1. Create a separate page for your own listings and keep it automatically updated using Interactive IDX.
2. Optimize your listings page for Search Engines with auto-populate custom Meta tags, SEO-friendly URL, breadcrumb navigation and more using SmartLeads IDX.
3. Attach RSS feed to announce new property listings and to attract more subscribers.

The Result:
faster search engine indexing -> more online exposures -> more traffic to your listing pages.

Bonus Tip:
Want even more traffic? Use this technique for your Open Houses.

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Let one of our Online Marketing Experts evaluate your website for its marketing strengths and weaknesses. Ask for FREE Consultation.

Show your clients the weather near their new home. It’s very easy to add weather badges into web pages, blog posts or incorporate into your design.

The fist step is to find a weather badge or widget that works best for your site.  Here are a few recommended providers with lots of options.

Accuweather http://netweather.accuweather.com

Accuweather provides a simple to use interface which creates a badge in 9 sizes and 10 colors.  Options include the ability to display current conditions, 5 day forecast, temperature, radar and precipitation maps.

Example:

Weather Underground: http://www.wunderground.com/

This site has the most options, but can little more difficult to navigate.

Example:

Plan your trip Local Radar Detailed Forecast

To add a weather badge simply copy the code provided and paste the code into your website, blog or community filters page.

Search Engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both. SmartLeads IDX with Automated SEO toolkit helps real estate agents to keep their website content updated daily and ready for search engine indexing.

Inquiries come via email and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospects, do you send them any further information?
When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp!

What follow up method really works?

Using an autoresponder to follow up with each lead:

~ individually
~ multiple times
~ at set intervals
~ with personalized pre-written messages,

will dramatically increase sales!

Google announced a display URL policy adjustment for AdWords campaigns.

The display URL (the URL that appears within the ad itself) shows potential visitors to a site where they’ll land when they click on an ad. For sites that sit on shared or hosted domains (such as wordpress.com) all ads will be required to display URL “that accurately reflect their destinations.”

Going forward, ads that do not include this additional information in their display URLs will be disapproved. A suggested display URL will be provided in the disapproval email notification, but we encourage you to proactively adjust any ads that you think might be affected by this change.

If you’d like to learn about this policy in greater detail, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Need help with Google AdWords optimization? Click here to request a Free Consultation.

This is where the process gets really exciting. Utilizing the full potential of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), agents can automatically populate their sites with the most current listing—or even “push” content in standardized format directly to customers, so they don’t need to return to the new site to check on new listings every day. Agents can even personalize feeds to subscribers to automatically deliver new home listings that perfectly match their search criteria.

Experience the benefits of RSS, starting today.
In addition to the obvious sales and marketing benefits, RSS offers real estate agents:

» Instant access. IDX-driven RSS feeds allow instant access to the latest listing data.
» Search-engine friendliness. Search engines love pages with feeds (and rank them well),
because they represent continually updated content.
» More subscriber options. Customers can choose their own criteria for searches,
making sure they receive only the most relevant listings.
» Personalized feeds. Agents can also personalize feeds based on each client’s preferences.
» External flexibility. RSS feeds can easily be used outside the original website,
expanding visibility through backlinks and beyond.

To learn more about putting the power of IDX-based tools and RSS to work for you, call 1.877.439.4967 or click here for FREE consultation.

According to Alex Viega of the Associated Press Realtors have taken notice.

Agents who use the social networking sites to market properties say they hope to generate referrals — just as you might tip off a friend about a new for-sale sign on a lawn.

“Tweeting is the same way,” says Duane Hopper, an owner and broker at Century 21 Real Estate Center in Seattle, referring to the term for posting messages on the microblogging Web site Twitter.com.

“There is a multiplier effect that can take place, particularly on very hot information,” adds Hopper, who posts information about homes he’s trying to sell and promotes himself on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and ActiveRain.

It looks like a lot of agents are jumping onto the social networking wagon, and it can bring volumes of traffic.

A search for the term “real estate” in Twitter turns up hundreds of people or businesses tweeting on the subject. So one way is to sign up to receive real estate agents’ tweets and then engage them with details of your home.

How do you use social networking in your overall strategy? Have you outlined your goals? Need help?

By now most agents and brokers understand and agree that there is little point to having a website if they don’t have IDX listings on it. Consumers seek out real estate websites for listings and the easiest source of listings for websites is IDX.
But is your MLS’s free or low-cost IDX solution enough?  I submit at least six reasons that free IDX solutions do not serve your ultimate marketing goal – meeting and developing new client relationships. Look at my reasoning below and give me your thoughts.
1. Most free solutions offer no lead capturing at all. Free or cheap IDX solutions offer a one-way stream of listings data, but nothing except your phone number and maybe an email link for contact information. Recognizing that this is an incredible waste of good content, most website vendors suggest that agents put a guestbook over the solution! That is just plain nuts. When was the last time you greeted potential clients at your office’s front door with a guestbook? Real estate is a service business. Show your prospective clients you have something to offer before demanding their contact information. Even if you get consumers to register in one of these cover guestbooks (most won’t, would you?), you’re starting the relationship off on a negative note, especially if you have a weak IDX solution on the other side of that registration form.
2. Free solutions that do offer an invitation to register are clunky and counter-intuitive. The first thing to remember is that online consumers have a short attention span and most definitely do not want to be “captured.” To increase your odds of getting contact information with which to start a relationship, you need to make a compelling offer and you need to make the information exchange easy and effortless. Ask for registration in exchange for a property address or in exchange for daily new listing updates. Once the consumer agrees to give up some contact information, make the registration process simple. Make your required fields minimal. Add optional fields for additional information. If a prospect is inclined to give up extra information about him- or herself, you’ve provided the opportunity, but you haven’t forced the point.
3. Free solutions liberally brand the listing office. Of course this is going to happen. Listing brokers are members of the MLS, too. Display rules for most MLS’s don’t require this high level of branding for the listing office, but neither does the MLS have any incentive to play down the listing office. Yes, most MLS’s require that the listing office name appear on the listing detail page, but even this information can be downplayed and still be compliant with display rules. An example of this is the free solution provided in Florida through the state association. That solution provides the listing office and often their logo on the thumbnail page (the page that comes back first after a query is submitted with the brief descriptions of the matching listings). Most of the MLS’s don’t require this listing office branding on the thumbnail page. A private vendor is your advocate and doesn’t have to please the listing office for constituency reasons. Private packages are designed with the purchaser in mind.
4. Listings results are presented lowest price first with free solutions. Do you specialize in low end properties? This strategy might work for you. Yes, visitors can usually specify a price range, but the lowest price in the range still comes first and how many of the listings will the consumer have attention span to review? (hint: not many!) Effective IDX solutions return your listings first and then make it really easy to re-sort the listings the way the visitor wants to see them, such as highest price first, lowest price first or newly listed. Feature windows can further highlight your listings.
5. Free solutions don’t give your visitors any reason to come back to your site. Unless your solution invites visitors to save specific listings of interest to a private watchlist or register to get daily new listing updates by email, you’re out of luck if the visitor leaves your site without contacting you or registering. Why would they come back? Because your site has lots of great content? That content had better be pretty darned compelling, and nothing is as compelling as offering your visitor a place to “park” his or her homework or to get new listings “hot off the presses” by email.
6. Free solutions don’t allow you to build automated pages of farm listings. Specialize in luxury listings in a particular neighborhood? I haven’t met a free solution yet that let you create these pages. And even if you can, what lead capturing tools do you have? Nothing says neighborhood expert like a page of listings on your site for your farm area. Manually creating and updating these pages is tedious, mind-numbing and not a great use of your time. An IDX solution that automatically creates these pages and provides effective lead capturing is worth its weight in gold.
It is indisputable that consumers come to real estate websites to see listings. If you’re spending any budget or energy to bring these visitors to your website, you owe it to yourself to have a strong listings-based lead capturing system on your site to protect your investment. At $40/month (the going rate for a solid, interactive, effective lead capturing tool), why wouldn’t you?

Not sure if your IDX solution measures up? Drop me a note with your web address and I’ll send you some brief comments back.
Absolutely certain that your sub-$40 solution does measure up? Drop me the same note and I guarantee you that I can find at least three ways that a $40 IDX solution can improve your bottom line.

Today’s smart consumers are turning to the Internet to start their real estate transactions and the first place they go is straight to the search engines. The term “Googling” a topic didn’t get added to our everyday lingo by some clever PR person. Oh no. “Googling” is a phenomenon that is taking this country by storm and real estate is no exception.
So, how DO you get your website to show up at or near the top of the results when a consumer types in “real estate” for your geographic area? And aren’t all your competitors trying to do exactly the same thing?
Search engine optimization and ranking can be a tricky thing. The rules are always changing. That’s why it’s important to hire just the right consultant to help you – one who understands the engines and more importantly, one who understands your exact business and how your consumers are going to behave when they sit down at a search engine to do their research.

Optimizing and Registering Your Website With Search Engines Will Boost Your Rankings
Over half of today’s real estate consumers start their buy or sell transactions on the Internet, more often than not by logging on to their favorite search engine and typing in key words like “real estate and [city name].” In fact, Google expects to launch over half a billion realty-related search results next year. Where will your website fall in these results?
Making sure that your website comes up at or near the top of search engine results requires a process called search engine optimization and registration, and its value has soared as the number of websites has climbed into the billions. Standing out in the crowd is critical. A high ranking in the right search engines is one marketing tool that can increase traffic on your website as much as 90 percent, according to BrandWeek Online Magazine. The more traffic a website gets, the more sales that result, improving the return on investment for money spent on Internet marketing.
What is search engine optimization?
Choose the right keywords.
Use meta tags.
Check out your competition.
Improve relevancy with links.
Deceptive practices are death.
Is optimization enough?
Search engine vendors.
Beware the guarantees!
What is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is the process of configuring your website to be attractive to search engines. Search engine optimization is not the process of deciding what you personally might think is attractive or even what you think your prospects will find attractive. It’s the process of choosing and improving criteria that the search engines think is important, and the process is part art and part science. The engines seek relevancy and their relevancy algorithms are a closely guarded secret. An experienced search engine expert can be invaluable in helping you maximize your search engine optimization efforts.
Choose the right keywords. Think about the words that will come to your prospects’ minds when they think about your business. These are the terms that you want to maximize on your site. If, for example, you represent buyers or sellers in Los Angeles, you will have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of competing sites that list “Los Angeles real estate.” You, therefore, will want to also add more specific phrases such as “Los Angeles beach properties” or “Bel Air real estate.”
Use meta tags. Websites are written in html code and use meta tags to identify various parts of a page. Each page has a different “meta tag title” of 50 to 80 characters, which is arguably the most significant component of search engine optimization. Your best keywords should be in the titles of each page.
Each page also has a meta description tag, which most search engines will display in their search engine results to tell the viewer what the page contains. Think about what a compelling call to action for your prospects would be and make sure this is what will appear in the search engine results. Sellers’ agents, for example, might want to use “free comparative analysis for your home on my website.” Buyers’ agents might want to use “search the MLS on my website.”
Each page also has a meta keyword tag that should include a string of all terms and phrases relevant to your business. Limit this tag to 250 characters and include common misspellings for words to match misspelled search requests. Absolutely do not use words that are popular, but unrelated to the content of your site, in a bid to attract the search engines. Engines that discover such words when they “crawl” your site will blacklist your site.
Check out your competition. Visit your competitors’ websites to see what key words they are using. This step will help you refine your own keywords by identifying ideas you didn’t think of.
Improve relevancy with links. Increasingly, search engines are factoring into their rankings the number of other websites that provide a hyperlink to your site. When other sites on the Internet point to your site, search engines attach a higher importance to your site and your ranking goes up accordingly. It is important, however, that you link only with sites related to your business. Excessive links to irrelevant sites are read as “spam” by the search engines and will adversely affect your ranking.
Deceptive practices are death. If search engines believe a website is using deceptive practices to boost its ranking, they will blacklist the site and it will not turn up in search results at all.
Is optimization enough? In a word, “no.” With their increasing popularity with web surfers, search engines have become big business. While a search engine might eventually “crawl” to your site and discover you, you need to “motivate” the engine to find and recognize you sooner with paid registration. Once you register, your work is still not done. Each search engine will randomly assign you a position after registration and it is up to you to analyze the position and strategize ways to improve it, if indicated. It is important to keep in mind that search engine rankings are extremely fluid. You must vigilantly monitor your ranking and take frequent steps to protect and improve it.
Search engine vendors. An experienced search engine registration vendor is worth its weight in gold. Such a vendor can economically bulk register your site with all the important search engines and analyze the resulting positioning and recommend valuable strategies, both free and paid, for improving your position(s). And don’t forget, rankings are fluid. A good vendor will help you monitor and protect your rankings.
Beware the guarantees! Do not believe the search engine optimization and registration vendor who guarantees you the top slot or two in the search engines. Only one result and be number one and rankings change constantly. Don’t pay extra for a guarantee and be particularly wary of any vendor who makes such a guarantee.