Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Political Blogs Revisited

In reference to a recent post after the Political Debates called, Kerry and Bush Seek to Capture Voters Thru Internet Blogs.

I mentioned a few instances whereby Internet Blogs have influenced news cycles such as the Trent Lott resignation.

Once again, we are reminded of the importance of the true power of blogs. No matter your political affiliation, it is factual that the larger media can sway public thought.

However, it is with Blogs that we are begininning to see the power to influence sway back to the individual.

This was again proven as just recently the Iraq munitions charges against President Bush were proven false by a blog. The point is not whether you agree or disagree, but that you do believe in the power of your ability to influence thru your blog.

Now, if you read the above linked artcle it does not get an A for journalistic credability. Their source is alluded to, but not revealed. But that is not the point.

The above linked sitee has been credited for first calling the accusations against Bush as false. It started a wave of other conservative bloggers to investigate, and most importantly we see the story turning the other way.

We once again witness the power of the blog.

Google Yellow Pages

I recently posited that as the engines move to be more profitable, they are becoming more like the yellow pages than a legitimate search vehicle.

Interestingly Google just purchased Real Pages.com. More of the story here.

Why would Google purchase a yellow page type business directory? There is big dollars in local search. According to a recent mediapost email:

The Yellow Pages are a $26 billion global industry. According to The Kelsey Group, 22 million small- and medium-sized businesses spend 46 percent of their advertising budgets on Yellow Pages marketing, and put only 3 percent into search engine keywords. In addition, only 30 percent of small- and medium-sized businesses have a Web site. ...Verizon SuperPages.com, which has been selling online directory listings since 1996, this year redesigned its Web site and business model to include pay-per-click listings.

Resources
Yellow Pages are Dead

Search Engine Optimization

Real Estate search engine optimization. The word has taken on a new life beyond its orignal meaning.

Back in the day (pre-Google), SEO or search engine optimization meant that you optimized your page(s) to reflect and represent your keyword. Software packages such as WebPosition Gold promised that you could pump out perfectly optimized pages based on a reverse engineering of the top positioned pages for that keyword.

Thus, if you matched keyword densities, proximities, weights, and so on then you could win the search engine game. As time moved forward, engines like Inktomi started the move toward link relationships. The term link popularity was used to describe simply how many links pointed to your site. Thus, the idea was that you must be popular and deserve extra favor for your keywords.

As Google became more important, linking became more sophisticated as the idea of page rank and reputation grew. Page Rank (not web page-Larry Page of Google) is simply the relative importance of a page. Reputation is simply what does the link say about the page it is pointing.

Thus, Search Engine Optimization does not really suffice when describing the act of marketing a website thru the engines. Therefore perhaps a better phrase is Search Engine Marketing or SEM. The die hards still like to call it SEO, but they will refer to it accurately as on page and off page optimization (page rank and reputation).

Unfortunately as marketers we are being mislead by the SEO & SEM industry to pay attention to the wrong "metrics". We are taught to look at a few positions for a keyword(s). I don't know anyone who made money for being number one for a keyword.

I recently listened to a recording of a fellow who has a very successful online store. He was asked if he keeps track of his positions, or even his traffic. He replied, "nope, I look at one thing, how much money I made that day". In real estate, we are not selling products. In fact, we are selling access in most cases to our IDX-MLS data. The transaction is the listings for the visitors contact information.

Yet, the SEO's of the world want to get us to pay attention to positions. Positions in and of themselves are OK to look at, but as a goal they make some big assumptions. The goal is a sale. A sale can only come from a qualified lead, which will come from good follow up. The good lead will come only from qualified traffic. Which may or may not come from a number one position, or even a top ten position. It will probably come from a phrase other than what you might think. I understand this is counter intuitive, but it is true for many keywords.

As real estate pros you must look at the SEO process as only a process. Albeit a complicated one. But positions are only a cog in a much larger machine.

Your time should be spent on followup and conversion of your leads into an appointment or contract. That is time consuming. So there is little time to spend on anything else like SEO and positions.

Instead, consider concentrating on the following numbers:

Traffic
Leads
Appoinments
Sales

I remember going to Mike Ferry Seminars and he got me to look at my prospecting numbers and how they related to my sales. The formula I took was:
How many calls= an appoinment;how many appoinments=a listing; how many listings=1 sale

Do the same here: How much unique traffic = 1 lead. Is it 15 to 1, 30 to 1?.
How many leads convert to an appointment? How many appointments = a sale?

Real Estate Forcast

As Realtors it is imperative that you believe that real estate is the strongest commodity that an individual can own. If not, then how else can you sell real estate?

The good news is that real estate is still a strong buy, compared to other assets.

These posts provide plenty of fodder to help you make your case that real estate will continue to rise. That real estate is indeed a terrific investment. Of course I am a bit biased sitting in my L.A. desk. I understand that in some parts of the country, real estate is not as robust as Cali.
{The Federal Reserve Governor Mark Olson said on Oct. 19th."In order for there to be a true bubble, there has to be a single market," Olson said in response to a question following an address on banking at Widener University, adding that was not the case for the geographically diverse housing sector.}

However, overtime these regions will still hold value, and grow. They always have, and always will grow in home values.

Recently I wrote that the hang-up in real estate sales volume right now is mostly an issue of:
~Having sold most of the people that are going to buy
~A seasonal and pre-election slow down
~and an adjustment from the fixed rate world to the adjustable world of financing.

{Long-term mortgage rates tumbled to six-month lows this week-Oct.22,04.

Fixed rates and adjustable rates are historically low.

I was pleased to see some evidence of this in today's Inman News which headlined as:

Adjustable-rate real estate loan popularity climbs First-time home buyers more likely to choose ARMs

A recent Motley Fool article refers to their own belief that the real estate market is in a bubble and will burst. The Fool article also calls upon a Goldman Sachs study that came to the same conclusion.

However, the piece fairly reports from an interview with Amy Crews Cutts, the deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac. She argues that there is no housing bubble in the U.S. today.

Cutts gives the following reasons for a strong housing market:

1.Supply of housing for sale is low. The current inventory of new and existing homes for sale is lower today than it has been in the last 20 years. If demand drops off, supply can be quickly cut back, which basic microeconomics tells us will mitigate any steep drop-off in price.

2.Housing doesn't resemble the typical bubble asset. According to Freddie Mac, the purpose of a typical bubble asset is investment, not consumption.

3.Mortgage rates are low. Freddie Mac argues that even with the recent increase in mortgage rates, we are still very far away from the 30-year mortgage rates above 10% that existed in the early 1990s.

4.User costs are negative. Related to the previous point, as long as mortgages are low and home prices continue to rise, net user costs are negative. Freddie Mac argues that interest (after tax), maintenance, and taxes approximate 6.5% of the price of a house. If the home price rises at 6.5% per year, the owner gets to live in the house "for free."

5.Household incomes and house prices in balance in the long term.

6.Rent vs. price growth is aligned.

You can get more details by visiting the article.

Recently Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan argued, "Short of a significant fall in overall household income or in home prices, debt servicing is unlikely to become destabilizing".

As Realtors, you have an obligation to squelch any fear that your prospective real estate owners may have. These articles provide plenty of help for your case.

Google gets your real estate advertising dollars

Thanks to http://google.weblogsinc.com for this one.

Google never gives its forcasts out to the public.

Howver, the San Francisco Gate claims to have obtained “internal Google Documents” that purport to predict a startling growth-of-advertising curve, in the teeth of bad press over click fraud, out-of-control clickthrough rates in search advertising, and a general plateau effect. Citing 280,000 advertisers this year, the “internal documents” forecast a surge to 378,000 in 2005, and a doubling by 2008 to about 652,000.

Real Estate Appreciation

CBS MarketWatch recently pointed out the dreaded downside to rapid real estate appreciation.

Homeowners in many parts of the country have watched as housing values soared, enjoying the newfound equity and often tapping it for a variety of needs.

But tax assessors read real estate news too. They know which way prices have been heading and they haven't been shy about following along

Hispanic Real Estate

As an industry, Realtor's have been pretty slow to attract niche markets such as the Hispanic community.
In Los Angeles we are nearing a 50% population of Hispanic heritage. Many own real estate.

eMarketer projects the number of Hispanic internet users in the United States will rise from 13.3 million in 2004 (7.6 percent of all internet users) to 16 million in 2007 (8.4 percent). eMarketer cites an America Online/RoperASW survey of U.S. Hispanic at-home Internet users' online activities: 54 percent of respondents research health care products, 52 percent make travel arrangements, 43 percent shop online, and a somewhat surprising 19 percent buy pharmaceuticals online.

comScore reports there are over 2 million U.S. Hispanics online who prefer surfing in Spanish. According to MediaPost.com, Hispanics like to use the same search engines as the average person.

Key word analyze the traffic for "hipoteca" (which means mortgage) and you will see that the cost is only a $1 for top bid. Even though the term gets a relatively small amount of traffic ..1,255.
It is non-competitive traffic.

More data on Hispanic demographics:
~According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Hispanic buying power for 2002 totaled $580 billion, with a predicted compound annual growth rate of 8.7%. (The standard rate for non-Hispanics is 4.8%.)
~The center's study predicts that by 2007 the dollar power of Hispanics will rise to $926.1 billion.
~There are 39.9 million Hispanics in the US, and half of the adults among them are foreign-born.
~5.6 billion spent online by U.S. Hispanics in 2003

In a recent article in MarketingProfs.comthey point out that many of these foreign born individuals need to be educated as to the basics that we Americans take for granted. As an example, a tax preparer would point out that you must file taxes.

In the real estate arena, I am reminded about a news piece I read about a real estate agent who defrauded the life savings from a foreign born real estate buyer.

The buyer when asked why he trusated this unscrupulous individual replied, "I saw his California real estate license on the wall."

If you wish to expand your market reach consider marketing to the Hispanic community. Call us today to help you attract Hispanic real estate buyers and sellers online.

Much of this info is from Polling Hispanic Search Users.