Who Really Owns Your Real Estate Web Site?

I encountered a scenario yesterday that has just made my blood boil, and It’s been simmering away in the background ever since, so I just had to get it off my chest, why? because it comes down to who really owns your web site, you or your webmaster. so let’s start by giving you the background to this little rant of mine. I’ve been hired to look at the SEO on a real estate web site for a client and yesterday I asked for  access to their hosting Cpanel, that’s so we could start working on the site’s optimisation. I received from my client the following email they had been sent from their web master in response to my request, and I quote the email here for you.

“Unfortunately we do not provide any login details for any sites that are hosted by (&*&*&) as a policy. Giving you the login details would mean that you would be allowed access to all sites hosted by us.

Essentially your SEO specialist will need to supply us with all the code he would like to add to the site. Our Web Design will then need to review the code and if everything is order we will implement this onto the site ourselves. Please note that there is likely to be a charge involved with this”

Isn’t this the biggest load of Cr^% you’ve ever heard, lets have a look at several issues in this email.

Firstly who owns the site? If I’ve paid for it then It’s mine, or am I wrong in this assumption, it’s not hard to set up Cpanel access, most companies provide this when your site is hosted with them, well I know I do when I set up a hosting account for my clients.

Secondly, they are making themselves out to be the policemen, what right have they to approve any code or in fact any content on the site before they will agree to add it to the site, it is not up to them to approve anything, it is the owner of the site who should make that decision.

Thirdly, they did such a bad job of optimising and setting up the site in the first place, they haven’t got a clue what their doing.

Finally, they have the cheek to suggest they would charge a fee for adding the code, so really, this is what this is all about, milking you for more money to do a simple job.

So, to get back to my original question who really own this web site? you should. You’ve paid the webmaster for it and you should have the say over the future of your own site. My suggestion to all of you small business owners that have web sites is to go out now and make sure you own your web site and all components of it and take control.

You need to be the master of your own destiny not held to ransom by these arrogant companies who think you and I are fools.

By the way, if you’d like to know which company it is, just email me or leave a comment and I’ll send you their details.

QR Codes For Real Estate

I’ve had a couple of agents send me emails this week inquiring about QR Codes, so I thought I’d write this post to explain what they are and how you can use them in your real estate business.

QR stands for “Quick Response”, and they are the next generation of bar codes. They have been in Japan for awhile with the Japanese going absolutely crazy over them and they are just starting now to appear in this country.

So what do they do?

• They contain lots of information such as your web site address

• They can be read upside down and faster than a standard bar code

• You can get a QR reader for your phone or iPhone – as long as it can browse the web.

• They can be scanned from a computer screen,a newspaper or flyer, magazine and Property billboard or Listing signboard.

So how does it apply to real estate, by generating a code, which is a simple process, you can apply the bar code to your listing sign board,your advertising including print and magazine or flyers, and people can simply scan the code and your phone will take you directly to the web site that the code has embedded.The code is scanned by taking a photo of the code and the phone then opens up a browser which takes you directly to the URL in the code.

This is a great tool if you want to specify a web site or property for First Home buyers or Retirees etc, as the code will take your reader directly to the URL you have specified. You can create your QR code to send people to a web site URL, a telephone number,an SMS message or text message.

Here’s a code I created, which when read will send you directly to my web site at www.mikeandrewconsulting.com, although I could have scanned any URL and sent you there if I wanted to promote a product or service.

You can add these to your business cards as well, which is a great promotional tool for your agency. You can download a QR reader from iTunes if you have an iPhone and some of the Nokia phones have the reader as standard.

To generate the bar code is a really simple process as all you do is search on the web and you’ll find a site, in fact to make it easy for you here’s the link to one I used.

Good luck and have fun with this, it’s a great promotional tool and you can add it anywhere.

If you’d like to have more information on this or are not technical enough to add it to your marketing, send me a comment or email at info@mikeandrewconsulting.com and I’ll help you out as always.

Twitter – Creating Your Real Estate Tweet Plan

Creating Your Real Estate tweet Plan

Twitter is the flavour of the year and a lot of you will be starting to use Twitter for the first time, and using it correctly to not only build your following but to get your followers to go where you want them to and to get buy in from them is not easy,even though there’s lot of people using the micro blogging service, you still need to have a plan to get the most out of the site. For those of you who have been using Twitter for awhile, this article will also help you get more response for all your efforts.

To be successful using Twitter you need to offer value to those following you, and you need to create what I call the “Trusted Adviser” role for yourself, once you have created this role and others see your expertise on a subject, they will follow you to get information and advice, but first you need to work very hard to create this persona.

Creating your Tweet plan and then following the strategy you have set up for yourself, will help you keep your plan on track. Just posting tweets about your product or listing is not engaging your followers nor is it creating value, it is just plain boring.

Setting out to become a trusted adviser means you need to listen,respond and broadcast and build your community, that’s what your followers are, your community, and you need to offer value in what you do to get engagement from them.

Creating your topic list is a good place to start, define your area of expertise and start to build that trust.

Some of the topics you could include if you are just starting out would be:

1. Your Expertise

2. What are your passions

3. Stats in your market – Good for those in real estate

4. Share your interests

5. Tweet what you are doing

6. Updates on your listings – real estate again

7. Share links and helpful information

So now you’ve worked on your list of topics, it’s time to create your tweet plan:

1. Make a list of topics

2. Identify your resources – sites to turn to, to get information

3. Schedule drips – spread your tweets out throughout the day

4. Be spontaneous

5. Follow other twitters of like minded interests and retweet information

Once you have your tweet plan worked out, you then need to set up your Twitter profile:

1. Create you Twitter background and personalise your profile

2. Complete your profile – serious followers always check out your profile before a follow.

3. Use monitoring and measuring tools to check your tweets – Use URL shorteners such as Bit.ly/Cli.gs/Hootsuite

4. Add video to your tweets by using Bubbletweet.com

5. Use Tweetlater.com to add an auto welcome  message for new followers

I hope that you find the above information helpful, particularly if you are just starting out with Twitter, and by using the tools I’ve suggested, it will give you the basics to start building your following and help you create the trusted adviser role.

Some helpful Twitter tools you can use to start building your Tweet plan:

1. Tweetdeck.com

2. Topify.com – Uses email notification for new followers

3. Hootsuite.com

4. Tweetlater.com

5. Tweetmeme.com – Search and retweet the hottest stories on Twitter.

Now to final the tip for you, using social media sites as farm areas can generate new sources of leads for you, particularly as you can tap into the conversations taking place right then and there. A great site for you to use is www.demandspot.com, it is a real time lead generation tool for real estate agents that taps into the conversations on Twitter, you enter the suburb or state into the site and it will give you the details of all conversations taking place about real estate in your selected suburb including contact information, you can then join in the conversation.

One word of warning though, please be careful how you use this tool, ramming your listings or services at them will not make you friends, the best way to engage these people, is to create the handshake and enter the conversation quietly.

Good luck.   

1.Use monitoring and measuring tools to check your tweets – Use URL shortners Bit.ly/ Cli.gs/Hootsuite.com

Get the SEO Tick of Approval for Your Real Estate Web Site

Get Your Free Web Site SEO Health Check

Last week I wrote an article on this blog about the importance of an SEO strategy for your real estate web site and in talking to a number of agents recently, it is one of the most neglected areas of Internet marketing by real estate offices.

Your web site is your link to the on line property searcher and making that web site not only be found on the web, but making sure it ranks in the top 10 results on Google and Bing for the terms that people search should be high on your agenda.

Some facts that you’re probably not aware of and published by the Commonwealth Bank about searching, reveal the way of the future when it comes to how consumers search on the web. Last year 75% of people did not use Yellow Pages, so where did they go to research business? to the web of course. Over 80% of consumers use the web to research purchase decisions and products, and that is why your web site needs to rank well on Google and other search engines including Yahoo and Bing.

How much do you spend per year on promoting your business on Yellow Pages? why not divert some of that into making sure your web site is performing as well as it should. It is a known fact that Google continually update their search algorithms and your web site needs to be constantly tweaked to make sure it is search engine friendly and searchable by search engines.

Don’t take it for granted that your web master will have set it up correctly, in my experience most of them don’t, so make sure it performs for you, their were over 16.6 million searches last month for the term real estate in Australia and if you don’t rank, you don’t get the business. Don’t think that getting your web site optimised is expensive, because it isn’t, and the return on your investment is worth every penny you’ll spend on SEO.

To help you find out how your site performs I’ve organised for SEOBOSS, an SEO Optimisation company to give your web site a SEO health check for free, they will analyse your site for the most searched industry keywords and then send you a report and a recommendation on how you can improve your site, what’s it cost? Nothing.

If you’d like to get  your web site checked then click on the link and SEOBOSS will do the rest. Give me my SEO Health Check

Spam and Social Media

One thing that has really annoyed me over the past few months is the amount of spam I’ve been receiving via social media sites I’m a member of. I’m sure you know the sort of spam I mean, “Click here to earn a million dollars”, “A friend of mine just found the secret to Internet marketing and you can too thanks to me”, all that kind of rubbish.

Then there’s the Twitter spammers, spamming Twitter with all sorts of offers, promising to increase your followers by a 1000%, and then when you’re hooked, along comes the crunch, it’ll only cost you $99:95 for this amazing strategy.

Then if you sign up for these fantastic once in a life time offers, you get suckered, they will never ever leave you alone again, everyday getting email after email offering amazing deals only available to you.

The reality of this, is that if a deal sounds to good to be true, it probably is and a lot of the testimonials used are fake, just there to get your money, so my advice to you is give them the big heave ho.

So what is the point of this article? I want to assure you that you don’t need all of these quick paths to fame and fortune on social media, you’ll achieve great results by providing good quality content and information by becoming a trusted adviser. There is no quick fix on this and the followers you will gain by using these spam sites is rubbish, so don’t waste your money.

What you want to do with your social media network is generate referrals, and turn those  referrals into business. Clients come from referrals and often those referrals originate from friendships we’ve made via social media sites, so there are ways to do it right and generate long term relationships via social media, not by spamming people. For example I’ve allowed my Twitter following to build organically and I get new followers every day, why, because I only Tweet when I’ve something to say, I always try and provide good quality information that is of use to them in business and I’ve never ever participated in spam.

So what are some of networking things you can do to avoid being considered a spammer and become a trusted adviser.

Don’t sell me before you get to know me – Build rapport and trust before trying to sell me your product.

Don’t spam your friends or followers – We don’t like it, it’s annoying and it just makes you not want to support your product or service.

Don’t play the numbers game – Allow your follower numbers to build organically by providing good content and networking, who cares about huge numbers of followers if they never connect with you. A small loyal band of supporters will do me thanks.

Don’t be a faker – We can all see through you, don’t have a hidden agenda be honest and up front. If you are a fake, you’ll go on my spam blacklist forever, no second chance here.

Don’t ignore people - It only takes a moment to communicate with your followers

Take time to get to know me – Spend some time with me and get to know me, then I’ll be open to your product or service, but I don’t wnat it rammed down my throat every second of every day

Treat me with respect - I’m here to follow you and get advice, give me some good staff and I’ll think you’re a guru.

Ok, there endeth the lecture, so now I’ve got that off my chest I feel better, and hopefully given you some advice, particularly those of you who haven’t yet got into social media but are thinking of starting your strategy.

Remember it takes time and effort to build loyalty and create friendships, there are no quick fixes not even by spam, but in the end,all your efforts will be worth it.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

SEO Strategies For Small Business – How Important Are They?

Over the past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time visiting small business offices and conducting audits on their SEO optimisation and their internet marketing efforts. The point of the exercise is seeing how vulnerable they are to competitors or where the weakness’s are in their on line strategy, and believe me, there are a lot of them.

One area that comes up more often than any other, is SEO,  or search engine optimisation, and how a business can generate a better page ranking within their local region when searching on Google, Yahoo or Bing. I’m asked this question more often than any other, and I thought I would share some interesting research and information with you on this subject.

Lets look at the US market first, and then come back to how business approach’s this in Australia, PCMS Consulting an SEO company in the US, has released a comprehensive study on the role of SEO as a marketing tool in small business.

It may come as no surpise to find that most business owners surveyed felt that an effective SEO strategy was important to their on line presence, yet could not convince the decision makers within the companies to allocate traditional marketing funds to promote their web sites with new generation SEO optimisation services.

According to the report, companies are overwhelmingly neglecting SEO optimisation and thus missing out on a considerable opportunity to boost their profits and drive traffic in today’s economic conditions.

Most searchers use keywords to conduct a search and not a brand name, therefore, even the most established companies need to optimize their websites to maintain their market position. Establishing the most searched for keywords that relate to your industry is vital to your web site performing well on the web.

Now lets look at the Australian result, in August last year, NSW based SEO company First Rate, released a report on the performance of small business web sites in the country, and the results were almost identical to the US result.

FirstRate found that, individual business web sites are failing to compete in the search engines rankings, they lacked decent natural search rankings,did not partake in paid search engine marketing for the most popular keyword search terms, and did not have good link popularity or page rank scores, as a result their web site traffic is suffering.

When you analyse the search trends or keywords relevant to your business on Google you’ll see the the popularity of each keyword.

There are lot of factors that you need to consider in optimising your web site, and these should  include link building, which is often overlooked by businesses, but is now a vital element in gaining higher search engine rankings.

High quality links need to be formed to benefit the most from linking, and just as important is the creation of  “Deep Linking”, links that point to sub pages within your web site, search engines are likely to rank these pages higher when they have high quality external links pointing to them. Creating good organic search results should be part of your strategy along with using paid SEO.

So how much of this can you control yourself? Write great content, a lot of SEO falls within writing great content and building authoritative back links to that content within your web site.

Sites that are image heavy and text light,don’t have headings and subheadings or site maps that search engines can’t crawl won’t fair well.

If you write frequent relevant content that incorporates keywords and phrases that searchers are looking for, your site will be found. This is where blogging and social media can help in the creation of good keyword rich copy and the building of back links to that content.

SEO of your web site and it’s positioning in search engine results, is vital for you to compete in business today, because more traditional forms of marketing are no longer effective in driving leads, for example, in a recent Commonwealth bank survey, they found that 75% of people did not use Yellow pages in 2008, 58% didn’t use it the year before and 80% of consumers use the Internet to research purchases.

The other consideration is that Generation X&Y do not read newspapers,don’t use Yellow pages and most of their social interactions and shopping research is done on the Internet.

There’s lot to understand about keyword rich copy, back link and reciprocal link building and web site optimisation, so if I can help demystify this for you please ask, just send me a comment on the blog or email me for information on SEO Optimisation for Small Business

One point to remember, is that 99% of your competition don’t know what their doing.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Writing Your Listings For Google and Search Engines

Earlier this week I was a presenter at a training session in Sydney run by one of the major real estate franchise groups, and my topic for the session was “How to Market More Effectively Using On Line Technology” , or in other wards, how to write better copy to be found on the search engines such as Google and Bing.

The first part of the day focused on writing for print, and the presentation really was quite good, it focused on writing clean copy with no clutter and writing catchy headlines and avoiding cliche’s.

A lot of time and effort went in to focusing on the print side, how to submit your editorial, when was the best time to do so, what style of writing does the editor like etc, and then, when looking at the end result, which had been written up on a white board, I thought about how those headlines or keywords would research on the web. A lot of agents simply copy and paste their print copy onto the web, with no consideration of keywords, search phrases etc.

You really have no idea whether your copy or headline will have any impact on the property searcher unless you have a clear understanding of how they search on the web, what phrases do they use, what are the trigger words or keywords they search for, these are all the questions you need to answer before you submit your copy to the web.

It’s even more important today, with Google’s real estate section now publishing listings, because anything that is published on the web, will be indexed by search engines, so make sure you start to optimise your copy with keywords or phrases that target your market, if you don’t, you’ll end up not showing on the search results, or being missed by your buyers, and whilst those headlines look OK in print, they may not work on the web.

With 9 out of 10 property searchers starting their property search on the web, how much time are you going to spend on your research to get it right. So lets give you a few ideas on where to start: A really good place to start your research is in your own office and for a refresher please read my earlier post “Choosing the right Keywords for your Content”

The post I’ve highlighted will give you some really good ideas on keyword research, so next time you sit down and start brainstorming ideas for your headlines and listing copy, give some thought on how your buyer searches on the web and what phrases or words they use, if you do that you’ll have a head start on getting your property found on the web.

Facebook Brand Pages – Which Days are the Best for Advertisers

If you’re a real estate agent or small business owner just getting into a social media strategy, or already using social media networks such as Facebook and you haven’t yet created a Facebook brand page, then go and create one right now. They are an excellent way of promoting your brand not only to others on Facebook, but also promoting your brand or product via Facebook adds.

If you are considering using Facebook adds or any form of on line advertising then it’s important to understand the searching and viewing habits of the audience you’re trying to impact. Social media sites are changing the way we search on line, and as marketers, relying on this information and understanding where and how your audience views or searches for information on social media sites is vital.

So which are the best days to run your adds or banners, and which days generate the best click thru rates for advertisers? Some new research out today helps shed some light on this and I’ve detailed some of the results for you.

Content posted on Facebook based brand pages has a higher than average click thru rate on a Tuesday, the average click thru rate on Tuesday is 9.89%, the highest of any day. Wednesday follows closely behind with click rates of 9.87%.

Friday and Saturday had the lowest click rates with a very measly 2.67% on Friday and 2.7% on Saturdays. If you  take all the days into account, click thrus for Facebook brand pages average 6.76%. This average is lower than Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but still much higher than average CTRs for display advertising across social networks in general, including Facebook itself.

So really what this research means, is that certain days of the week are better for launching a product promotion, and by really understanding how consumers use social media sites, you and your company can start to target where you’ll get the best return on your investment.

In a nut shell, you really need to have a well thought out communication strategy for updating your Facebook brand page, and an understanding of when to create promotions to get optimum response.

Response to your marketing on social media sites is better early in the week then dwindles and picks up again on Sundays.

What I’ll cover for you in the next post on this subject, are results of the latest eye tracking study on social media pages, where are users eyes focused when viewing these pages and how does it differ from other web page viewing.

This has an impact when you’re deciding to use advertising on social sites such as Facebook etc, does your target market actually look at the adds? I’m sure you’ll find that an interesting read.

About the data:The sample data reported is compiled from nearly 200 million fans impressions on Facebook pages over a five-month period (March – August 2009).

Social Media As The New CV

Image via CrunchBase

For some time now I’ve been using my social media network as my on line CV, suggesting to prospective clients and others I work with “to check me out on line and Google me” if they’d like to know more about what I do and a number of times this has been very effective for me and has led to new clients and speaking engagements on using social media to drive new business .

By using this method I’ve found it really gives them a good understanding of what I do, and of course, when it comes to working with them on a web campaign or social media strategy they have a clear understanding of what can be achieved. I’ve effectively replaced the old style paper resume with a new generation concept, and once they do a search on me they see all the web sites I own, articles I’ve written and those that have been syndicated and can see my area of expertise far better than I could explain or show on paper.

There is however a down side to all of this, and that’s why your on line presence or social network needs to managed very carefully and you need to be really aware of what information you put on line on your Facebook or Myspace page, as those photos, words or comments can really come back and bite you big time!!

Job seekers today are being urged to manage their on line footprint very carefully, because a recent report by Viacom in the UK, found that 1 in 5 employers had researched social networking sites and found personal information about prospective employees, and 59% said it had influenced their recruitment decision.

Amongst the reasons given for not employing people they had researched on the net, were and I quote, “His MySpace website showed a negative side to him including excessive alcohol abuse and disrespect for his job’ and ‘We found that the candidate was on the local police wanted list.’ The report also found that we as users of social media sites are leaving significant footprints of personal information on the web, as we use blogging sites, social networking sites etc.

The spread of people posting personal information on the web is not limited to younger generations though, with 31% of all internet users leaving personal information, which is searchable by anyone, on the web. However, the biggest group of information providers are in the age group 18-24, with just under half of those questioned for this survey, posting personal information on Facebook, MySpace and Youtube. The biggest concern to come out of this survey though, is that over 54% of the 18 to 24 year olds questioned during this research,responded that someone other than themselves, had posted photos, information and comments about them without their approval.

So, with the rise of search engines such as Google and Yahoo, be aware that employers are never more than a click away from getting information about you the job seeker, and of course, the same is true for companies, as job seekers are able to research information about prospective employers, so this is really a two way street.

The upshot of all of this is that you really need to think very carefully about the information you put on social network sites and you need to protect your name or brand. Your on line reputation is so vitally important today that you can’t afford to neglect it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this post, or even if you’ve experienced this problem yourself, so please leave me a comment.

Social Media College

For those of you who are really interested in social media, I’ve decided to create another blog called Social Media College and my intention for this blog is to include information and updates about my training courses and updated articles tips etc on Social Media.

Very soon you’ll find information on my Bloggers Masterclass series which I’m putting together as we speak, I also intend to use the blog purely for social media updates and leave this blog for real estate tips & technology updates.

So please make sure you have a look at the blog and leave me comments on your thoughts on layout and content etc.