You know – don’t you? That your real estate business has changed? That consumer behavior has changed? That your real estate marketing needs to – change?
If you have been in the real estate space since 2005, this may sound familiar: pick out a postcard [glossy or JUMBO], add photo shopped image of yourself [cut out that guy/girl you met at the beach – the one with the really good picture of you], add a tagline like “for all your real estate needs”, add contact information: phone number, email address, postage, mail postcard. . .wait for phone to ring. . . sell a home.
Does this work anymore? From everything I have heard, from my own personal behavior I would say – Nope. If there is any industry that has been flipped on its head by the Internet it’s the real estate industry. Things that used to work to make the phone ring simply don’t work so well anymore.
When you need information where do you go? When you want to see what something looks like where do you go? If your answer is “the Internet” then congratulations – you are not that much different than the rest of us. I say “the rest of us” because this is where over 94% of consumers start their home search.
You can grow your real estate business by helping consumers find your real estate website – online. But just because you build it [website] does not mean they will come. The internet is littered with abondoned real estate websites – websites that never produced a single lead for their owners.
Why? Content or rather – LACK OF.
You can grow your real estate business and avoid the fate of too many real estate professionals before you by getting the right traffic to your real estate website. Here are 5 ways to boost traffic to your real estate website.
5 Ways To Boost Traffic To Your Real Estate Website
1) Get WordPress. The days of paying a monthly fee to “rent” a space on the internet are over. ATTENTION: If you are paying a monthly fee for a website YOU DO NOT OWN I have one word for you: STOP! You wouldn’t dream of using a phone number in your real estate business you didn’t own so why are you using a real estate website you don’t own? WordPress is a website and blogging program that empowers real estate professionals to control their own destiny without being held hostage to programmers to make content changes. WordPress is a CMS [Content Management System] that allows you to fire your programmer, manage your site on your own and control your own online destiny. Make sure it’s a SELF HOSTED WordPress website – not the FREE kind.
2) Write Often. Content as they say is KING. It’s true. SEO is important put it’s people that do things when they get to your real estate website – not a search engine, so having rockstar content is imperative. Writing often will help you position yourself as an expert/authority in your market area. Writing often gives you a voice, a way to connect and build a community. Writing often also brings search engines to your website more often. Search engines crave unique, new content. Writing often is a great way to help search engines like Google send traffic to your real estate website. Here are some ideas for real estate blog content.
3) Identify Your Ideal Client. Having a beautiful WordPress Real Estate Website and writing often mean very little if you are not writing for the right target audience. To write for the right target audience you must identify your ideal client first. Think:
- Who are you writing to?
- What problems do they have?
- How can you solve it?
- Why should they work with you?
Knowing WHO your ideal client is will help you create real estate content that is not only relevant, but valuable. Relevant and valuable content is what your ideal client will seek out when they have a need for homes under $300,000 in Chandler Arizona, Val Vista Lakes short sales with pool, bank owned homes in Scottsdale Ranch, Fulton Ranch Gated Communities, Homes near Chandler Regional Hospital and much more.
4) Link To Your Site. Once you get a great WordPress real estate website and you identify your ideal client and you write often for them you will need to link to your site. Linking to your site will help you build referral traffic. Once you write a great article it is not good enough to wait for a search engine to come along and index it, you should post it on other websites like your facebook business page, Twitter, Linkedin, Google +, StumbleUpon, Digg and more to drive traffic from these websites to yours. Another great way to link to your site is to comment on industry related blogs. If someone reads your comment they can [and likely will] click on your profile and end up on your website where they can learn more about you and your value.
5) Link In Your Site. This is one of my favorites. Adding links in your site to other related articles on your site will help search engines like Google find and index your content. It also will help keep your visitors engaged and on your site longer. The longer consumers are on your site the more they are watching your videos, reading your articles and searching for homes – making conversion more likely. Good internel links from pages and posts that rank well in search engines like Google will help your other pages and posts rank as well. Think of it like this. External links are for search engines, internal links are for humans. Your content is only as good as your weakest “link”.
These are just 5 ways to Boost Traffic To Your Real Estate Website, there are many more. One of the best ways to boost traffic to your real estate website is to use an Indexable IDX for WordPress as the good ones can create 1000’s of valuable and informative listing pages consumers are scouring the internet – looking for. There are many ways to create awesome content including videos, screen capture videos, ebooks, downloadable REO and short sale lists and much more. If you are a Phoenix real estate agent that would like help growing your real estate business, please fill out the form below and come to our Real Estate Marketing Classes Phoenix – I can help.
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