TRAFFIC: Heart and Soul of a Real Estate Website
* Great guest post by Joe Salcedo*
FIRST, I want to tell you what this article is NOT. I’m not here to speak to you in a condescending manner about why your site is not receiving enough traffic, you know the Nobody-Cares-About-Your-Content-Until-it-is -Found smackdown.”
I share your pain. In the first three years of my real estate site, I got an average of 50 readers a day. And that’s on a pretty good week. Not something to laugh about but hardly a Star Wars opening weekend.
But every year I started online marketing, my business has steadily increased. This year 40% of my revenue will come online.
And here’s my first big thought I want to share: You Don’t Need A Lot of Traffic. Just enough.
My forte and passion has always been to capture traffic, so the bulk of my advice here will revolve around that.
1.) If you are in a small market… it is not hard to beat the big guys (Big Bad Wolves on the first page of search engines) in your real estate keywords. Use your ‘smallness’ to your advantage by working smart:
- Get a good generic domain name (building your brand is too expensive). If you already have a site but is not getting traffic, use a 301 Redirect of your old name to your new one.
- Make your ‘city pages’ Long copy — meaning, after separating your website to different areas (NEW YORK–MANHATTAN–BROOKLYN) invest time in researching and writing local content. Use your imagination and your personality’s quirks. If your competitor writes three pages. Do ten.
- Write unique, reader friendly page titles on each page.
- Add unique content in a daily or weekly basis.
- Spend half of the time you spent on writing to marketing your finished article. Reach out to real estate bloggers who may like the content. Be nice. Build relationships. Link out.
2.) If you’re in a medium size city… Do all of the things above but focus on long tail keywords. Instead of keyword ‘Real Estate’ try “homes” or even better, a popular specific community you want to own online. You can track long tail keywords by following how people found you using keywords they typed in search engines (Analytics). Sign up in Woopra (free for the lowest plan).
3.) If you are in a big city like Tucson or Portland…do all of the things above and take time to ‘prettify’ your site design. It’ll be awfully hard to compete if your site is not stunning. But keep it simple. Like this. Target a niche market. Like immigrants.
I always wanted to move to San Diego and if I ever do I will start a site that is very specific to international buyers–from property tax guides of each community, what to expect, school reports, ‘community lifestyle reports’ ethnic population, jobs report. *I already have the domain…hmmmm..*
It’s not that complicated. The issue is follow through and it helps if you have a genuine concern for home buyers. Do not be afraid to be you. Talk to them in print how you talk in person. Make them feel that you built your site just for them. Everyone wants to feel special.
Be interested and you will be interesting.
Oh yes, don’t listen to everybody’s advice. You will lose your mind. Stick to one or two ‘online marketing mentors’. And aim for incremental improvement. A great site is built through one hundred tweaks. Have fun while doing it.
Cheers.
Joe has been happily slaving on Reno Real Estate Blog since 2007. He has since started a niche project in adjacent Lake Tahoe Real Estate using less words, more pictures. He loves his wife and two kids dearly and would someday like to start a blog about being a Realtor and a Family without Premature Aging
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You made me a happy man. In reading your post I now think I’m headed in the right direction on my blog. I will take a bit more of your advice to heart burns I want to thank you for a great post.
I had an office in San Diego for a while and it is a great market to work in!
A little piece of advice I would add to the mix for all three categories of sites would be to make a point of using consumer words and NOT realtor terminology that consumers aren’t looking for. For example, a house isn’t “listed” it is “for sale”. It doesn’t have good “curb appeal” it looks great from the street, etc.
Spot on! When I started my blog, in conjunction with many other online/social ventures, it was frustrating to see slow growth. Takes time to realize that the one’s that are reading (no matter how few people), are your raving fans! And building your raving fans little by little will build the referrals you are hoping for!
My landing page is lucky to get 50 visits per day… company webpage, maybe 80 visits per week! I thought these were small numbers, but I’m usually fighting the number one spot for most used “company” site and although I receive very little interaction from posts, I get surprise phone calls all of the time when I least expect it as a direct result of all of the madness! Makes it all worthwhile, and fun!
Great post! I think most agents fail to realize that it takes time to get your website going. It takes time for your website to earn trust with Google, make connections with industry peers, and get noticed online.
You can definitely speed up the process with things like SEO, PPC, and various other marketing efforts, but understand that all these things take time to start seeing results.
Great post. Thanks…
Well said, Joe. I learned a thing or two here. A beautiful site is a must.
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This advice is so sound. Love it. On my wordpress site, I’m finding that my “long tail” blog posts seem to be ranking well and getting continued traffic each month.
I just bought 2 key word rich domains (mini sites) and am about to start building these up.
Thx for the tips.
I liked Kirk’s comment about keeping the RE terminology consumer friendly. It is very easy to overwhelm the clients with real estate lingo. Thanks for the reminder, Kirk!
I have been keeping our blog posts to about 2 a month but it looks like I need to get more motivated and start writing more.
Great post. I like the idea of making your city pages long copy. I wrote a post in our city about the best (and worst) neighbourhoods. It was based on census data for crime rates, income average, greenspace, etc. It brings us in a LOT of traffic every day for people who are trying to decide which part of the city to move to.
This is a well-written post about traffic. Website is a great tool for a real estate business, however, you will not use its absolute use without traffic. There are a lot of methods to acquire traffic for our website but you have to make sure that you do it in a natural way.
Creating a website that generated alot of traffic takes years. Slow and steady always wins.
Great insight Steve. I see many agents that throw up a generic website thinking that they are going to land on the first page of Google immediately. They have a “build it and they will come” mentality, without the understanding that content is king and that it takes time to build an online presence.
Some really good tips here. I also agree that slow and steady to gain real estate website presence is sound advice. It has gotten more and more competitive so I think you always have to be looking for ways to set yourself apart from the crowd and be unique.
This is a very helpful article. My real estate site has been sleeping for almost a year now and I want to step it up. Your tip on regular update is I think what I need to look into. Nowadays, competition is very stiff that just mere listings are not enough. We need to be able to give tips and other informational articles that will help potential clients that visit our site.