Marketing SEO Blog

10 THINGS TO TRY IN 2011 For Your Brand

Image via Wikipedia NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR YOUR BRAND: 10 THINGS TO TRY IN 2011 guest post 1. BE COURAGEOUS, OFTEN Take bold steps to stand out from the crowd. Reflect on 2010 and look at what you did well, and what you could have... Read more →

How To Blog Comment For Profit

Yesterday I posted an article on affiliate marketing for real estate and mortgage pros. It was in response to a post on another RENet vendor website 4Realz.net I had left a comment on Dustin Luther's post that was in opposition to posting affiliate ads all... Read more →

Active Rain

This is what the industry as represented here at AR is saying is their relevance to the single largest asset that the consumer/visitor owns. Can you understand why there is a demand for a Redfin in the marketplace? Read more →

Real Living: Real Marketing

Their marketing focus is on women 25-54 They have instituted an in house on demand mail house The Real Living online and off line material uses Red and Orange, as opposed to the typical industry blues, and yellows. The Real Living marketing material use lifestyle images of women as opposed to still houses. Since 2002 they have expanded to 63 franchises in 20 states. So far this year they have printed 2.2 million mail pieces. They say they have implemented social networking on their site. Read more →

Content Content Content

The 3 most important words in real estate? Content Content Content. At least on the web anyway. The web was supposed to be the great equalizer. Today, it is becoming more and more expensive in money and time to compete. Arianna Huffington recently described her... Read more →

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

I found this news very intriguing. A builder of townhouses in Torrance is guaranteeing buyers that they will not lose money on their home purchases. "..it's true! BC Urban Development will guarantee that you cannot lose on your new home purchase by offering the first... Read more →

Vote For HouseBlogger!

We have been put up into the MarketingSherpa Readers Choice Blog and Podcast Award. All you gotta do is vote for us. We are about half way down the row, under Marketing to a Specific Consumer Demographic. The criteria that they ask you to vote... Read more →

Other Industries Teach Us

I have always used other industry data to help lead us in dominating in the real estate and mortgage industry which comprises most of our client websites. By looking at other markets we can take inferences that lead us to understand new opportunities and solidify hunches.... Read more →

Real Estate SEO

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.

--------------------------

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.

Read more →

Writing a Real Estate Website's copy

A recent Eye Tracking study revealed some huge behaviors that should dictate your real estate website design and writing.

As outlined by Lorrie Morgan Ferrarro, the study proves the importance of headlines and subheads. In fact, it says the visitor gives us 5 chances to influence them thru headlines. It also says that smaller copy is better to force reading while a larger font is better for headlines. Upper left is where the eys is first drawn.

Read More.www.red-hot-copy.com/blog
Read the study directly at http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm.

Read more →