Justin's Real Estate SEO Blog

• A Simple Way To Find Real Estate Leads On Twitter

  
  25 Aug 2010
  
  

  If you've been wondering all this time what Twitter is all about then join the club! I've never been a big fan of it myself, for various reasons, but it's hugely popular with millions of people using it so you cannot afford to ignore it.
  
  As an estate agent I'm sure you've often wondered how you can use it for your business, particularly in terms of generating leads.
  
  There are various ways you can work Twitter, which I'm going to be covering in depth in some future tutorials. But today I just wanted to demonstrate one of the simplest ways you could put Twitter to work for you right now.
  
  We're going to be using the Twitter Search facility, which you can find at http://search.twitter.com. The idea behind this simple activity is to find people who are talking about looking for property.
  
  Here's an example that I just tried:
  
  
  
  I've typed into the Twitter search box "I'm looking for apartment". You can see that if you were an estate agent in Spain, covering the Almeria area, that first result there is someone actively looking for an apartment in Almeria! That took all of 5 seconds to find and it was posted just 1 hour ago. You could now send that prospect a direct message on Twitter or respond to their post.
  
  Now, it's important to note that the Twitter search facility is nowhere near as advanced as Google, so if you enter "I'm looking for AN apartment" you will get a different results, so just be aware of that.
  
  Now, let's try another. Say we search for "I'm looking for property":
  
  
  
  In the first two results we have someone looking for a Spanish property and another looking for a commercial property in Florida. Another two leads! I think you get the gist now. Depending on the market your serve and how people refer to properties in your area or country, then you can tailor the search phrase accordingly. You can also be more specific by including your area or trying other search words such as "I'm searching for" or "Can anyone recommend an estate agent", etc.
  
  Now, I hear you saying "but I can't keep doing this for every phrase every day...can I?". Well actually there is no need to, because Twitter comes to the rescue again. At the top right of the search results page is a link that says "Feed for this query". Take that link and add it into an RSS reader such as Google Reader. Then just fire up Google Reader every morning and see who's house hunting on Twitter!
  
  Surely, things don't get much easier than that?

   

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• 6% Of Real Estate Websites Have Incorrect Email Addresses

  
  24 Aug 2010
  
  

  I did something a bit naughty today! I sent a crawler out to 400 real estate websites to pick out the main email address for each of those websites.
  
  The idea was to find out how many of those website had an non-functioning email address on their contact us page.
  
  I was truly hoping for a result of "zero", although that would have made for a very boring blog post. Instead I was quite staggered to find that...
  
  25 out of the 400 websites had non-functioning email addresses!
  
  
  
  Unbelievable really. These people have spent a good amount of time and money on their websites yet they have cocked up with one of the most important parts of their website...the method some of their potential customers may choose to use to contact them.
  
  Is it really a big effort to check that every form works and that every email address is working? Some of the emails were bouncing back because those particular people who they were going to were obviously no longer with the company.
  
  Have you checked your forms and email addresses on your website recently? There really is no excuse.

   

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• So You Rank For Your Company Name? So What?

  
  24 Aug 2010
  
  

  I was talking to a restaurant owner friend this morning who was telling me how chuffed he was that his restaurant was ranking at number 1 in Google for his business name followed by the location...and it wasn't his own site, it was a business directory website.
  
  He was so excited that I didn't really have the heart to tell him that that's about as useful as a bra on a fish.
  
  I mean, at least be number 1 with YOUR own website. And secondly, unless you have a very recognisable brand, what is the point of ranking for your company name? It's a wasted SEO opportunity. Simply adding your company name to your footer normally does the trick, as your company name won't be that competitive in the search results.
  
  For my friend's restaurant, he really wants to be ranking for "tapas in Sabinillas", which is his local area. That would really help him out.
  
  Just doing a quick scan on Google you can see loads of real estate websites where they haven't put much thought into ranking for anthing apart from their name. See this example here, I've highlighted their home page title tag in red:
  
  
  
  So if you rank for your company name it's probably best if you don't shout about...it's not that great.

   

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• How To Get Yourself Banned From Google Adsense

  
  20 Oct 2010
  
  

  I'm a big fan of Adsense for monetising websites. It's the lazy way of getting advertisers on your website. However, when you put Adsense ads on your site, Google is essentially lending you their advertisers for a portion of the revenue earned from them. That means that you have to do whatever Google tells you.
  
  One of the clearest terms of use of Adsense, apart from clicking your own ads, is that you cannot encourage people to click on the Google ads on your own website. The terms of service state:
  
  "You shall not, and shall not authorize or encourage any third party to: (i) directly or indirectly generate queries, Referral Events, or impressions of or clicks on any Ad..."
  
  Seems quite clear to me...but maybe not so clear to the owner of this website I came across today. Just take a look at this:
  
  
  
  I have blurred the image in places slightly as I don't want to give away what the website is, but this is SOOOOOOOOOOO bad. Sorry, I mean SSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bad.
  
  You just don't do this. It's crazy really. Why would you risk your earnings like this? Hopefully the person whose website this is will see this post and correct it before Google catches them out.
  
  Very naughty and very silly.

   

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• Real Estate Website Home Page From Hell

  
  19 Aug 2010
  
  

  I spend a lot of time studying different real estate websites in different markets to see what others are doing. In my travels today I came across a website which had me spitting out my coffee all over my monitor. This is a snapshot of the home page of that website:
  
  
  
  This has to win the top prize in the "Worst Real Estate Home Page" awards..which I'm just starting up now ;)
  
  Just look at it, they are doing evertying you should never do. It's starts off with the four images with red text. They look totally awful and are difficult to make out.
  
  And what about that intro text from hell: You have found "The Ultimate High-Tech Website for Intelligent Buyers and Sellers of Real Estate in Mississauga". WHAT? Are you kidding me? High-Tech??? What a load of rubbish. That is the worst intro I have ever read.
  
  As if that wasn't enough...they've then put two lots of Adsense blocks right there on their home page! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Do they want customers or do they just want to drive them away? What about the Google Maps links all in a bunch to the right of the first Adsense unit?
  
  And what is it with the yellow post it note and other thing below it?
  
  Terrible, absolutely terrible. If they make any sales I will eat my shorts.

   

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• Add The New Tweet Button To Your Site

  
  17 Aug 2010
  
  

  You'll have noticed on my blog and throughout this site the "tweet" button that I've placed strategically around!
  
  Twitter have actually made it incredibly easy for you to add this tweet button to your own website and there really is no reason why you should do it.
  
  As an estate agent, the most logical place to button this button on your website is either in your blog posts or within each property listing. That way if the visitors to your website find something of interest they'll go ahead and tweet it.
  
  And why would they want to tweet it?
  
  There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's such a great property that you've got there that they would like to share it with their friends. Secondly, many people use Twitter as a sort of social notepad. They'll tweet about things that they come across and want to refer back to later on. By adding the tweet button you are making this incredibly easy for them.
  
  The propery listings on your website are (should be) dynamically generated so adding the tweet button only has to be done once so that it appears for all of your properties.
  
  Seeing as it's that easy and free you might as well do it now. Head on over the the Twitter tweet button creator and get your button now.

   

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• Welcome to my new blog

  
  17 Aug 2010
  
  

  Welcome to my new blog on Online Property Lab!
  
  I'm going to be sharing some excellent online marketing tips here with you. Quick and simple tips that you can use to boost your website and lead generation efforts online.
  
  I'm going to use a mix of text and videos and also cover some of the latest methods, strategies and changes happening in the online world.  The idea is that this is the only blog you should need to visit as an estate agent to keep on top of what's new.
  
  I look forward to sharing my advice here and I would, of course, appreciate it if you could comment on my posts.  It helps to interact with my readers and also so that I can understand what it is you need to know.
  
  First proper post coming very soon!
  
  Just adding this here for technorati: PXMSQQMYQ4DU

   

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