We’ve been talking about the importance of integrated IDX for Realtors since 2008. Six years later, we’re still coming across sites that do not have integrated IDX and prospective clients who do not understand why it’s important. We felt it was time to revisit what integrated IDX is and why it matters so much to your search engine rankings.
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Comments2015 is only a few weeks away. Crazy, right? While you’re putting your list of new year resolutions together, don’t forget to think about your real estate website. We’ve put together a list of tips to prep your website so that you’re ready to hit the ground running as soon as January 1 shows up.
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CommentsWe’re sure you’ve heard the announcement from the National Association of Realtors about their new domains offered exclusively to NAR members. This is a potentially exciting opportunity, but it’s one that needs some teasing out. It also brings up the topic of multiple sites – will they help or hinder your SEO?
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CommentsSEO can be a little intimidating to the untrained eye. In fact, many real estate agents shy away from developing a full-fledged SEO strategy because they think it’s too complicated.
This idea couldn’t be further from the truth. A strategy that’s built around targeted long term and short term SEO keywords can give your real estate website a major boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs), and it’s relatively easy to set up.
In this post, we’ll tackle how to choose long term and short term SEO keywords for your real estate website, and we’ll also talk about how to begin using those keywords in the beginning stages of your content strategy. If you’re an SEO beginner, feel free to take a look at our beginner’s guide for real estate agents.
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Comments[This article is the second post of a four-part series on how to prep your website for the busy season. Look for the following posts over the next few weeks to make sure your website is ready for the rush.]
In our last post, we delved into the data and talked about the major trends surrounding summertime real estate traffic. We found that most buyers are on the hunt for a new home in the warmer months, which is no news to agents and brokers in the field. Now, we’ll talk about how to capture the traffic in order to grow your business.
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Comments[This blog post is part of a four-part series on how to prep your website for the busy season. Look for following posts over the next few weeks to make sure your website is ready for the rush.]
Ah, summer. The sun’s out, the weather’s warm, and flowers are in full bloom. It’s enough to make you feel like Julie Andrews in the Swiss Alps.
That is, unless you’re in real estate. Then, summer is a certified mad house.
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CommentsIf you’re having trouble sticking to a weekly blogging schedule, read on. Regularly adding valuable, unique content to your site will benefit you now more than ever before.
Google’s most recent algorithms – Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird – may sound cute and cuddly, but they pack a suckerpunch of power when it comes to planning SEO strategies. The company’s most recent algorithm updates are designed to aggressively attack the low-quality, spammy content that has overrun the Internet. SEO strategies that were once effective, like creating many similar pages with only a few words tweaked, no longer fly. (Does “keyword overuse” ring a bell, anyone?)
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CommentsFacebook and Twitter and Pinterest, oh my! If you’re a real estate agent looking to market yourself for potential clients, you might feel like you’re looking down the barrel of the social media marketing gun.
Here’s the good news: 92% of home buyers used the Internet to search for real estate in 2013. This number is continuously increasing. With that in mind, it’s crucial for real estate offices and agents to have a significant web presence. But a simple website does not a web presence truly make. Carefully managed social media profiles do a lot for your business; they round out your online brand, vastly improve your visibility, and increase website traffic and lead conversions.
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CommentsI ran cross country in high school. Rick Beattie – who doubled as my coach and European History teacher – used to tell us “The clock doesn’t lie.” If I performed poorly at a meet, I could say that my shoelaces were too tight, the rain slowed me down, or my mind was wandering. But the fact of the matter was this: I had a number waiting for me at the finish line, and that number didn’t lie.
Fast forward (gulp) 20 years. Cut to a Union Street Media Internet marketing meeting. We’re gathered around a conference table looking at a spreadsheet of numbers. I think of Coach Beattie and say, “The data doesn’t lie.”
This is a universal truth. Before the Mad Men-esque advertising brainstorm meetings you envision, before graphic designers turn winning ideas into marketing reality, before a catchy slogan ever hits the printed page, there’s a common foundation: data.
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CommentsSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of marketing your website to search engines. Why do you care what search engines think of your website? You care because search engines are the matchmakers of the Internet, pairing every person who enters a search into Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or the many other search engines, with a custom list of every website that pertains to the keywords used in their search. You care because you want to be visible on that list.
So how do Google and its counterparts know which websites to show us when we do a search?
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