Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

Do You Have a Leads Problem?

Image via CrunchBase

I was recently asked by a long time client about a looming leads issue. Without getting into the identity of this client or some of the specifics. I do wish to reveal the problem which this client does not seem to be alone. The name has been changed to protect our fiduciary relationship.

I identified her biggest problem is that her competitors have more traffic because they have more pages.

Ida-
I know your current provider seems to be parsing words on their SEO capabilities. However, with most providers of IDX we are able to work around most of their inherent limitations as far as SEO by muscling up with your linking.

So in that frame, you do not have an SEO problem. Except on the issue of pages I illustrated to you prior and again below. You rank well for mostly anything you type into the engines as I demonstrated to you.
Watch my most recent video on lead counts.

Your issue is the other sites you are competing against are sites like Trulia and Realtor.com whom have thousands more pages than you. More pages=more opportunities to get found in Google = more possible traffic.

Its as simple as that.Those pages that they have get them traffic in longer worded phrases (long tail-more specific words). Not the big phrases (fat tail-city + real estate)_that you already rank for. Long tail tends to get better conversion and should be 80% or so of your traffic.

Your current provider is blocking your opportunity at getting long tail traffic trough the robots.txt protocol. Therefore you cannot get found for those.   So even though your site actually has more probably more pages than the one Realtor competing site, it cannot be indexed into the search engines. Because it is blocked by the robots.txt. (Many IDX providers block their/your listing pages because it burns expensive bandwidth)

That is your real SEO problem. There are plenty of other issues too. But most IDX cos duffer from something. But if you could have more pages. In some cases hundreds if it is your MLS. Then that may make up for the other problems. Assuming we can make some crucial changes and leverage then IDX pages to help us.

 

Social Media: The Truth Shall Set You Free

It was Vegas, Summer of 2008.....

I was sitting in a persuasion and marketing conference hosted by Dave Lakhani. Dave is one of my favorite marketing persuasions teachers. In fact, I credit him for starting this blog. The first of its kind in the real estate space. The event changed not only my business view, but I dare say my life view.  The thing was meat and potatoes and none of the typical conference hype. It was called Renegades of Persuasion.

This is another talk than Renegades of Persuasion

There was a couple sessions that extolled the virtues of the social or new media. Now IMHO this is the ** next to there was no hype. There were a few self appointed experts on the issue that was in the audience. They pitched Twitter hard and in fact were Tweeting the entire time. They were chatting about what the teacher was teaching. I thought it akin to the digital equivalent of passing notes back and forth in the 3rd grade.

I remember chatting with a guy who is a pharmaceutical salesman who was bumming big time that he wasn't hep to Twitter and all its virtues. He was literally having an anxiety attack.

I told him to relax. And not to buy into the hype. I asked him to tell me who his is his typical client? He told me that he sells to Doctors but usually that is through their office managers. "Exactly"! I told him. "Do you seriously think that an office manager, let alone a Doctor is online doing the social thing?" 

The Secret to More Real Estate and Mortage Leads

Do you suffer from a buy or die mentality?

Meaning that if 100 people come through your website, and 1 registers as a lead, then 99 are lost. They died.

Follow up is key and the best follow up is through intelligent email followup. Call it drip marketing or sequential, but this is the secret to large success online.

Here is what I told a consultation client when asked how to create more leads online.

Start at the end...you want more sales?....

how do you get there?

back your way into that

SALES<lead incubation<lead created(conversion)<Traffic<Organic search

Each of these events are created by elements onpage,offpage or both.

Need more help than this to tie it all together? Sign up at http://www.realestateguerilla.com.

Real Estate Lead Generation

  Interview with Payam Zamani CEO Reply.com-online godfather of online leads

Lead Generation 1.0: Challenges with Lead Generation Today
The lead generation industry has been significantly impacted by legislation, a downturn in the economy and tightening of consumer credit. In 2007 and 2008, several large lead generation companies went out of business or stopped generating leads (RealEstate.com, House.com, Loanweb, Loanpage).

How to Survive in this Real Estate Market

I wrote yesterday about how I would get homebuyers and homesellers in the recession of the 1990's.

What I forgot to mention is that I went after Expired listings because they were a natural for my approach. The reason they expired was because no one was telling them the truth. I would call them, show up at their door, leave Fed Ex boxes and much more to get the homesellers attention. They were ready and more motivated by the time I got to them.

I want to commend the Tomato for his post : Looking For Ready To Act Buyers? This is a very nice compilation of ideas to blog prospect for buyers.

A New Traffic Generator

I just posted a new video for you to check out.

I discuss a few problems that I see with technology today as it relates to time.

I also give you a great way to to leverage actions you are already taking to create a massive traffic surge.

Integration Key to Lead Generation..

That is the point of a study outlined on the front page of BtoB.

"Excelling at lead generation takes more than putting in a new CRM system. It takes integration throughout the organization".

This is sage advice that is seldom followed in the many real estate brokerages across America. Although this study dealt in areas outside of Real Estate, it is still true in our industry nonetheless..

Their loss should be your gain.

Now I am a Dinasore

Well, I have been called Fred Flintstone, and now a "dinosaur mentality on steroids".

Seems Joe Zekas over at postingforleads.com has me figured as a modern day Buddy Holly trying to sing Nirvana. It seems that the internet is too sophisticated for selling. (are you tired of the metaphors already?)

Its a nice dialogue where even a self professed investor chimes in with his opinions.

If it Ain't Making Leads, Then its Just an Expensive Brochure

Blogging, Websites, lead capture vs open MLs.

I can't tell you how many times a day I hear an agent or an "expert" espouse the virtues of the empowered consumer and that it really is a benefit to leave the MLS open VS forcing them to opt-in.

The biggest excuse is that the consumer will just move-on to another website.

Hmm. Lots of responses come to mind for that one:

"Whose fault is that?"
The MLS has systematically been given away by NAR itself and boards since the beginning of the net.
"So what"
Serious people do not mind giving away some personal information for the data they want. Blogs are growing at a blistering pace where anyone with a thought can publish. Do you want to see the future? Just go to MySpace. What a mess of disjointed and frenetic text. Remember the line, "57 Channels and nothing on?" Yah. The net is Cable TV on Steroids.

The future of the internet is paid content. People, will not mind paying for content from sources they trust, because they want the information they can trust. When you have a medium where anyone with Frontpage and some time can start a business, it makes it more time consumptive to get what you want. Thus, people do not mind giving their information.

I have driven millions of consumers to my own and my client websites. They all get a phenomenal lead conversion rate.

Real Estate Control Freaks

At the end of the day, a forced opt-in is about control.

Control over your business, your website and your future. The money is in your list of prospects that come from your blog, your website and IDX VOW websites.

Control is from you communicating your message to an opt in list. It comes from knowing the point of your real estate blog, or your realty website. In my opinion that is to gather names. Lots and lots of names. So that can talk with those names on your terms.

Thank You For Your Information

As Online Marketers it is crucial to understand that nature of the internet search.

By its nature of the internet searcher is to research online and buy offline.

Read that again.

By its nature of the internet searcher is to research online and buy offline.

This is evidenced by recent studies showing that 87.3% of consumers say they regularly or occasionally research products online before making a purchase in a store. This isn't real estate but human nature is human nature.

Our jobs as online home marketers is to respect that the serfer is using your data with the overt or covert intent of purchasing offline. And to jump in their path and say I have the info you wish to research, and your name and email is the minimal charge of admittance.

Here is the irony. They couldn't buy the home from you online anyway. So the purpose of the real estate website is to start a courtship that is instagated via the lead registration.