Real Estate Marketing Online: 5 Ways to Dominate the Web
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by Brandon Cornett
It seems everywhere you turn you find an article about real estate marketing online. It can get tiresome. Or, it can set off a little alarm in your head that says, "Hey, this is important!" Hopefully you'll get the alarm. Here's why:
The reason you find so many articles about real estate Internet marketing is because the real estate industry is moving online (and fast).
Just look at what has occurred in the last couple of years — the rise of home valuation sites like Zillow and HouseValues, the increasing Internet usage among buyers and sellers, the massive number of real estate agent sites popping up...
My point is this. As a real estate agent or broker, you can pretend the Internet isn't that big a deal, and then later wonder why your business isn't growing. Or you can embrace the Internet and grow your business to exciting new levels. If you choose the latter, the following tips will help.
Real estate marketing online 5 ways to dominate the web
1. Build a Quality Website
Think of your website as "Web Marketing Central." It's the all-important centerpiece to your online marketing strategy. Build as much value into your website as possible. Load it up with helpful content, articles, listings, real estate news, mortgage calculators, etc.
In web marketing circles, this is known as making your website "sticky." The more valuable content you offer, the more likely people will be to stick around.
Just keep in mind that the more content you add, the neater things must be. Organize your web content so people can find things easily. Keep things clean and uncluttered. Within ten seconds, people should be able to identify the correct path to the information they seek.
You should also incorporate some kind of response-generating mechanism. Offer high-value reports with information about local schools, the current real estate marketing, or future development in the area ... something that people would want to get their hands on. Strive to create something so irresistible that people can't help but email you for it. On the web, this is how business relationships begin.
2. Submit Press Releases Online
Public Relations, or PR, is often the forgotten tool of real estate marketing online. That's unfortunate, because an online PR program can generate a wealth of exposure for a minimal cost.
For instance, most agents don't realize they can submit press releases online for free — and possibly have that release distributed to hundreds of relevant websites. PRWeb.com is one of several resources you can use for this purpose.
Publishing releases helps your online marketing program in two ways — PR visibility and search engine visibility. By having your press releases appear on real estate-related websites, you can get the attention of humans and search engines alike.
3. Publish Articles Online
Article marketing is the act of publishing articles online for marketing purposes. It can do wonders for your real estate marketing program. By publishing articles over the web, you extend your communication reach and increase your search engine ranking (by way of relevant backlinks to your website).
With a little online research, you can find dozens of websites that seek articles from real estate authorities. EzineArticles.com is a multi-topic article directory, but it also allows submission of real estate articles.
HomeBuyingInstitue.com (a real estate-specific website) welcomes articles from real estate and mortgage professionals. A link from HBI could help your search engine visibility a great deal, because the site is real estare-related and well-established.
4. Start a Blog
Blogs do many things well that search engines like. A blog is easier to publish than a regular website, so you can add content to it more often. Search engines like websites with original content that's updated frequently, and blogs fill that role perfectly. From a search engine perspective, Blogger and WordPress are two of the most popular blogging tools.
5. Publish an RSS Feed
RSS (or really simple syndication) is a way to syndicate content from one website to another, or from a website to an RSS reader. The "big three" search engine sites offer personalized home pages that people can customize (My Yahoo, My MSN and Google Personalized). These pages allow users to add RSS feeds at the click of a button.
What does this mean? It means that if you publish an RSS feed through your blog or website, people can easily add it to their RSS readers to receive future information from you. In this regard, RSS feeds are similar to newsletters. But they also have a number of advantages over newsletters. RSS feeds offer privacy, simplicity, and guarnteed delivery of content.
So what do you publish through your feed? RSS is perfectly suited for any kind of information that needs to be updated regularly. This might include real estate news, interest rates, new listings, open house information and more.
The benefits of an effective RSS feed are too numerous to list here. Top benefits include additional website "stickiness," search engine visiblity, online exposure. It also shows you're a "web-savvy" agent, which is important to buyers and sellers these days.
Conclusion
For best results, take a multi-pronged approach to real estate marketing online. As with financial investing, you should avoid putting all your eggs into one basket. Diversify. Create multiple channels and let them reinforce one another.
After a while, you'll begin to see how these channels can work together in alliance. This is the first step to dominating the web.
