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Princeton Real Estate

Notify Search Engines of Your Latest Blog Post

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So you are a Realtor that blogs…finally.

You are over the mental barrier that maintaining a ‘blog’ is simply maintaining a conversation with potential customers online.

You are waxing poetic and sending out tons of useful information on your local markets via your blog. In order for your local customers to be able to find your blog search engines have to be able to find you. Thanks to a great post by my Realtor tech guru, LIMEYBOY, you can use a new service called http://pingomatic.com/.

When you go to http://pingomatic.com/ you will see the following:

Simply click where you want your blog posts to go. For more great Realtor tech ideas check out LIMEYBOY’S BLOG. Good luck with your blogging!

10 Tips for Real Estate Success in 2010

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Here is a great quote from a great article from Bernice Ross from Inman news. ’10 Tips for Real Estate Success in 2011.’

‘3. Lead generation is the name of the game


As a rule of thumb, about one out of three solid leads ends up closing a transaction with us. This means that if you want to close four transactions per month, you must have 12 well-qualified leads each month.

The issue is how to generate these leads. For example, if your conversion rate for Web leads is 1 percent, you must generate 1,200 website visitors to generate 12 solid leads and four closed transactions.

If you convert 25 percent of your expired listing leads, you must call on the owners of 16 expired listings per month to close four transactions. If you convert 10 percent of your open house leads, you need 120 open house visitors per month to close those four transactions.’

You can read the rest of the article here. Enjoy.

http://www.inman.com/buyers-sellers/columnists/berniceross/10-tips-real-estate-success-in-2011

Weichert.com continues to Dominate, providing Weichert Customers & Associates premier internet coverage

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Whether you are a homeowner or a real estate agent, you have to ask yourself the same question: ‘Is my Broker website in a position to make me money?’ Weichert.com, a top broker website can answer that question, YES. Here is some great news about how Weichert.com continues its growth and dominence among real estate websites. Take a look for yourself: www.weichert.com

Think you have a Great Web Site…Find out what your users think

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Get a Clue: What Do People Remember About Your Site?
By FREDERIC LARDINOIS of ReadWriteWeb
You’ve invested good money in your web design, but do you know what your customers actually remember about your site? <a href=”http://clueapp.com“>Clue</a>, a new tool from Bay Area interaction design and design strategy firm lets you create a 5-second interactive memory test that you can use to test what people remember about your product. The tool is available for free and you don’t even have to log in to use it.

Google Analytics…for a Realtor’s Facebook Business Page?

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Many of us (me included) have fl0cked to Facebook Business Pages as part of our marketing routine. There are a lot of advantages in having one…they are free, inexpensive to advertise on Facebook, and serve as a website of sorts for Realtors that have not been able to invest in one.

The one problem in using a Facebook business page is that you are flying blind once you build it…how many visitors have I had, who is arriving at the the page, how are they finding it and most importantly, what are the looking at once they get there?

Facebook launched its ‘Insights’ Analytics which again is very handy as it is built in and FREE! If you really want to track your marketing efforts on-line Google Analytics is the probably the best (Free) application you can use.

Now there is a way to place Google Analytics right on your Facebook Business Page. Follow these simple steps to get started and start analyzing the effectiveness of your Facebook Realtor Business Page:

1. Setup Google Analytics account.(you can go to Google and search ‘set up google analytics account’) If you already have one, create a new website profile. You can name it facebook.com or facebook.com/your_page_name. You will finally get your tracking code which looks like this UA-3123123-2

2. Follow the simple instructions on Google (feel free to contact me for help) and it will create HTML code. You need to copy that code.

3.  Go to your Facebook business page, click on ‘Edit Page’ (this is located in the upper left of your page right below your photo).

4. Scroll Down to the box titled ‘More Applications’ and click on the ‘Static FBML’ Link (Static FBML)and Install that on your Facebook Business Page.

5. Once you install that on your Facebook Business Page you need to click on the ‘edit page’ button again and scroll down again though this time the FBML will have its own box. In the FBML box, click ‘edit’.

6. In the box that pops up, past the HTML code that you copied from Google earlier and click ‘save.’

Google will do the rest. Remember that it starts tracking from the day you install it on your Facebook page so be patient and get marketing. Drive as much business to your Facebook business page as you can and Google Analytics will help you measure the results.

Happy Tracking!

So I Have Website, Now What?

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I did it. I built a website. It is sophisticated, high tech and consumer focused. So why isn’t my phone ringing with oodles of calls from new customers telling me to partner with them on their Real Estate needs? Well, simply because the consumer hasn’t found your site yet and it is up to you to drive them there. Here’s is a couple of ideas for you to consider. The best way to get traffic to your site I will not post here. Want that juicy tidbit, give me a call.

  1. Brochures: I have always said that houses are not important in the real estate Associates’ business. Sound strange? It is true. People are important, period. So why do agents spend so heavily promoting their current listing vs. themselves. The listing will sell. It is a one time event. When you do a brochure on a house, front and center on that brochure should be, you guessed it, your website address. If a customer walks into an Open House, takes the brochure and there is no website on it they will take no further action. If there is  a web address offering a virtual tour of that home they will take action. When they take action, you get visitors.
  2. Open Houses: We recently had an Open House in our market with over 120 visitors. That is not a typo. 120 guests were in that house on a Sunday afternoon. Instead of handing them just piece of paper or a brochure on the house hand them a full color promotional sheet promoting your website and give details of why they should visit. Stapled to that sheet can be the information on the house. Over the course of a year that is a lot of extra visitors to your website, becoming a fan of your Facebook business page, etc.
  3. Print Media: There is no company or marketing exec who will invest in any type of print media without displaying the company web site. Why would Realtors not do the same? If you are investing in any type of print media the most prominently displayed item should be your website.

Rethink your marketing and drive everything and everyone to your website. Want my #1 proven way to drive traffic to your site…call me.

Attn. Realtors….

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…90% of homebuyers used the Internet as an information source

…77% of Internet homebuyers drove by or viewed a home they saw online

…36% of buyers first found their home on the Internet

The internet is where its at. If you are not engaged you are well, not engaged.

Realtor.org has a ton of information (for free) for Realtors looking to upgrade their web presence.

Here are a few links:

2009 NAR Profile of Homebuyers and Homesellers: It offers insights into the most valuable commodity in our business, the customer. http://www.realtor.org/prodser.nsf/products/186-45-09?OpenDocument

5 Ways to Enhance Your Website: Most Realtors build a website backwards, they build it for what they think is important vs what the consumer wants to see. Here are a few tips for you as you plan your website: http://www.realtor.org/archives/listtechmarch05

How to Create Compelling Offers to turn Visitors into Leads: Getting people to your website is only half the challenge, you want them to contact you. Here are some ideas to make it happen. http://www.realtor.org/archives/askmrinternet20050124

If you have any question on setting up your internet strategy please give me a call and I will be happy to help. Office 609-921-1900.

Why Do Some Realtor Websites Appear on Google and Some Don’t?

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Ever wonder why one Realtor’s website appears higher on Google search than others?

Two major reasons are ‘CONTENT & STRUCTURE.’

Websites with good ‘content & structure’ get ranked higher by Google than those that don’t.

Take a look below at a Realtor website for an example.

What we see….

What Google sees…

Though pleasant to look at this website does not have good content or structure as Google sees very little.  As a result this Realtor website will have a tough time appearing on the first page of Google or any of the major search engines.

Curious as to what Google & other search engines see when they go to your website? Do you want a plan to have your website appear #1 at Google?

Call me and I will show you how to use the Internet to take your business to a new level.  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

If I know the town…why are you selling me on it?

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According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of all buyers move either within the same state or the same town that they have lived in their entire life. So what does this mean to the average Real Estate Agent? To answer that ask yourself how often you have visited a Realtor’s website and than spend several the first four paragraphs extolling the virtues of the town(s) that they sell in? If there is a 50/50 chance that I the customer A. grew up in that town or B. know of it already, why are we taking valuable cyberspace selling people who are already sold? Makes a lot of Realtor websites kind of redundant, doesn’t it?”

Keep in mind why a customer came to your website in the first place…to search for homes in a town that they have already made a decision to buy in.

Right now, quickly, go to your website and pretend you are a customer.  If you can’t find in 1 second or less the link to the ‘search for homes‘ tab on your website, neither can your customers and in one more second they will be off your site, permanently.


Do yourselves and that poor soul we call the customer a favor and give them what they want,  access to homes for sale in an easily organized search format. Do that and that customer might be so grateful that when they decide to get off their computer to go out and start looking at houses, they might just call you to tag along….

Agents Need to be Hyper Local

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I recently read the following quote, ‘ I am not sure  the secret to success, but the secret for failure is trying to please everyone.’

I am sure that I did not do it justice though it sums up what Agents struggle with in their on-line marketing strategies. They don’t want to miss on a potential customer so they try to please every possible demographic on their website. This approach however is completely contrary to how customers search online. If a customer is searching for homes in California they will not put ‘california homes for sale’ into Google. It is too big a search.  Customers will search ‘Malibu homes for sale.’ If they are looking for an ocean front home they will surely incorporate the word ‘ocean front or ocean view(s)’ into their search so they pull results that they are looking for.

Per Google there were 450,000 searches for ‘california homes for sale’ in the last 30 days. A Realtor has very little chance of showing up in the top of the search results, as that search pulled up over 14 million websites related to that search that would compete with yours to land on the first page of Google. These means that you have a 1 in 14 million chance of getting on the first page of Google so those consumers find your website.

Per Google when you typed in ‘malibu homes for sale’ there were only 406,000 possible websites that would appear for those search results and more importatly there were 49,500 consumers who typed that exact search into Google in the last 30 days!

Per Google when you type in ‘malibu oceanfront homes for sale’ there were (only) 40,000 websites that appeared and yet there were over 5,000 customers typing that phrase into Google in the last 30 days.

If you wanted to go ultra niche you could focus on ‘solar malibu homes for sale’. There were less than 6500 websites that you would be in competition with!

So ask yourself, does your website have a better chance of appearing on the first page of Google with competition from over 14 million websites or less than 7,000?

If you want more specific strategies on making your web and marketing strategy Hyper Local contact me for an evaluation of your current program. jwilton@weichertrealtors.net

John Burke

Broker/Sales Person

Weichert, Realtors
350 Nassau St,
Princeton, NJ 08540
Office: (609) 921-1900

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