7 Steps to Building a Successful Internet Presence for Real Estate Professionals

The Internet is a valuable marketing tool for those real estate professionals willing to jump aboard the technology train and become involved—and it’s easier than you think.  The following seven steps are proven to increase productivity and help you properly utilize your website and social media pages to help generate more consistent internet leads.

1. – Your own domain

Even though you may work for a large company like Century 21 or Caldwell Banker you have to remember you are an independent contractor and your whole career is built on marketing and making a name for yourself. While it’s great for you as a career agent to have the support of a large company backing you, most of your business and repeat business is because you, and not the company. You.com is the most important aspect of successful internet marketing and owning your own domain name gives you the ability to maintain both a permanent Web Site address and a permanent email address that will follow you no matter what direction your career path ends up taking you. A big mistake many Realtors make is even though they have an established domain name they still use a generic web based email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Yourname@You.Com is much more professional than Yourname3211881@Yahoo.com and it instantly brands you as a successful real estate professional. (Gmail’s new features allow you import and send your email using your You.Com address)

Edit 10/28/2009
It has also been suggested and makes perfect sense that it is also very beneficial to use neighborhood or market specific domain names like “MidtownHeightsProperties.com”. This instantly brands you as local neighborhood expert.

2. – Make the most of your listings

Understand how and where your listings and services are currently being marketed on the Internet, and then decide what you can do to improve your current position. Most properties offered for sale in the country are being marketed on Realtor.com and your local MLS board. The first reason consumers go to real estate Web sites like Realtor.com is to view photos of properties. Realtor.com allows six pictures for each property, and yet, if you did some random searches on that site, you would find that very few real estate professionals take advantage of this opportunity. Get yourself a good digital camera and take it to every listing appointment. The point is, that you must include quality pictures when you upload your listing to your local board.
Having a great looking listing on the MLS is not enough during these competitive economic times. Your “featured” listings need to be prominently and attractively displayed on your site. Consider using the professional services of a seasoned web designer who understands real estate web marketing. All the custom designed sites we build at RealtorWebSource.Com for our agent or broker clients include a featured listings on the front page with the option of displaying a Flash Slide Show that links to a more detailed listing page on the site.

3. – Display search-able MLS listings on You.Com or your Neighborhood expert site

Make your website a valuable resource for anyone in the market to purchase or lease a new home. Recent research publicized by The National Association of Realtors found that 77% of home buyers use the internet to search for their home. According to the NAR and MLS terms of use, you are entitled to the buyers agent commission on any lead generated through listings displayed on your website. Many agents out there simply provide a link to their local board for users to search. Not only does having outgoing links lower your search rankings it takes visitors off your site and after searching they might never come back. If your in a major market like Houston, your MLS probably will provide the technology for you to do what is called an “MLS Wrap” where the listing database displays on pages that you insert or wrap your website around. Some even allow the flexibility to customize how they are displayed so the search results will have the same look and feel as You.Com.
If your market board doesn’t allow “Wrapping” you can still pull the listings in using what is called “IDX” or Internet Data Exchange.

4. – Dynamic Relative Content (This is the SEO part)

How do you get your website to the top of the search rankings? Easy, blog blog blog! By blogging and consistently blogging about stuff that is relevant is the most important key factor in moving up in the search rankings. Every time you update your website with a blog post Google, Yahoo and all the major search engines are “pinged” or notified that something on your site has changed. This makes the robots crawl your site and update the information in the search databases. The more you publish content the more consistently your site will be crawled. The search bots will consider your content fresh and make it more available to its searchers. What you blog about is also very important, not only for SEO but also to compel your visitors to return and other sites will start linking to yours. Having lots of high trust link to you will always put you at the top of the search rankings. You could write about the home market, financing, tips for buyers and sellers or anything that will be useful and beneficial information to your visitors. At RealtorWebSource.Com our sites are built on the WordPress platform using a because of the easy back end Admin area and it effortlessly posts your blog’s content in a very SEO friendly manor. We provide affordable WordPress services that range from installing and customizing premium themes purchased elsewhere to designing custom themes and technical support.

5. – Create a Web site that is a personal Web portal

Consumers today are always looking for information, and you can help them — not just with information about real estate, but with information that they might use regularly. The number one Web site tip for real estate agents is this: Develop a Web site that people will visit and return to even when they are not interested in buying and selling real estate. Consider compiling useful information about local restaurants, sights of interest, churches, and clubs. Combine this with a visual tour of the scenic points of interest in your area.

6. – Create materials that help buyers find information on the internet

Serious buyers might provide you with profile information about the kind of property they are seeking. You, in turn, can create an e-mail alert that notifies the buyer when a matching property appears on the market. They could sign up for the alerts and input their criteria through a simple form on your site. You could also create an email newsletter that you send out to all the visitors that sign up for it.

7. – Social Media

Social media sites are the hot topic right now. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are a great way to market your website if done correctly. Use your existing contacts and comment and respond to others. You don’t want to bombard your contacts with constant updates that promote your services, that will get annoying. Simply engage others and respond to comments often. People will see you as friendly and outgoing and when the time comes when they need your services, you will be the first one they contact. When you see that someone has a Real Estate question or expresses a need that’s when it is ok to remind them about what you do.

Twitter is a great tool to let people know about a new blog post or a new listing and if you engage others they are more likely to “ReTweet” or forward your updates on to their contacts.

I hope you found the above information useful and informative and we as well as our users would love to hear some of your strategies or comments you might have. The Internet offers unlimited opportunities for real estate sales, but only a few in the business know how to use it to their full advantage.