Real Estate Marketing Blog

Google Secrets

A document posted on behalf of Google's patent shares some secrets of Search Positions in Google....or not. There are many ridiculous ideas that you would think they would never use.

Real Estate Online

California Association of Realtors released "2005 Internet Versus Traditional Buyer Study".

Results say:

• The median age of Internet buyers was 39 years compared with a median of 46 years for traditional buyers.
• More than nine out of ten Internet buyers were married, while eight of ten traditional buyers were married.
• 85% of Internet buyers had at least a four-year college degree and 11 percent completed post-graduate work. By comparison, 78 percent of traditional buyers held a college degree and 4 percent completed post-graduate work.
• Internet buyers had an annual income of $185,088, compared with $151,190 for traditional buyers. They can more home.
• Internet buyers spent an average of 5.8 weeks considering buying a home before contacting a Realtor®, nearly three times more than traditional buyers, who spent 2.1 weeks in this stage of the homebuying process.
• Internet buyers spend 4.7 weeks investigating homes, and neighborhoods, before contacting an agent, while traditional buyers spent 1.6 weeks.
• Internet buyers took only two weeks before selecting a home ,while traditional buyers took seven weeks.
• Because the Internet allows buyers to preview homes, a typical Internet buyer only viewed 6.2 homes with their agent, while traditional buyers visited 14.5 homes.
• Nine out of ten Internet buyers found their agents through an online real estate listing site; 60% found their agent through Internet search engines such as Yahoo! or Google. (note I am not sure that google is a real estate searchengine) 12% used agents they had worked with previously. (I would take this to mean that the online exposure buys you loyalty)
• Traditional buyers found their agents through for-sale signs (47 percent). Half (47 percent) found their agents through agent advertising. One quarter (26 percent) of agents were referred by friends and family, and 19 percent had a previous transaction with their agent.
• Internet buyers typically interviewed only one agent (71 percent) -- the first one who responded to them. Traditional buyers interviewed a median of three agents, and 37 percent interviewed four or more agents.
• A whopping 47 percent of Internet buyers said they selected their agent because of responsiveness, while only 42 percent of traditional buyers chose their agent for that reason.
• 22 percent of Internet buyers and 21 percent of traditional buyers choosing agents they felt would be the most aggressive on their behalf.
• Internet buyers are more likely to be first-time buyers, they are younger, wealthier, better educated and more likely married.
• All first-time buyers typically spent four weeks considering buying a home and four weeks investigating homes for sale before contacting a Realtor. They then spent three weeks previewing eight homes with their Realtor.
• All repeat buyers spent three weeks considering buying a home, and only two weeks investigating homes for sale on their own. They spent five weeks previewing ten homes with their Realtor.
  

Niche Real Estate Marketing

SpiderJuice Technologies can help you discover your online niche real estate market.

More reasons to attach yourself to the hispanic real estate market:

• The population of Hispanics will grow to 103 million by 2050.
• Currnetly 1:8 americans is Hispanic: 66% from Mexico, 14.5% form Central of south america, 9% Puerto Rico & 4% Cuba.
• Some say that 90% of Financial Services growth will come from the hispanic marketplace.
• Worth $200 Billion in new business next year.
• Hispanic owned businesses will grow 55% by 2010.
• Purchasing power will grow by $12 Trillion by 2010. (Bigger than Mexico's GDP)

SEO Marketing

There are people in this world that sit around and track web visitor eye balls. The motivation is acutally quite useful to you and I.

If you know where visitors like to peek at first. You will put your most powerful message there.

A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it.com and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that, during a search, the vast majority of eye activity focuses on a "golden triangle."

After using Google search result pages, researchers found that visibility dropped quickly in the organic rankings, from 100% for the top listing, to 85% at the bottom of the "above the fold" listings. Visibility fell below the fold, from 50% at the top to 20% at the bottom.

They also found that side-bar sponsored ads, that the top ranked results received much more in the way of both eye activity and click through than did those that followed. About 50% of participants looked at the top ad, while only 10% looked at ads in the 6, 7 or 8th position on the page.

Google Adwords

Google just released its Google Toolbar 3 Beta. Some pretty cool tools that I will not mention.

However, there is one tool that should bother you. Especially if you are paying for your search results thru Google Adwords.

As Danny Sullivan says:

When a user lands on a page with "trigger" content, he hears a little pop (the same sound used when a pop-up is blocked by the toolbar). The AutoLink toolbar button lights up. When the button's active, the user can click or use the drop-down arrow to get a menu. If he clicks, links are added to the page. If he uses the drop-down menu, he'll see those links in the menu rather than on the page itself.

Since we are in the real estate business this is bothersome. We deal in addresses. I do not think you want people clicking off your listings, especially after you spent $3.00 to $15.00 a click to get them there.

For Google to alter your content is just wrong and GREEDY.

This is an idea Microsoft gave up on after much BIG BROTHER name calling.( see the Danny Sullivan's article for the history of this scumware technique)

This is no different than the previous attemtpts, and the silence is deafening. Some how Google gets a pass. I guess the public sees this mammoth corporation as this pristine idealistic company run by a bunch of coolguys, and a few pimple faced cool geeks.

Spider Juice Technologies serves Realtors by building targeted real estate websites, Top Search Position Marketing, Blog Marketing, Real Estate PR, IDX/VOW web sites, and Lead Conversion.