Realtor Websites - Real Web Results Blog

I was thinking today….

Many Realtors spend hundreds of dollars each month on pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords and even Homegain’s BuyerLink product to generate traffic to their website. I have a bunch of existing well-ranked Realtor websites currently without Realtors - why not use those websites to direct traffic to the IDX Search and lead generating pages of your existing websites that perhaps are languishing in the search engine results?

I have some existing clients that have been doing this successfully for quite a while already - one has been doing it for over 4 years. The idea of redirecting traffic to the IDX search and lead pages of the website a Realtor has elsewhere - that is not one of ours - is not something that I ever offered before but was willing to do if asked.

The Realtor website landscape has changed a lot in the last couple of years however and I realize that often agents are spending many thousands of dollars on customized IDX searches and websites - which is not something that we offer. Agents can always use a little help in directing traffic to those high priced websites and IDX search services - and perhaps that is where our system can be of help.

The traffic that comes to our websites is high quality traffic that arrives by searching the big 3 search engines  for “city real estate” and other popular real estate keywords. It is not traffic that comes from deceptive advertising and popups etc. It is the same traffic you strive for when you work to have your current website ranking well in search engines. When visitors to sites we provide click on links to the search forms and listing searches on our sites - they can be directed to the IDX search and forms on your current site. The websites we provide would be personalized with your information - just as if you were not redirecting the traffic - so visitors would know right from the start that you are the Realtor providing the information to them. It would not be like Homegain’s BuyerLink service where visitors are redirected to a totally different Realtor (surprise!).

If this is an idea that holds some interest for you, check out our website for more information on our Realtor Websites.

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The most valuable thing you have is your time and how that time is spent will determine your wealth, health, and happiness.

Ever since the inception of the web, there have been many opportunities to participate in activities that are a waste of time. I first wrote about this long before there was such a thing as blogs - but the issues were the same. Back in September 1999 I wrote an article titled “Get off the computer and back to work!” in my newsletter that was subscribed to by thousands of Realtors at the time - the forerunner of this blog.

Spending your time maintaining a real estate blog at one of the many blog communities may just be a colossal waste of time. Yes, I know that statement is politically incorrect but I did not say blogging was necessarily a waste of time - just the reasons most agents give for frequently writing blog posts at blogging communities may no longer be valid.

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In addition to having my own web server, I use the services of over a dozen web hosts and in some cases have multiple accounts with each. I have usually done a bit of research prior to signing up with a new hosting company and have generally had few problems until recently.

It seems that the barriers to entering the web hosting business have lowered to the point where almost anyone can now set up shop as a web hosting company and present the appearance of a large, stable, and experienced web host - even though they may have entered the business only a few months ago and be flying by the seat of their pants. Continue Reading »

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From time to time I hear from Realtors who are concerned that if they link from their site to outside resources they are just creating a way for visitors to leave their site. I used to hear this concern more than I do now as in the past this fear was widely planted by some template companies who were trying to attach a benefit to the framed sites they were offering. Now most template companies, in attempts to make their products more search-engine-friendly, have stopped using frames (on their main entry page at least) so they are not promoting this “benefit” as much as they used to.

When Realtors do express concern over linking out from their site, here is my usual response… Continue Reading »

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We have all been inundated lately with requests for triangular or 3 way links. So far I have refused them all for myself and my clients. Why? Because those being offered are of minimal value - except to those doing the offering of course.

A triangular or 3 way link is one where website A links to website B but instead of B linking back to A - a different website - C - will link to A. The way this scheme is always offered is that the link you provide to B is valuable but the link you receive in return from C is worthless or at best worth a lot less.

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I received an email from a client wondering about how often a website should be updated…” I have been reading Florida Realtor magazines and they suggest I should be “touching” my web site every other week to keep it fresh.”

My response…. Continue Reading »

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I would recommend that you regularly check to ensure those you have traded links with are keeping up their end of the bargain. You may be surprised at what you find. Today for example I was checking the reciprocal links of a client’s site and found that 100% of the links we had carefully accepted over the last couple of years had stopped linking back. Every last one!

The links we were providing to these cheaters were all good links on a PR3 page - which was way better than we were getting in return in the first place. There was no reason for these sites to remove their link back. I guess some people just like to take advantage of others.

So, even if you carefully check out potential link exchanges (as outlined in other posts here) to ensure that you are getting a fair trade - you need to keep checking to make sure you are still getting value and are not being taken advantage of!

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Realtors are increasingly discovering the world of blogs and are beginning to use them to convey information about themselves and the real estate market in their area.

A blog is really just a web page you can post content to even if you do not have any web development skills.

A Realtor can use a blog to post listings, real estate news, interest rates, and it can be branded and publicized to reflect a local real estate market to attract regular visitors. A blogger just needs to find something good to write about everyday, but can be short.

Blogs are easy to set up and there are tons of good free blogging software out there, like blogger.com which hosts this blog.

Now there is a brand new search-engine-friendly directory that lists real estate blogs and also blogs of industries affiliated with and servicing the real estate industry. The directory is brand new - in fact this blog is the first one to be listed. You can find it at http://www.real-estate-blogs.com.

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In an earlier post I outlined how to tell if an offer to exchange links was worthwhile. Lately there has been some talk that exchanging Reciprocal Links no longer works. The fact is that link exchanges still work although I believe some carry more weight than others. It has been widely noted in SEO forums (and I agree) that a link from a site whose links are organized as a “web directory” IS ignored.

By “web directory” I mean where they have multiple categories not related to the actual theme of the site - so if a real estate site has a links directory that has categories for travel sites and health insurance sites etc. - you probably get no benefit from the exchange.

Also, if a site uses popular links programs like Linksmanager you most likely get zero benefit from from the link as Google would recognize such programs and ignore links from them.

It IS getting harder and harder to find link exchanges that are of value but there still are some out there.

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I was just going through some of my website statistics and was surprised to find that over 30 percent of visitors are now using a browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a very large increase in the past year and it is important that website owners and webmasters understand that websites do not display the same in all browsers.

If you design your website (especially if you use a Microsoft product to do so) and never check to see how it displays in some of the more popular non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Netscape you may be interested to know that your website may look horrible to 30% of your website visitors. In some cases it looks so bad that visitors will leave immediately.

It is probably not a good idea to be turning off a rapidly increasing number of website visitors!

If you only check your site in one other browser -I would suggest you do so in Firefox which is available for free at http://www.mozilla.org/. Firefox and Netscape display pretty much the same as far as I can tell and those two browser’s make up the lion’s share of MSIE’s competition.

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Some agents are concerned that their website content is being copied by others and are looking for a solution. Various website providers and webmasters have been recommending and implementing a so-called solution that prevents web surfers from accessing the menu that is seen when the right mouse button is clicked.

This is done because when that menu is accessed one of the choices is “View Source” which allows the code to be seen. The thinking is that if you can prevent the code from being seen then you can prevent it from being copied. A nice thought but most webmsters and anyone but a web “newbie” knows this to be total fantasy. Continue Reading »

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Where I live, this week has been Spring Break and the kids are off school and in need of activities to keep them occupied and out of mischief. So, I figured it would be a good time for my pre-teen son and I to head up to the family camp along the shores of the Winnipeg River in North West Ontario and take care of some work that needed to be done there.

The lengthy drive was quiet and peaceful - because “modern times” allowed my son to watch DVDs on my laptop the whole way (with head phones on as a bonus for dad!). Once we arrived at our destination, we found that there was still a couple of feet of wet snow in the bush so had to put on snowshoes and make the trek through the bush on a trail we shared with deer carrying our gear with backpacks and hands full. It took two trips to pack all our gear in - You would be amazed at how heavy a notebook computer becomes when carrying it through two feet of snow! Continue Reading »

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