You Can Have My Real Estate Agent Leads

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

You can have all of the real estate agent leads you want. Seriously. I'll even show you how to go about it. You see, lead generation is not a complex science or skill. It just takes a lot of hard work and persistence.

This article is a compilation of the lessons I've learned over the years. As a marketing consultant, I've helped many real estate agents generate leads with their websites and blogs. And through this process of trial and error, I've learned which techniques work best for producing real estate agent leads online ... and which ones are a waste of time. Here's a list of those proven techniques.

Real Estate Lead Strategies

Start by writing a lot of website content. Using a blog is the easiest way to do this, because it reduces the entire publishing process down to a few steps. We will talk more about this as we go. But for now, just realize that you need to create lots of content if you want to get lots of traffic. And traffic is the first step to generating real estate agent leads through your blog or website.

Don't just write any website content. Write articles and reports based on your local real estate scene. Use tools like this one and that one to create a list of relevant keywords ... the kind of phrases your target audience would search through Google, Yahoo and Bing. Relevant content will help you generate quality traffic, and this is paramount to getting real estate agent leads online. You can learn more about keyword strategies here.

While you're expanding your content base, you should start implementing some lead-generation strategies. You can use chat programs for this purpose, or contact forms, or a wide variety of other ideas. But you've got to encourage people to "raise their hands" in some way. You need to promote interaction. I've written an e-book that compiles my favorite techniques for generating agent leads, so you might want to download a copy and give it a read. You'll be glad you did!

Don't just use one lead-generation technique on your website. Use two or three. Experiment with different strategies. See what works best for you, given your particular audience, your website, etc. If one technique works like gangbusters, and the other two are a bust, then get rid of the dead weight and focus your energy on the one that works. Then introduce a new technique to see how it works. This process never ends, by the way. I've been doing it for many years, and I learn something new every week.

Take the advice of other people (including me) with a grain of salt. When it comes to producing real estate agent leads, nothing is written is stone. What works for John might be a bust for Jane, and vice versa. Maybe John did a poor job implementing the strategy, while Jane pulled it off perfectly. Same strategy -- two different stories. Harvest ideas from other agents, but take their "case studies" with a grain of salt. They are personal experiences that may or may not apply to you.

Do you have a search engine optimization (SEO) program? If not, you're falling behind. I have to be blunt here, because there's no time to waste. All of your successful competitors are working hard on their search engine visibility. I guarantee it. Why? Because you can't generate real estate agent leads without traffic, and search engines are the best way to produce a steady stream of traffic.

Learn to capitalize on the web traffic you have right now, before trying to boost your traffic. I once had a client who was convinced he needed more website traffic, because he was not getting very many leads through the site. I reviewed his website analytics and found that he was getting about 1,000 visitors per week. That's plenty of traffic for an agent website! He just wasn't doing anything to get those people to raise their hands. Work with what you've got. Put your lead-generation strategies in place today. And then work on boosting your website visibility and traffic. First things first.

Let me restate that last point differently. (It's important enough to warrant repetition.) Web traffic alone does nothing for you. If 500 people visit your website each day, but leave the site without interacting with you, then you've gained nothing. You must convert traffic into real estate leads, and then you must follow up with those leads to turn them into clients. It's a series of steps. Website visibility comes first, and it's the hardest part of the process. This will increase your site traffic. And then, if you do something to encourage interaction, you'll turn traffic into real estate agent leads ... or not. It's all up to you.

Realtor Website Design with Search Engines in Mind

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Realtor website design and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand in hand. So if you're planning a new website soon, you should learn how to optimize it as well. You don't have to become an SEO expert or anything, but you should know enough to build the site properly.

Why is this important? Because if you ignore the fundamentals of SEO when creating your site, you could hamstring your future success. In this article, I'll talk about Realtor website design with search engines in mind. If you embrace these fundamentals early on, when designing the site, you'll attract more visitors later on down the road.

Let's start by defining what SEO is, and what it has to do with your marketing success.

Definition: Search engine optimization is the act of optimizing your website for better rankings in Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. By ranking well for certain key phrases, you will also increase your web traffic. So the ultimate goal of SEO is to gain additional exposure online, in order to attract clients and grow your real estate business. I think we can agree that these are all good things.

The question is, how do you achieve this kind of success? Well, it all starts with Realtor website design and how you build your site. This is the first step to SEO success -- the fundamental building block. So let's talk about some of the things you should put in place to achieve maximum search engine visibility.

Realtor Web Design with SEO in Mind

So what does it mean to practice Realtor website design with SEO in mind? It means you develop the site with an eye toward your future search engine visibility. It means that you put certain things in place to achieve good rankings and visibility. Most importantly, it means you understand the importance of search engine optimization, in terms of bringing visitors to your site.

That answers the "why" of SEO-friendly web design. But what about the "how" side of things? How do you ensure the future visibility of your Realtor website with SEO techniques? What areas should you focus on to get the best results? That's what we will talk about next.

1. Create plenty of topic-specific web pages.

We all know what a web page is, and we know that content is the information that fills the page. But what is a "topic-specific" page? This means that every page on your site has a specific focus -- one that is built around a particular topic. More specifically, you should build each page around a key phrase that's relevant to your business.

When you take a topical, keyword-driven approach to Realtor website design, you will increase the specificity and relevance of every page on your site. This contributes to better search engine rankings for your key phrases.

How many pages should you have? Well, this depends on your business model, your area of operation, and your audience. You could have pages for different cities, different neighborhoods, the different real estate services you provide, etc. But generally speaking, the more pages the better.

The key to all this, from an SEO standpoint, is to keep your pages tightly focused around one or two topics / phrases. This will boost the search engine relevance of each individual page. On the contrary, if you take an "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" approach to content development, you will decrease the specificity and relevance of your individual pages.

There is no limit to the number of topics you could integrate within your Realtor website design, and that's actually our next subject.

2. Design your website for future growth.

We just talked about the value of having plenty of content on your website. When you add more topics and pages to the site, you give people more ways to find you through search engines. Your website will appear for more searches, because you've incorporated so many key phrases. This will increase your web traffic, which is the first step to gaining new clients via the Web.

You need to account for this perpetual growth in the early stages of the Realtor website design process. Why? Because if you build a site that is hard to expand, or is rigid in some way, you will limit your growth. So when you're sketching out your organizational chart for the site, make sure it's flexible and expandable. This is a key requirement for Realtor web design and SEO success. You may think you only need five web pages right now. But as your business grows over time, you may end up with dozens of even hundreds of pages.

Adding new content to your website on a regular basis is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your traffic levels, month after month. Here are 21 content ideas to help you get started.

3. Build your site logically, with an organized structure.

Before you actually start building your website (or having one built for you), you should it mapped out on paper. Call it a site map if you like, or an organizational chart. Whatever you call it, you need to make sure your website is designed around a logical structure.

This helps you in two ways. It increases usability by helping people navigate their way through the site. And it improves your visibility by helping search engines find all of that content you've created. Both of these things will help you gain new clients via the Web.

If you have a large site with dozens or even hundreds of pages, you should also create an XML sitemap to help search engines find all of the pages. You can create a sitemap easily (and for free) by using an online tool such as this one.

It's also helpful to have at least one text-based menu on your site, since these are the easiest links for search engine "spiders" to crawl. If your main navigation menu is built using Flash, Javascript or some other fancy programming, put an alternate menu at the bottom of the site. Include plain-old text links (like this) to all of the key sections of your site.

4. Add a blog to your website for easy expansion.

This is the perfect solution to what we just talked about. A blog is an easy way to grow your website over time, because it's so easy to use. By using a blogging program, you can add new pages to your site just as fast as you can type.

I'm writing a blog post right now, and as soon as I click the "publish" button I will have a new page of content. This gives me a greater range of topics on the site (item #1 above) and helps me grow my website over time (item #2 above). Both of these things will lead to an increase in search engine traffic, which is the whole point of an SEO program.

In terms of search engine visibility, there are other benefits to all of this content development. If your Realtor website provides a lot of useful information, news and other resources, other webmasters will be more inclined to link to the site. This increases the link popularity of your website, which in turn will increase your search engine rankings for all of those key phrases. See how it all ties together? This is what I mean by Realtor website design and SEO going hand in hand.

5. Optimize images and photos for search engines.

Search engines are starting to show more images within their results pages. Searchers can do an image-only search to find pictures related to a specific phrase, but these pictures will also show up in the regular search queries from time to time. So if you optimize your images, you are giving people yet another way to find your website.

You can optimize the images on your website in two ways. You can save them with keyword-rich file names (such as "credit-score-chart.jpg"), and you can use relevant keywords within the alt tag for each image.

I hope you've enjoyed this guide to Realtor website design and SEO, and I wish you well in your online adventures.

Generating Leads With a Real Estate Landing Page

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Landing pages are a great way to generate real estate leads through your website. But many agents don't know (A) what a landing page is to begin with, and (B) how to use them to produce leads. In today's lesson, I'll talk about each of these things. I'll also give you a sample landing page to reinforce the lesson, and to get your marketing wheels turning.

What is a Landing Page Anyway?

Within the context of Internet marketing, a landing page is where a person "lands" upon reaching a certain website. So in a sense, every page of your real estate website could be a landing page, because you never know where somebody will land upon finding the site.

But you can also create specific landing pages for specific purposes. For example, people who use sponsored search / pay-per-click marketing in Google and Yahoo usually have landing pages as part of that program. Or at least they should. So when the search engine user clicks on a sponsored ad, they are sent to a specific landing page that is relevant to their search and the overall ad campaign (as opposed to sending them to the website's home page, which is just plain silly).

Using Them to Generate Real Estate Leads

Let's say that Jane Doe (a hypothetical real estate agent) specializes in short sales to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Home foreclosures have reached record levels this year, so can see the relevance and timeliness of this approach. Jane has worked hard to create a homeowners guide to foreclosure avoidance in her city.

Here's how I would present this on a landing page in order to generate leads from it. I've stripped away the other website elements to focus your attention on the page itself:


View full-size image

The job of this particular landing page is simple. It must be designed to (A) increase the visitor's desire for the booklet and (B) make it really easy for them to request the item.

Analyzing the Landing Page

Landing pages will vary based on the offer, the marketing strategy, the product or service, etc. But they all have certain traits in common. Or at least they should have these traits. Here are some things to notice about Jane's landing page, as well as the lead-generation strategy she is using.

• The page's headline identifies the audience and subject matter, using straightforward language. This tells impatient readers what the page is about within seconds.
• The introductory statement (in italics) reinforces the headline and expands on the promise made by the headline. It also includes a call-to-action hyperlink.
• A "virtual cover" image is used for visual enticement. This technique has been proven to increase conversion rates, when compared to a text-only description.
• The key selling points of this booklet are featured in bullet points.
• The last bullet point is a hyperlink that repeats the call to action. By offering multiple links (and even a button), Jane is increasing the likelihood of a click-through.
• In case the reader skims past the first two hyperlinks / calls to action, there is a gigantic button at the bottom that they cannot miss.
• The copy is also keyword-rich for various "San Diego foreclosure" types of phrases. This will help with search engine visibility. It's not a lead generation technique, but it's worth mentioning here. You need traffic before you can get leads!

Logistical Odds & Ends

So what happens when somebody clicks one of the hyperlinks or the button? Well, this is up to you. There are several things you could do here. But the important thing is that you either (A) capture the lead for eventual follow-up or (B) get the reader to contact you directly. Based on your preference, you could then do one of the following:

• Use a form with a thank-you page. With this option, the reader would fill out a brief form to the request the booklet. The form would ask for only basic contact information, such as name and email address. Once the reader completes the form, they would be sent to a thank-you page where they download the PDF booklet.
• Use a form with an auto-responder. This is similar to the last option, only here the booklet (or a link to download it) would be sent to the person by an auto-responder email. This is a good way to encourage people to subscribe to a newsletter, as well. The benefit is that the person has to use a legitimate email address to get the booklet.
• Have people email you for the booklet. This is an easier strategy to put in place, but it may work just as well as the other two. Here, the reader simply emails you to request the free booklet. It's a low-tech approach, but the end result is the same.

Driving Traffic to the Page

This is not a lesson on increasing your website traffic, but on generating leads from the traffic you already have. However, this is a great opportunity to offer some traffic-generating techniques that our fictitious Jane Doe might use to get people to her landing page. If I were Jane, I would do the following things for starters:

• Submit a press release online to announce the booklet.
• Submit the same press release to local news outlets.
• Optimize the landing page for good search-engine rankings.
• Experiment with pay-per-click marketing, such as Google AdWords.
• Put a prominent link to this page on the home page and elsewhere.
• Mention the booklet in a newsletter blast, if such a program is used.

I would also do anything else I could think of to drive traffic to this page. The search engine optimization / SEO strategy is especially useful, because it provides lasting benefits. It's a great way to get a steady amount of qualified traffic to this landing page, which will directly relate to an increase in leads generated.

P.S. -- If you want to learn more about generating traffic through search engine optimization, you might want to check out my book on that subject. You can find it at www.TopTenAgent.com.

SEO Strategy - How to Get Hundreds of Quality Real Estate Links

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

In this real estate SEO tutorial, I'll explain a proven strategy for link building success. Inbound links (from other websites to your website) will improve your search engine rankings, and thus your web traffic in general. Links from quality and relevant websites will get you the best results.

Anyone can buy their way into a link-building scheme and pick up a bunch of links. But these links will mostly come from low-quality websites that have nothing to do with your real estate niche. The key to SEO success is to attract links from strong sites that can pass authority along to your own site, and to do this naturally without buying your way in.

Quick story. I had a former client who, out of desperation, signed up with some link-building network. Within a month, he had thousands of new links ... but they were from some pretty sketchy websites. Before long, his Google rankings had plummeted. Why? Because Google has sophisticated algorithms that can spot this kind of thing.

My former client emailed me in a panic and asked what might have happened. It took me about three minutes of research (using Yahoo Site Explorer) to realize he was mixed up in a link-building scheme. He had links from some highly unusual websites, including a Pakistani "celebrity watch" blog. What does this have to do with Austin real estate? Absolutely nothing. It took me a couple of minutes to spot this trend, and it takes Google's search engine only a few seconds.

You can go this route if you want to, trying to buy your way to link-building success. But you've been warned. Sooner or later, it's going to hurt your search engine rankings. Oh sure, you'll coast along with some good results for a while. But then ... slam ... your rankings will crash overnight. It has happened so many times, to so many real estate agents, that it's not speculation at all. It's only a matter of time.

Professional Grade Link-Building Techniques

Unskilled, fly-by-night SEO companies will often use the kind of linking schemes mentioned above.

Reputable SEO firms, on the other hand, (and there aren't that many of them) use long-term strategies for link-building success. They use search engine optimization techniques that fall within these guidelines. The reputable firms do this, because they understand the value of consistently good rankings over the long term.

I'm no longer in the SEO business, because it reached the point where I no longer enjoyed the work. It's tedious, time consuming and repetitive, to say the least. But let's assume I still offered search engine optimization services. What would you get for the money if you hired me? In particular, what would I do to improve your link popularity, and thus your search engine rankings?

Here's what I would do, for starters:

1. Evaluate your website to make sure it's worth linking to in the first place. Does it offer plenty of useful and original content? Does it offer helpful tools and resources for local buyers? Is it unique in some way, or just another agent website? If a website is not worth linking to, then there's no point in launching a link-building campaign. Until you make the site "link worthy" in some way, you'll be restricted to the kinds of linking schemes mentioned earlier.
2. If your website lacked content, I would start with that. Writing website content is not as hard as you might think. But if you absolutely detest writing, you can hire a writer through a service like Elance. At a minimum, I would create some pages for every major subdivision in your area of operation, information about local builders, etc. Here are some more content ideas to get you started.
3. Here's a link building "secret" that SEO people have been using for years. Webmasters love to link to helpful lists. So if you can create such a list relevant to your city or town, you'll pick up some good links over time. For example, you could create a list of home builders in your area, with detailed information about each one. Or a list of neighborhoods. Or a list of good restaurants. Or ... you get the idea. The more work you put into it, the more links you'll pick up later on.
4. Steps 1 - 3 above will make your website more link worthy. Once that stage is complete, I would start an outward campaign to promote the new content. Here are some of the steps I would take...
5. I would send emails to every webmaster in your city who offers information to local residents -- the kinds of websites that would link to your new and helpful resources.
   
6. If there was something truly unique and useful on your site, I would send out a press release through PRWeb.com and several other distribution channels. I would send the same release to all of the local news channels in your city or town. Each press release would link back to your real estate website from the company profile.
   
7. I would start an article marketing campaign to pick up additional links over time. This would include two phases. The first phase would be to publish the articles through various distribution websites designed for that purpose (like EzineArticles.com). The second phase would include a few "handpicked" websites that allow guest articles. Each article would link back to your site, as the citation source.
8. If you weren't already blogging, I would set up a blog for you and help you devise a blogging strategy. Publishing new information on a regular basis is a solid link-building strategy, and blogs make it easy to do.
9. I would "rinse and repeat" by reiterating the strategies that worked best. If we had some good success with the neighborhood profiles, I would create more of those. If the lists turned out to be popular, I would double up on that front. You get the idea.
   
10. It's a never-ending strategy, but the results will compound over time. More links = better rankings and more web traffic. This gives you better exposure to your key audience. And, if you have some kind of lead-generation system in place, you'll get a lot more clients via the Internet.
    

The Problem With SEO Companies

The list above is only a snapshot of a proper link-building program. It takes time and effort over a sustained period. But it all revolves around two things -- quality content and proactive networking. This is where most real estate SEO firms fall on their faces, and it's why I recommend avoiding them altogether.

The work I've outlined above requires time and personal attention, and these are two things most SEO companies cannot provide. They take on too many clients, so they have to cut corners to save time. So instead of using the professional-grade link strategies listed above, they'll resort to linking schemes and other risky strategies.

At some point, you just have to ask yourself the tough questions: How much are search engine rankings worth to me? Do I have the patience and determination to do it right? How bad would it hurt my business if my search engine rankings plummeted one day, out of the clear blue sky? How much trust am I willing to place into the hands of a total stranger (SEO firm)?