’ve cooked up some solid linkbait in the form of widgets.

If you are currently using their widgets on your site, I would either:

• Discontinue the use of the widgets all-together.
• Take Eric’s advice, and modify the script to use the widgets without hurting your search engine rankings. You can see an example of this modification by following the source link below.

Source

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Trulia Widgets Help Their SEO, Not Yours is a post from: Technology For Agents

If one of your sources to tap is in the realm of online lead generation, mastering the lead conversion process is one of the best “art forms” you can choose to focus in on.

I say “art form” because I truly feel that converting online leads takes talent. This talent could be found in you, or if your business is at a higher level, someone that you hire.

You should not only possess natural rapport building skills, but should also have the motivation to master your scripts when in dialogue with all of your online leads. You should also be someone that can take a phone conversation with someone and naturally convey the sincere desire to help without sounding cheesy. It’s not easy, but then again it’s not impossible to learn what it takes to convert more online leads.

Three Factors

Quick: A lead has contacted you online requesting more help about the real estate process. What do you do? Your ability to convert an online lead will be in direct proportion to your level of mastery with the following three areas.

• Timing
• Scripts
• Follow Up

Timing

Seth Goden would tell you that the world of an internet lead is actually quite small, and when looking for help with real estate the first person to return his call is the best agent for them. Are you the first person to respond?

As a student of the online lead generation game, your systems should be focused on contacting all internet leads as quickly as possible. This is much more important to internet leads than casual referrals from your network.

If you take to long to answer the inquiry of an online lead, you are directly sabotaging your efforts to convert that lead. Make sure you make an effort to call all internet leads back within 1 hour; 30 minutes preferred. Take more than an hour and you could very well have lost a vital transaction to your business.

Scripts

You get the client on the phone, and now you’re at a loss of words. The agent who takes the time to master their scripts when speaking to a new potential client will be the agent who converts that lead. You could be the first to call, but without knowing what to say your efforts are in vain.

A great way to become comfortable and confident in your scripts is to sit down and practice them with a peer. Anyone motivated to role play their dialogue with another agent is a great person to associate yourself anyway; they’re into self-mastery just like you are. Visit with your broker or an experienced agent in your office and ask if they would share their best scripts with you.

If you are a Keller Williams Realty agent, visit KWUniversity.com to purchase a book filled with valuable scripts for multitudes of situations from top Keller Williams agents around the world.

Follow Up

The average online consumer of real estate will take 6-12 months to turn into a transaction. Does this seem like a long time to you? In retrospect, let me ask you the following question. Will you be needing a transaction 6-12 months from now? Your answer is pretty obvious; of course you will!

Your systems should be designed to place all leads that are not ready to buy now into a follow up program respective to their time frame. Your ability to follow up will greatly increase your conversion ratios with online leads, or hinder it to the point of no return. Invest time in creating effective follow up programs to systematically communicate with all leads that come your way.

This is by no means a complete reference guide to online lead generation, but hopefully you’ve learned the areas you need to master. Take the ball and run with it!

To those agents out there where more than 50% of their business comes from the internet: How important are timing, scripts, and follow up to your ability to convert an online lead that comes your way?

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Converting Online Leads is a post from: Technology For Agents

Nearly 85% (TAR) of consumers browsing your real estate website use it for one thing only: to search and view properties for sale in your market. Take a look at your website now. At first glance, now that we know this vital statistic, is your site conducive to giving them what they want?

It’s all about adopting the right mind-set. When you’re working on new marketing materials, take a step back and assume the role of a skeptical customer. Ask yourself: Why should she care about your product? How will it make her life better or easier? What are the damn benefits? – Dan O’Sullivan

I feel that this can directly relate to the content advertising you are placing on your website. In Don’t Make Me Think by Steven Krug, you’ll learn that most users don’t actually even read everything on a website; they scan.

All this has to be taken into consideration when you begin the construction of your very first real estate website, or used in planning an overhaul of your existing one. Here are five useful tips to implement on your site that can help you keep your visitors longer, and increase your online conversion ratios.

The Property Search

This hands down is the most important feature of your website. Not only do you have to make the visitors immediately aware of where your property is located on your site, but you must also ensure that your property search is simple, intuitive, and overall easy to use.

Having an impressive property search is a very worthwhile investment, and increases the user experience your site delivers to consumers looking to buy or sell homes.

Advertise No Registrations

If you currently are not forcing your users to login to view properties, let them know! I haven’t personally researched the number of visitors that prefer no registrations versus forced registrations, but the winner is pretty obvious. When the hurdles to get to your properties for sale are minimized, you’ll find your visitors staying at your site longer and the frequency of contacts from them increased.

If you don’t require registrations, in a subtle but visible way inform your visitors that they will have an easier time viewing properties; all with no registrations required and pressure-free. Who wouldn’t enjoy that?

Relate To The Client

The content contained on your site is an expression of your services. Is your content filled with information about how you can help them, what you can do, what you have done in the past, and how you’re just an overall great person? While I’m sure you are, how are you making an attempt to relate to your target audience?

A good practice is to interpret how the offer you and conveying to the client will directly help them in some way. One good example is explaining how your home market report will help your client make a more informed and intelligent decision regarding the refinance of their home or as a tool for fighting property evaluation nightmares.

Keep Your Homepage Clean

First impression is of vital importance to your website conversion ratios. A visitor will mostly likely make a mental decision to stay on your site, or jump to another within the first 10 seconds; this is commonly referred to as bounce rate.

Make a wise decision to avoid banners, adsense advertisements, contrasting colors and large fonts on your home page. It’s also wise to make it readily apparent that you have a property search on your site, and provide a link to direct your visitors on how to get there.

The About You Page

Giving a history of your career in real estate, also with some background information to better help your visitors to relate to you as a person, is useful in a page usually named, “About Me” or “About Us”. Keep this page separated away from your content, enabling your visitors to initially find what they’re looking for while still offering information about you should they take interest.

Your website can be a very valuable asset to your business, and can be considered one of the best sources for online leads. As time progresses and more consumers are taking advantage of the wonderful tools presented to them online, real estate agents not adapting to this change will be left in the dust.

Have you started to implement a source of online lead generation?

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It’s Not About You is a post from: Technology For Agents

HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site. It’s that simple. – Hittail.com

Hittail is a simple tool that will show you the link that generated a visitor to your site. If you rank well in search engines, then the links will show you the particular search the visitor did to find your site in the search engine rankings. This comes in quite handy to see what your top keywords are, and even to get some hints as to what long tails you can include in future articles.

A long tail is a keyword that you may not intentionally target to optimize your site for, though you will still occasionally bring a visitor or two for those niche or very specific keywords.

In most cases, your long tails may not really mean much; especially if your running a website solely to bring in visitors to click on your advertisements.

For real estate agents, however, long tails are golden. Let’s say for example that you have a high dollar subdivision near the center of town, and you mention it in one of your articles on your site. That “mention” may land you a long tail hit from a search engine, and that one visitor may be looking for that high dollar home and call you to get further assistance!

Tracking your website performance for long tails is a great way to see if you’re being effective in generating those niche keywords, plus it’s nice to see a real time view your hard working paying off.

• Visit Hittail

To install, you’ll first need to register both yourself and the website you want to track. You’ll then be given a script (simple piece of code) that you’ll need to place right before the “close body” tag near the end of your site source code. You’ll most likely want to hire your webmaster to do this for you, or contact me and I’ll set you up with someone that can help you.

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Tracking Keyword Search Hits is a post from: Technology For Agents

Good “search engine optimizers” will check your source code of your blog to ensure that a special tag is removed from all links. The “nofollow” attribute of a link will tell a search engine to NOT follow that link, therefore not helping the person who created the link to build those precious backlinks to improve their rankings in the search engine of their preference.

You need to make sure that these link attributes aren’t automatically applied to the links created on your site to encourage others to comment on your blog.

In a nutshell, to increase the popularity of your site you are going to want to encourage others to link to your site. In addition to this, you may be commenting on other blogs as well, which will then create a link to your site (most blogs ask for your website name when posting a comment).

If a blog you comment on has a “nofollow” attribute on the link, then you won’t get a dime of credit for your effort on commenting. How do you change that? Remove it! It encourages people that pay attention to that sort of thing to take the time to comment on your blog. Sure they may just be trying to build links to their site, but at least you’re getting comments and it looks like your blog has frequent readers.

So How Do You Remove It?

If you have a Wordpress blog, then it’s actually quite simple. TechForAgents.com is built using Wordpress. The plugin I use is created by Semiologic and can be found here. At the bottom of the page, click on the link that says V2.0 Download.

Once you download the ZIP file, you are going to want to extract the contents to your computer (remember where you put it!). You will then upload this directory to your website file structure under:

blogsitename.com/wp-content/plugins

After this is done, login to your Wordpress administrative backend and click on the “plugins” link at the top. You’ll then activate the plugin by clicking the activate link; the title should be “DoFollow” created by Dennis de Benardy.

A special thanks goes out to Eric Bramlett who specializes in Austin Real Estate for pointing this out to me.

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Removing NoFollow From A Wordpress Blog is a post from: Technology For Agents

How I Use This Tool

The search query I use the most is “site:www.sitename.com”. What this will allow you to see is when pages of your site get indexed by Google. You are then given the opportunity to re-visit the page, remind yourself what keywords you were targeting for, and check their ranking in Google. You can automate this process by using this handy keyword analysis tool at McDar.net.

You can also use the Google Alerts tool to notify you of when new topics are indexed regarding specific keywords that you are looking to gain rankings in. The most common use would be “area real estate”, where you would replace “area” with your market location. This will allow you to see when new blogs, news articles and even competitors get their sites indexed by Google for the various keywords that you’ve chosen to go after.

If you are currently using Google Alerts, what nifty ways are you using them to better your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts?

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Using Google Alerts is a post from: Technology For Agents

Agents will have the flexibility to control when users must register to see more listings. This directly will affect your lead conversion ratios with visitors to your site. Many IDX systems currently do not have a way for real estate agents to convert incoming site leads to clients, so this Wolfnet IDX solutions should help boost agent income company wide if taken advantage of by the individual agent. Keller Williams agents will have the option to customize when users must register, such as (thanks to Ashley Payne at Wolfnet Technologies):

• Login Required To View Address – If enabled, addresses will only be shown when the user is logged in.
• Front Page Login Required – Requires login before the user enters their search criteria.
• Search Results Login Required – If enabled, prompts login after the user clicks Search.
• Login Required to View Details – If enabled, the detail page will only be shown when the user is logged in.
• Allow Number of Detail Views – Number of detail pages allowed before forcing login.
• Special Data Login Required – Prompts user to login when accessing special data like virtual tours or open houses.

Agents roll out will vary depending on market location and local MLS support, but Keller Williams Realty plans on finalizing the roll out by Fall of 2007.

Many of you may know that I am a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty, so I will be experiencing this transition first hand. At the current moment, my site has not implemented the solutions but I will be sure to update with my experience when the upgrade has been completed.

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Keller Williams Agents Get Wolfnet IDX is a post from: Technology For Agents

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Top 20 Blog Designs is a post from: Technology For Agents

This piece of software made by Axandra offers a vast array of tools to use by the beginner or avid web developer. It also enables it’s users to bypass tedious tasks, such as directory submissions. By far my favorite is a tool is the “Top 10 Web Page Optimizer”.

The optimizer will initially ask you for a target keyword or phrase. In this example, let’s use “Houston Real Estate”. What this software from Axandra will do is analyze the top ten pages that appear when browsing that keyword phrase via any major search engine such as Google, then compare their pages to yours!

You must first enter your URL, or web page address. Let’s go ahead an use my site as an example: MyHomeHouston.com. After inputting your URL, it will then ask you which search engine would you like to optimize for. I suggest you start with Google, since they currently have the largest market share among Internet users.

Moving forward, it will then ask for your keywords phrase where I have entered “Houston Real Estate”, and it then shows you the top 10 pages that come up when typing in “Houston Real Estate” into Google.com. This is more along the lines of a verification, just to make sure you want your site compared to all 10, or maybe just a few. You also have various other options to choose from which we can get into at later date.

After it’s searching process you are left with a nifty report, analyzing the keyword usage, title descriptions, keyword density on all the top 10 pages for “Houston Real Estate”! You can obviously see how this tool can come in very handy, as all you must do is simply mimic the top 10 sites as a foundation, then begin to input quality content to rise in the rankings.

Perhaps you do not know what keywords phrases to use. Internet Business Promoter also has that covered. They are also providing a nice keyword generator that uses the content from your site to suggest keywords that appear often in your articles or pages. This tool can stumble upon frequent used words that you may not catch off hand.

The Internet Business Promoter software is available as a demo for free. Many of the useful features are still able to be used in the demo. I suggest that in time, however, you take the investment in your business and purchase the full version which gives you the best web page optimization tools.

The only negative side is that their software is quite expensive. You are looking at a hefty $250 investment. I suggest that you first make sure that you are ready to invest in this part of your business before purchasing the full version, as the demo is pretty sufficient if you are new to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

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Internet Business Promoter Initial Review is a post from: Technology For Agents

I’ll admit; at one point I was one of those guys.I learned a few things a while back that really stuck with me from various informational sites that had experienced users who had success with SEO or “Search Engine Optimization”. In this article I will share a few of those key points with you.

There are a couple major factors when working on your site to develop it for the web, or optimize it as some will call it. There are also shortcomings that can indirectly effect the income of your business.

It Takes Time and Money

Time and money isn’t something that we all can say we have in the real estate business early in our career. I want to stress to you that good search engine rankings take time; sometimes lots of it. I’ve read and experienced that a search engine such as google.com will take the age and domain registration length into consideration when determining it’s rankings.

Therefore, we can conclude that even if you had a nice domain name, such as [Insert City]MLS.com, that doesn’t mean you’ll get to the top right away.

The early stages of web design and development aren’t always dollar productive since spending time on your real estate website doesn’t produce direct results right away. Usually that time could be more effectively used on vital activities, such as training and development and lead generation. You’ll find that the domain registration, hosting, and time actually spent developing content all equate to lost money in some form, whether it be through lost time or the actual tender of cash for product and services.

Therefore I have come to the conclusion that unless you have cash reserves (at least 3-6 months worth), your time could probably be better spent elsewhere for now. Work on some dollar productive activities such as lead generation that can directly effect the commission you plan to receive.

The reason I make this statement is simple. I invested the first eight months of my real estate career building my site and earning practically minimum wage. A year and a half later, I can now see that it is now getting a great traffic (or visitors) and I receive a steady flow of leads.

Would I have approached it a different way? Absolutely. I would have focused on prospecting, THEN when I had enough to last a while, spend time on my site. Those first eight months were torture on my personal finances. Building sites can be consuming, especially if you’re a perfectionist such as myself.

Moving forward, let’s say you have the reserves or perhaps you don’t agree with the previous suggestion. I’m alright with that; it’s your business! That’s the beauty of our industry. You can decide what deserves your attention and what doesn’t at any given time.

Our next step should be considered during the planning phases of your real estate website.

What Makes For Good SEO

There are three key factors I consider when optimizing my site for the web. I consider keyword density, content, and most importantly, quality inbound links.

The key word density is also considered and usually goes hand in hand with your content. The content of your site must be filled with key words that are relevant to the theme of your site, such as “real estate” or “listings”.

Why else would someone searching for your site pull up yours? You must have some form of indication that what you have on your web page is relevant to the user’s search query. I suggest a value from 6-10% of how many times your target keywords should appear in the article amongst other words. I will research this in more detail so that perhaps I share more insights with you.

The content on your site has to be of good quality, and continually updated. When I say quality I am referring to articles that really mean something to your readers and visitors. Talk about foreclosures, the market, anything real estate related. I suggest you just keep it current and informative so that your readers have a reason for coming back to you. If someone bookmarks your site, you’ve hit the nail on the head.

The last item of importance is quality inbound links. Other sites need to feel that yours is important as well. I do not mean to past your URL (or link to your site) everywhere you go online; the site referring traffic to you must have some form of relevance.

A site about the maintenance of dogs referring to you will probably do little to affect your rankings in Google. However, your link on a site that already is held in high regard in the real estate industry such as inman.com would certainly help boost your rankings.

The key is figuring out how to get your link there. Inman.com is a real estate news portal so perhaps you could write a fantastic article for buyers about buying homes and they would pick it up and link to you. Who knows?

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s quite a bit of information to be absorbed when thinking of building a site, and optimizing for the web.

Be sure you are ready to take on this major project before embarking on the endeavor. Doing so without thinking of how time should be spent in advance could lead to you making irrational decisions on the use of your time, and your business could temporarily suffer. Learn from my mistakes and make sure you do have the cash reserves before you decide to take on this animal yourself.

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Search Engine Optimization and Your Business is a post from: Technology For Agents