When Mike Kehoe of Birdview Technologies reported to the Inman Conference that one of his clients received over an 11% conversion rate, I smiled with pride. For the site mentioned was designed and optimized for traffic and conversion by Spider Juice Technologies. Years of testing and bucking the "common" knowledge had paid off.
You see, we have discovered that the most optimal way for an online Real Estate agent to succeed is thru rapid lead generation and follow up. And in order to escalate your leads, you must start off with an acceptance of your current traffic and lead conversion ratio.
Ask yourself "How many visitors does it take to get to a lead?"
In fact, when we initially interview a potential client often times the conversion is close to 200:1. Depending on design features, you should really get at the most 50:1. And probably 30:1 is more like it.
Conversion comes from on page conversion optimization & Keyword representation.
On Page Factors
Most people have heard of Search Engine Optimization. Few talk about on page conversion optimization.
First of all, this whole concept pre-supposes that you are starting off with a most wanted action (MWA). Sometimes your MWA is Branding, sometimes it is Leads. And many times it is both lead capture and branding that you are asking your website to do.
If Leads are your goal then your call to action is critical. Other features on your page can distract the viewer from your objectives.
On Page factors that may increase or decrease conversion are:
- Asking them to sign up (making your call to action clear)
- A Johnson Box (these are those tabled boxes that break up your body copy)
- Color can attract or distract
- Too many buttons
- Animation
- Offer Placement. Where are you placing your call to action?
- Variety of Call to Action
- Frequency of your call to action
These are just a few of the attributes that may help your lead count to go way up.
HappyVille Real Estate
There is a reason that studies have found that Pay per Click search engine results often render poor conversion rates. Specificity.
The reason is that you can only use high volume keywords with pay per click (PPC). These high volume keywords are by their nature generalized. They are also the most profitable for the engine. But what may profit the engine does not always profit you. (Thats not to say that PPC doesn't have its place in a search marketing campaign)
9 times out 10, I am asked to "make my site #1 for "My City real estate". While this is a worthy objective, it is at best very short sighted. Words like "City real estate", "city homes", city condos", are all high volume in just about any city you research.
However, a successful marketing campaign must employ search engine click thrus that are made up of general & specific "streams of traffic". This is because traffic is a comprehensive endeavor. You wouldn't just rent out 1 or 2 of your penthouse units and leave the rest your 150 unit apartment complex empty? You couldn't expect profitability would you?
However, this is exactly what most agents do when they go after a few high volume words.
Traffic is made up of the combined visits that come from various inquiries into a search engine.
Each inquiry represents a finite amount of possible traffic determined by the placement in the engine, for a particular keyword phrase.
So long story short, a few keywords aren't going to make your business. You need a Universe of words in order to get monster traffic and lead conversion.
Additionally, not all keywords or traffic are created equal. Step out of real estate monetarily and imagine yourself as Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. What would delite you more?
500 visitors that typed in "Books"? Or 500 visitors that typed in "Harry Potter"? Or better yet, "Harry Potter, Sorcerors Stone"? The more specific you get, conversion goes up and the closer you can get to that elusive 1:1 conversion.
The challenge however, is that the more specific you get with our keywords, the less traffic you get. So you need to represent a large amount of these specific keywords that produce low traffic by themselves. But combined, create a large stream of very convertable traffic.
By optimizing your on page factors and your keywords that drive people to your site, you will take your visitor to conversion ratio down to a respectable number.
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Tim O'Keefe is President of Spider Juice Technologies. His firm specializes in Search Engine Traffic and Lead Optimization strategies. An ex-Realtor himself, TIm has always started a project with the fastest path to profitability as his objective for his clients. You can consult with Tim personally, at 310-533-9145.
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