9 Ways to Increase Web Traffic in 2009

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Anyone with a business website can benefit from an increase in web traffic, and that obviously includes real estate websites. Increasing your traffic makes all the other aspects of Internet marketing a lot easier.

With more traffic, you'll be able to...

• Increase your visibility within your market area
• Generate more leads from your website
• Enjoy more feedback from your web visitors
• Make your website more profitable overall
• Grow your business by tapping an infinite audience

In other words, when you increase your web traffic you make your entire Internet marketing program more successful. I think we can all agree on this so far. The question is, how do you get more website visitors? What kind of marketing techniques can you use to drive more traffic to your site?

This is where a lot of people get stuck, and it's often the result of vague articles and "tutorials" published online. These articles stress the importance of increasing web traffic, but they don't offer any specific tips for doing it. So in this blog post, I'd like to give you a list of specific techniques you can use to increase your web traffic consistently over time.

But first, a couple of key points:

Point #1 -- Website traffic is not the ultimate goal of your Internet marketing program. It's a good first step, but there are more steps to follow. To benefit from your web traffic you must find a way to capitalize on it. For real estate websites, this usually means generating leads and inquiries.

Point #2 -- Not all of the ideas on this list will apply to your business, your audience and your marketing goals. So you'll have to experiment with the strategies you feel are most applicable to your situation. But with so many ideas on one page, you're bound to find something that works for you.

Ideas for Web Traffic

With those disclaimers out of the way, let's jump right into the list. I've mined all of the articles and e-books I've written in the past to come up with a list of proven strategies. I hope you find it useful in your web marketing efforts.

1. Do a thorough round of keyword research to identify topics and phrases with the potential to drive web traffic, and then make sure you're covering them on your site. If you need to, add pages of content to cover all of your key phrases.
2. If you're not already blogging, start a blog and publish content through it on a regular basis. This is a great way to implement the topics you identified in the previous tip.
   
3. Add new content to your blog as often as possible. The more keyword-rich content you have on your site, the more search traffic you can earn. Here are some content ideas to help you update your blog on a regular basis. And speaking of blogging for traffic ...
   
4. Follow the news and blog about hot topics on your website. Nothing drives Internet search patterns like the media and current events. You'll get a lot more traffic from search engines if you do this on a regular basis.
5. Create your own real estate maps with listings, open houses and other events. You can use Google Maps to do this, and it's easier than you think. I've created a real estate mashup guide to help you get started. This will keep visitors coming back, and it will also make them more inclined to recommend your site to others.
6. By adding useful resources to your site (like the map idea above), you are also making your website more link worthy. When other bloggers and webmasters link to your site, it will boost your search engine rankings. And that means even more web traffic over time.
7. When you make noteworthy additions to your website, you can also distribute an optimized press release online. If you do it right, this can help you increase web traffic and search engine visibility at the same time. Just make sure you have something newsworthy to say before using this strategy.
8. Experiment with pay-per-click marketing with programs such a Google AdWords. You could put your sponsored listing at the top of Google for certain key phrases, and you could have it there immediately (depending on how much you bid). Just be sure to do some research into AdWords marketing before using this strategy. It's a good way to increase web traffic, but it can also be a money-loser if you don't know what you're doing.
9. Download your copy of Top Ten Agent and learn how to increase your search engine optimization with proven SEO techniques.
   

So there you them, nine ways to increase your website traffic for online success. Actually, each of these ideas will naturally lead you into other techniques for traffic generation. So you could use these ideas every day for the next year and never run out of ammunition. Good luck with your Internet marketing.

Internet Marketing Ideas for Real Estate Listings

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Reader Question: What are some Internet marketing ideas I can use to get more people to see my real estate listings online?

Somebody asked a similar question a couple of weeks ago, regarding real estate listings. But that question wasn't Internet specific like yours, so I'm happy to take another crack at it.

There are plenty of Internet marketing ideas you can implement to drive qualified traffic to your online listings. In this context, "qualified traffic" refers to people who are using the Internet to search for homes for sale in your area (i.e., the best kind of web traffic).

Here are some online marketing strategies for real estate listings that you can start working today:

Search Engine Marketing for Real Estate Listings

I just did a quick experiment using Google's keyword tool. I started with the phrase "Austin homes" and then ran a query to get some search history on that phrase. According to this tool, there were approximately 246,000 searches for this phrase in September alone! There were also plenty of searches for other versions of this phrase, such as "Austin homes for sale" and several others.

When you add it all up, that's a lot of potential website traffic for anyone who ranks well in the search engines for such phrases. Let's say you're a real estate agent in that city, and your website ranks within the first five Google listings for those phrases. You would have a steady (and significant) stream of web traffic. Each day, hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of people would visit your site looking for information on homes. So your real estate listings would receive excellent exposure thanks to the Internet.

You could also use that as a selling point for potential clients: "Your listing will receive maximum exposure on a top-ranking website..." Only a handful of your competitors would be able to say the same thing. Talk about differentiating yourself!

This is why I stress the importance of search engine visibility as part of your overall real estate Internet marketing strategy. If you succeed in this area, you wouldn't have to do much else in terms of marketing. You'd have a constant stream of leads, courtesy of Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. So this is one marketing idea for real estate listings that every agent should pursue.

When it comes to search engine marketing, you have two options for increasing your website's ranking and visibility:

• Search Engine Optimization -- This is the act of improving your website for better "organic" or natural rankings. These are the main listings on a search engines, and they rank websites in terms of content, link popularity, and other factors. This is the long-term approach to search engine visibility, but it's well worth the effort. The Austin homes example above clearly explains what you stand to gain. We offer SEO services to help in this area, and the Top Ten Agent book offers step-by-step instructions.
  
• Sponsored Search / Pay-Per-Click -- This is the quicker path to search engine visibility, but you'll pay for the privilege. With this option, you would bid on certain keywords or phrases related to your business, and your bid would partly determine your ranking for the phrase. These are the sponsored listings that appear down the right column (and sometimes the top) of search engine results. You pay a certain amount each time somebody clicks through to your website.
  

Both of these search strategies can help you drive traffic to your website and the real estate listings it offers. The first one, SEO, is the long-term approach to Internet marketing and visibility. The second one, PPC, is the short-term (but paid) approach to search engine visibility.

Submitting Your Listings to Other Websites

The Internet marketing strategies listed above will increase the exposure of your real estate listings on your own website. But you can also submit your listings to other high-traffic websites for even more exposure. This is an Internet marketing idea used by many agents.

There are dozens of websites that allow you to add your listings, but the process is usually the same across the board. You pay some kind of listing fee in exchange for the exposure it brings you. In other words, you are paying to leverage the traffic of a popular real estate website. The NAR website offers services like this, as do many of the big real estate search websites like Trulia.

Try it for yourself: Feature your listings and your brand on Trulia.com. Get Trulia Pro today.

Other Internet Marketing Ideas

These are by far not the only ways to showcase your real estate listings online. They are just two of the most popular ideas among modern agents. In truth, any Internet marketing strategy designed to increase web traffic can be adapted for real estate purposes.

For example, online press releases can drive targeted traffic to your website. And if your site offers real estate listings, then you've just increased the number of "eyeballs" on those listings as well.

Are You Ready for Internet Traffic?

This is a good time to touch on another important aspect of real estate Internet marketing -- website usability. If your site is difficult for people to use, then it really doesn't matter how much traffic you generate. Many of your visitors will leave in frustration if they can't find your real estate listings, or if the listings don't offer enough information (property details, photos, virtual tours, etc.).

So keep this in mind when using any of the Internet marketing ideas presented above. Make sure your website is easy to use, and your property listings are easy to find. You'll get even better results when you work from both ends of the spectrum like this.

Internet Marketing Newsletter - Sign Up Today

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

The Advice for Agents website has been reborn with a new purpose. The website is now built around an email newsletter of the same name. You can subscribe for free. Twice a month you'll receive expert advice on real estate Internet marketing. Topics include blogging, search engine marketing, website lead generation and more.



The current issue (for August) just went online, so you can preview the type of information you'll receive every other week. As with any legitimate newsletter, we have a strict anti-spam policy. When you sign up for the newsletter, your email address will only be used for that purpose. Likewise, we never release your personal information to any third parties.

If you'd like to get more business from the Internet, but you're not sure how, this free newsletter is for you! See for yourself

A New Blog Directory for Real Estate Bloggers

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I know that many readers of this blog have real estate blogs of their own, so I wanted to let you know about a new blog directory we have created. The directory is for business bloggers in particular, and there is a category for real estate blogs as well.

If you're like me, then you are always on the "hunt" for quality directories and linking opportunities to improve your search engine rankings. So I'm happy to share this new directory with you. The main website where the blog directory resides is a popular business blogging website with many inbound links of its own, so a listing in the blog directory will contribute toward your blog's visibility as well (as the new section gets crawled by search engines).

A listing in the blog directory is very affordable too, at only $29 per year.

Check it out here:
http://www.ceoblogwatch.com/directory/

Using Online Chat to Generate Real Estate Leads

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 64 of 100 - Experimenting With Chat Programs


When it comes to generating leads and inquiries online, real estate agents need to use as many different techniques as possible.

After all, you never know where people will go when they reach your website. You don't know their personality, their desires or their motivations. So if you present them with options, there's a much better chance they will move forward.

Chat programs are an often overlooked method of generating leads online. But these programs can be very effective when used properly, so I've dedicated this entire article to the subject.

The Value and Simplicity of Chat

In order to use this technique, the real estate agent or broker must have an office manager or customer service person -- someone who is near a computer for most of the day. So if you are a true sole proprietorship with no from of customer support, you might want to put this technique on the side burner for now.

For those al estate agents who are lucky enough to have an office manager or customer support person, let's move on to this useful technique for lead generation.

You've probably visited a website in the past that had a button encouraging you to "Get live help" or "Click to chat." These tools are a great way to get a spur-of-the-moment response from website visitors, the kind of response that could lead to a business relationship as well. Instead of sending an email and waiting for a response, people can click the chat button and have a dialogue with a live person.

How the Process Works

Here are the nuts and bolts of installing and using a chat program on your website. It's actually pretty simple, thanks to some handy software programs that are available these days. Here's an overview of the steps involved:

1. Choose a program to use.
2. Complete the setup process.
3. Put a chat button on your website.
4. Train the person handling the inquiries.

Step 1 - Choose an Online Chat Program

For starters, you will obviously need to choose a program to use. These are third-party programs that will either be (A) installed onto your web server or (B) hosted remotely by the chat software company. I've done a little research in this area to get you started.

The best approach when comparing these programs (or any software product for that matter) is to do a free trial of the software. To the best of my knowledge, all of the companies / products listed below offer a free trial. This allows you to judge the product firsthand, before buying any software.

Step 2 - Complete the Setup Process

Once you have chosen a program that meets your needs, you will then have to complete the setup process. Depending on the company / product you've chosen, this might be a very short step. If you are hosting the program on your own server, you'll need to upload all of the files to run the program -- a downside to this approach.

On the other hand, if you're using a remotely hosted program, you can forego this step. "Remotely hosted" means the program will run from the chat company's servers. This approach has the advantage of being easier and requiring less technical involvement on your end.

Step 3 - Put a Chat Button on Your Website

This is an important step, because it directly relates to the number of people who use the tool. If online chat is going to be an important part of your lead generation program (and it could be), you'll want to give the chat button its own piece of web space.

Where you place your button will depend on the layout of your website. If you have a left-hand navigation menu, you might want to add it at the top of that menu. The main thing is to give it some space so that the eye is drawn to it, a fundamental practice of Web Design 101.

Step 4 - Train the Person Handling Chat Inquiries

When I say you must "train" the person, I'm not referring to the technical details, which are fairly straightforward. Instead, I am referring to how you want to handle the online communication process with strangers. For example, how will you move these strangers toward contacting you by phone or email? After all, when they pop up on the chat screen, you'll only have their first name -- but no phone number or email address.

So the person handling the inquiries must be trained to balance two things at once. He or she must answer the person's immediate question (which is the whole point of a customer service chat program), while also moving the person toward a more formal conversation via phone or email. For this purpose, it will help to have some copy-and-paste scripts the customer service person can use, after handling the person's initial inquiry.

The New Real Estate Directory - Example of an Enhanced Listing

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

In a previous post we mentioned the launch of our new real estate directory of agents in the U.S. In this post, I'd like to show you what an enhanced listing looks like.

When you submit your website to the agent directory you will have to listing options -- standard listing or enhanced. The latter option gives you (A) more room for a company description, (B) additional links to your website sub-pages, and (C) a headshot photo included with the listing. Enhanced listings will also appear above standard listings within a certain city page of the directory.

The headshot is a rarity among real estate directories these days. As you may know from submitting your website to agent directories over the yeas, most of them only allow a short description and a link to your home page. Very few real estate directories will allow headshot photos like we do. As a result, there is no way to "break out" or distinguish yourself among all of those other links.

Look at the listing for Sam Carroll on the Austin agents page of our directory. Sure, he's the first listing for that city because our real estate directory is brand new. But even when the page fills in you can see how much nicer it is to have a photo (instead of just a link).

If you have any questions about the new real estate agent directory just let me know. I will try to answer most questions here on the blog for the benefit of all.

-Brandon

Real Estate Directory for Agents - New Development

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to create a quick post to let you know about the real estate directory we put online over the weekend. At the city level, the directory is still something of a "shell," but we will be filling it in with original content on all pages.

Basically, there will be keyword rich content on every city page to help draw traffic (which is good for the agents listed in the directory). This is just one way I plan to make this directory better than most real estate directories online today. Our directory is actually created for consumers, and not just for search engines. It is designed to be user-friendly and to help people actually find a real estate agent in their town.

Also, because it's part of the Home Buying Institute, our real estate directory will enjoy excellent search engine visibility in time. Those of you familiar with real estate directories will see the double value in this. Our agent directory has the potential to send direct traffic to your website, in addition to helping you boost your search engine rankings with a quality link.

I will create an information page with more details in the next day or two, and I'll post to the blog again when that page is up. But some people have been asking about the directory already, so I thought a brief mention was needed.

If you have any questions about the new real estate directory for agents just let me know.

-Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing on CNN Money

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I recently contributed to an article on real estate Internet marketing that you might like to read. It was a piece for Fortune Small Business (part of CNN Money), and it was a question-and-answer series about reaching homeowners via the Web.

In truth, I misunderstood the nature of the question when I was interviewed by the FSB journalist who did the piece. I thought the question came from a real estate agent, but it actually came from a real estate advertising company.

At any rate, I thought you might like to check it out. Michael Russer also contributed some good advice to the article.

Read the full article here

Real Estate Marketing Online - Introducing City Pages

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Coming soon to a city near you, City Pages are a unique approach to real estate marketing online.

I've recently begun to revamp a website of mine that, up until now, had just been "hanging out" online with no real purpose. In its new form, the site has plenty of purpose. It will be an online encyclopedia of U.S. cities, from a real estate and lifestyle angle.


You can see the groundwork here

And, because all of the City Pages can be sponsored by real estate agents, it's also a new way to approach real estate marketing online (for additional exposure, web traffic, etc.).

Here's the gist of the program, and how you can use it for real estate marketing online. Each City Page will be designed for good rankings in the major search engines such as Google. But even more importantly, the pages will be very informative and useful for people researching the city from a real estate angle.

By following a "one agent per city" type of rule, the website will offer premium placement for the real estate agent who chooses to sponsor a particular City Page. Thus, it's a nice addition to any online real estate marketing program.

Also, because we are spending more than 40% of site revenue on additional site promotion, it's a marketing investment with increasing returns year after year. (The City Pages will enjoy increased visibility and traffic levels over time.)

This will all make a lot more sense if you see it for yourself:

• Here's an example of a sponsored City Page for Georgetown, Texas.
• Here's an example of an available (not sponsored) City Page for Birmingham, Alabama.

Here's some additional information on the benefits of the program.

Being a newly revitalized program, there's obviously a lot of work to be done. Now that the site's redesign is complete, my focus will be on (A) creating new City Pages, and (B) pouring resources into the site in order to increase its search engine ranking and traffic levels.

Note: We are adding new cities / pages at a rate of two per day. If you are interested in sponsoring a City Page, please let me know and I will put your city at the top of the production list. This will give you "first dibs" to lock down your City Page for a year ... or longer!

Real Estate Lead Generation Online - Tip #63 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 63 of 100 - Increase Your Onsite Conversions

A real estate website that doesn't make conversions is a real estate website that serves very little business function. So let's talk about (A) what a conversion is and (B) how you can increase conversions across your real estate website or blog.

By way of definition, an "onsite conversion" takes place when somebody goes from being a website visitor to something else as well.

For example, if a person visits your website and signs up for your email newsletter, an onsite conversion has taken place. The person has "converted" from a casual website visitor to a newsletter subscriber.

There are many kinds of conversions, and they differ from one website to another, and from one organization to the next:

• A non-profit website might seek donations or volunteer registrations. Those conversions are valuable to them.


• A service-related business like real estate might seek website conversions of a different nature. Maybe they want people to sign up for a newsletter list or call to learn more about a property listing. Those are valuable conversions for these business models.


• A product-based website like Amazon.com seeks one type of conversion above all else. They want people to purchase products, plain and simple. So that's the most important type of conversion for them.
  

Increasing Conversions Across Your Website

So we have talked about the importance of onsite conversions, and how they are the end-product of your online real estate marketing efforts. Now let's look at some of the ways you improve your onsite conversions to help grow your real estate business.

1. Define Your Conversions in Advance

This might seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised by how many deer-in-the-headlight expressions I get when I ask real estate agents, "What are your top three conversion goals on this website?"

Some will scratch their heads and say, "To get clients, I guess." That's not a specific goal for website conversion. It's the end-goal of all real estate marketing efforts, sure. But it's not a clearly defined conversion goal.

Other real estate business owners have it figured out better. For example, they might say something like, "I want my visitors to do one of three things ... download our featured report from the home page, click on the chat button to get in touch with a representative, or contact us by phone or email."

In the example above, the hypothetical real estate professional has clearly defined the conversion points on her website. And from the sound of it, other members of the company are knowledgeable about (and engaged in) those conversion points. Customer support, for example, is ready to connect with site visitors through the website's chat tool, anytime somebody clicks on the button. That's much more specific and achievable than the first conversion goal of "getting clients."

2. Be Visible Online

People cannot contact you (or purchase your products, etc.) if they don't know you exist. So you must strive to make your business visible, online and off. Internet visibility is a big part of this. After all, the more visible you are online, the more likely people will be to find you.

That's why I've written an entire book on the subject, to serve as your guide to online visibility.

But there are other ways to increase your visibility as well. You can publish articles in your local newspaper, syndicate articles and press releases online, be active in your community, conduct free seminars, and many other aspects of PR. Visibility and awareness are the first steps to generating real estate leads online.

3. Increase Usability Across Your Website

Picture this. You're on one side of your real estate website, and a potential client is on the other side of the website. This person is looking for an agent to represent them in buying a new home.

The problem is, you don't know the potential client is there. How could you? They haven't contacted you yet. So in order for a connection to take place, the person must first enter your real estate website, navigate their way through it, like what they find on the site, and then contact you in some fashion.

But what if they find the navigation menu confusing? Or maybe they can't find the property listings on your site? Or what if they have any number of problems related to a lack of usability? That's right ... they'll leave as quickly as they came. After all, there are plenty of other websites within your industry that they can visit.

Website usability is crucial to making onsite conversions. The two concepts are inseparable, because if a person can't use your website, you have no chance to connect with them or to make a sale. You don't have the luxury of personally guiding them through your website -- they are completely on their own.

4. Minimize Distractions Across Your Website

This is another element of website usability, but it deserves special focus. On a real estate agent website, the goal is usually to lead visitors down a certain path. You can't control where people will go or what they will click on, but you can at least offer your preferred path and make it easy to follow.

But when you overload your web pages with too many items, you end up dividing the reader's attention, creating unneeded distraction, and increasing the likelihood visitors will leave your website altogether.

Visit your home page and ask yourself, what is the most desirable action you want people to take? What is the second most desirable action? From a visual standpoint, does the placement and prominence of these two paths support their importance? Or do they battle for attention with a dozen other distractions?

5. State (and Restate) the Value of Each Conversion Point

In real estate web marketing, there is a direct correlation between value and response. If you want people to take a certain action on your website, you have to convey the value of that action. In other words, tell people what they get out of it. It's a simple rule to remember. If you want action, you have to explain the reason and value behind the action.

Instead of saying, "Click here to join our newsletter," say something like this:

"Join our newsletter for access to hard-to-find property listings, plus a wealth of money-saving tips and advice!"

6. Increase Traffic to Website Conversion Points

Want the opportunity to convert more of your website visitors into clients? Then just increase the amount of website visitors you get. Once you have some lead generation and sales-generation techniques in place, you want to get as much qualified traffic to those conversion points as possible.

The first step is to increase your overall website traffic. The second step is to increase your traffic to specific pages of your website (your purchase page, your download page, your contact page ... in short, your conversion pages). You can do this by making your conversion points / pages more prominent and easy to find. See the following items for tips on doing this!

7. Increase the Prominence of Conversion Points

Once you've defined your conversion points (see item #1 above), you should try to make them visible from every page of your real estate website. Put them into the main menu, right up near the top. Create eye-catching graphics to showcase them. Put them "above the fold" across all of your web pages.

For example, let's say one of your conversion points is an email newsletter you want visitors to find and subscribe to. You could put a sign-up box in the upper-right corner of your website, a location that has been shown to increase sign-up rates. You could also create a newsletter link at the top of your main menu area, right under the links for "Home." You could put call-out boxes within articles on your site, right there in the middle of the page ("center mast").

By doing these things, you would increase the prominence of your newsletter sign-up forms (conversion points) and most likely increase subscription rates as a result.

8. Minimize Website Attrition

Marketing attrition refers to the number of people who do not take the actions you want them to take along the path to conversion. At each step in the marketing process, you stand to lose some people. You could also refer to this as "drop-off." The higher the attrition rates, the less successful the marketing program.

9. Increase the Interactivity of Your Website

The more ways people have to interact with your website, the better your chances of converting them into customers. You can increase interactivity in a number of ways. And these days, there are all kinds of software products to make it extremely easy for you!

Here are a few examples of interactivity you could build into your website:

• Real estate blogs work great because readers can leave comments on the various blog posts. That's a form of interaction, and it's also the start of a dialogue that could lead to a sale.


• You could create some kind of Q&A forum on your website and grow your own Internet community. Forum software programs like VBulletin and phpBB make it achievable.


• You can also buy and install programs to help you create an interactive FAQ section of your website (also known as a "Knowledge Base"). Interspire's "Active KB" and Omnistar's "KBase" are two such programs.


• If you have customer support personnel, you could install a chat program on your website to encourage the all-important first contact from site visitors.
  

10. Overcome Skepticism / Encourage Trust

We are all naturally skeptical online. The reasons for this are obvious. The Internet can be an anonymous and scary place, used for deceitful purposes by everyone from con artists to pedophiles. Yikes!

Of course, these shady characters represent the minority (or so I'd like to believe). But it still poses a challenge you must consider in your online marketing program.

I encounter a lot of "faceless" websites that use a lot of pronouns like "we" and "us" ... websites that make it nearly impossible to find a person's name. You've seen websites like this, yes? What's your first reaction when encountering a mystery website? Distrust? Uncertainty? Fear? Yeah ... me too.

Take a look at your own website right now. What have you done to make the visitor comfortable in who you are? How have you demonstrated integrity? How have you encouraged trust and confidence?

Hot topics in real estate ... and how they drive web traffic

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I often tell my marketing clients that they can boost their online success if they adopt a publisher's mentality. That's because the first step to Internet marketing success is to generate traffic. And nobody knows how to generate traffic like professional Internet publishers.

One of the "tricks of the trade" is to follow the news and cover popular topics on your website and blog. Media coverage increases consumer awareness, which in turn drives Internet search patterns. For example, you hear a lot on the news these days about subprime mortgages. As a result, the number of Internet searches for that phrase have risen steadily in recent months.

The media talks about ... the public picks it up ... and the public begins to research it online. It's a predictable cycle.

So if you cover popular, media-driven topics on your real estate website or blog, you stand to gain more traffic. The more traffic you have, the greater your chances for web-based inquiries and leads.

So what are the hottest topics in real estate right now, as judged by media coverage and Internet search?

1. National slowdown in real estate -- Every time I turn on the news, I hear something about the overall real estate market in the U.S. and how it's taking a dive. Is this happening in your area? How will it affect your key audience? What should they know? Tell them on your website and/or blog.

2. Mortgage foreclosures -- I don't need to tell you how popular this topic is right now. Popular in a bad way, but popular nonetheless. Are mortgage foreclosures spiking in your market area, like they are elsewhere in the country? Do you have advice for people looking to buy foreclosure properties for investment purposes? Can you help people avoid foreclosure through short-sale techniques? Share it through your website and/or blog.

3. Subprime mortgage loans -- Much of the foreclosure "crisis" in this country can be attributed to the subprime mortgage loans that were doled out to unqualified buyers several years back. What should the people in your area know about subprime mortgage loans? Tell them through your website and/or blog.

4. Home staging tips -- Thanks to shows like HGTV's "Designed to Sell" the popularity of home staging has soared over the last couple of years. Home staging companies are sprouting up like mushrooms, and consumers are increasingly interested in home staging tips that can help them sell their home. Can you offer advice on this subject? Share it through your website and/or blog.

If you noticed the links spread throughout this post, you'll notice that I'm following my own advice here. By creating tutorials on most of the subjects listed above, I'm able to increase the traffic levels and general success of my real estate websites. And you can do the same!

Think like a publisher, address popular topics, and watch your web traffic increase.

Starting Your Own Real Estate Forum

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I would venture a guess that every real estate agent reading this blog post is familiar with real estate forums. After all, if you're active enough online to find my blog, you've no doubt found some real estate forums as well.

Forums such as AgentsOnline.net and ActiveRain.com offer real estate agents a place to share ideas and insight with others in the "trenches."

So now let me ask you this. What if you started your very own real estate forum that catered specifically to buyers and sellers in your hometown? Can you imagine the business-building potential of having your very own online community of real estate-minded consumers in your area?

I've created a free tutorial that shows you how to do exactly that. It actually started out as a few notes I was writing for a friend (he wanted to know how to create his own real estate forum). I expanded those notes into this tutorial, and I'm now happy to share it with you.

How to Create Your Own Real Estate Forum

I hope you find it helpful.

~Brandon

Address Popular Topics - Internet Marketing Tip #62 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 62 of 100 - Address Popular Topics

Generating traffic to your website is one of the first steps to success with real estate Internet marketing. The more traffic you have, the more leads you can generate. And the more leads you can generate, the more clients and business you can acquire.

Internet Marketing 101, right?

But where do you get website traffic? Well, if you've been following this series on Internet marketing, you've gained plenty of traffic-generation tips. And here's another one for you ... tap into known search patterns by offering information on popular topics.

Foreclosures, mortgage refinancing, types of mortgage loans, flipping houses ... these are all popular topics right now, topics that you hear on the news all the time. And nothing drives Internet search patterns like news coverage.

Case in point, the number of Internet searches for "home foreclosure" types of phrases has risen dramatically over the last couple of months. This is largely due to all the news coverage of the current spike in foreclosures. (Yes, I keep track of such things. And that's why I have a mortgage refinancing website within my network!)

So I ask you, why not capitalize on this to get another slice of the Web traffic pie? If people in your area are looking for local information related to home foreclosures, mortgage refinancing, mortgage applications, home sales statistics, or information about that new highway going in ... why not give it to them?

Sure, you might not be a foreclosure or refinancing expert. But you don't have to be. You're a real estate expert, and these are topics within the real estate umbrella that you could certainly cover on your website. It's just one more way for people to find you online. And these days, as competitive as the real estate industry has become, you need to give people as many ways to find you as possible.

In fact, that's the basic premise of my guide to the Real Estate Web Presence.

Have a good weekend.

~Brandon

Relieving the Marketing Burden - New Article Posted

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Most agents feel a certain burden when it comes to real estate marketing. The real estate industry has gotten hyper-competitive in recent years, and there's a lot more "noise" to overcome in order to get your marketing message through.

A strong web presence is one of the things I recommend to help real estate agents overcome such challenges. I've written an e-book about it, and I've also just posted a new article to explain how such a web presence can relieve some of your marketing burden.

• Here's the new article
• Here's the e-book

Have a great weekend!

~Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing - Frequently Asked Questions

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

This blog (and its parent website) offers a wealth of information on real estate Internet marketing. Tips, articles, books, related resources ... you name it. So I thought I would gather some of this material on real estate Internet marketing and compile it into a handy FAQ format.

Obviously, you'll be more familiar with some of these topics than you are with others. But with so much advice on Internet marketing, there's bound to be something there that you find useful.

Share With Colleagues
If you find this Q&A resource helpful, be sure to share it with colleagues or coworkers who might also enjoy it!

Real Estate Internet Marketing - Questions & Answers

How do I create a website?
This is obviously a preliminary question that needs to be answered before you can tackle the bigger challenges of Internet marketing. Here are some resources to get you started.

• Real estate websites - technology guide
• 7 tips for a better agent website
• Fundamentals of real estate web design
• The Agent Net
  

How do I generate web traffic?
Web traffic is another first step in the real estate Internet marketing process. Generating traffic to a real estate website takes time and patience. You can generate traffic in a number of ways, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click, direct mail and more. Here are some resources related to website traffic.

• Increase traffic with SEO
• Experiment with pay-per-click
  
• Drive traffic with real estate postcards
• Expand your web presence
  

How do I generate website leads?
A real estate Internet marketing program that's not build around lead generation is a flawed program. Only with an effective lead-generation program in place can you capitalize on the traffic you've generated through the techniques above. Here are some tips for generating leads through your real estate website.

• Agent's guide to lead generation
  
• Previous blog post on the subject
• Generating website leads
  

How do I use a real estate blog?
Blogs can support your real estate Internet marketing program in a several ways. A blog gives you an easy way to publish content on a regular basis, which can do wonders for your online visibility and traffic. Here's more advice on integrating a blog within your Internet marketing program.

• What's a real estate blog?
• How to earn blog subscribers
  
• Real estate blogging strategy
  

What are some other online tactics I can use?
A website can serve as the central hub of your real estate Internet marketing program. But what good is a hub without spokes? You can branch out and expand your web presence in a number of ways. Here are just a few.

• Publish articles online
• Publish press releases online
• Launch a second website (advanced tip)
  

I hope you've enjoyed this Q&A on real estate Internet marketing. If you'd like more tips on this subject, check out our blog series.

~Brandon

Submit an Article to Home Buying Institute - Tip #60 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 60 of 100 - Submit an Article to Home Buying Institute

In previous posts in this series on real estate Internet marketing, we talked about the practice of publishing articles online as a way to increase the number of inbound links coming to your website ... which in turn helps with search engine ranking.

The best kinds of sites to seek links from are sites that are (A) well-established with search engines and (B) related to the real estate industry. So if you can place an article with such a website, and the website links back to your site in exchange for the article, you've just acquired a powerful link for real estate SEO purposes.

I own a website that meets this profile. It's the Home Buying Institute, and it accepts article submissions from real estate professionals. We even allow keyword hyperlinks at the end of the article, which can boost your search engine ranking for that phrase.

Of course, like any good content website, we don't just accept any article. We accept well-written articles that meet these submission guidelines. So if you can create a real estate article like the sample articles listed on the guidelines page, and you'd like a link from Home Buying Institute to your website .... feel free to send us your best work! There's an email address on the article submission page, as well as some other helpful info.

Related: Articles for SEO

Look for tip #61 soon!

~Brandon

Create a Squidoo Lens - Tip #59 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 59 of 100 - Create a Squidoo Lens

Squidoo is a website that allows its users to create pages around a particular topic, hobby or passion. What does this have to do with real estate Internet marketing?

Well, in my book about the Real Estate Web Presence, I explain the value that comes from a broad and pervasive Internet presence. If you are many places online, then your target audience has more ways to find you online (than, say, if you only had a single website).

It's simple math. If you have a website ... and you publish articles online ... and you publish press releases ... and you create topic pages on websites like Squidoo ... then you have four times the chance of being found than by publishing a real estate website alone.

Here's a friendly tip. You can link to your main real estate website and/or blog from your Squidoo page. So if you create a topical page on Squidoo about the real estate scene in your area, and then link to your main site from the Squidoo page, you will gain some relevant links to help increase the search engine visibility of your main site.

Here's another tip. Link to your Squidoo page from your blog, website, and other places. This will boost the search engine visibility of your Squidoo page ... which makes it easier to find through search engines ... which will also improve the value of the links going from Squidoo to your site ... etc.

Don't you just love the synergy of the web? Or am I just a geek?

P.S. You can see my new Squidoo lens about Austin search engine optimization. This is a new experiment page for now. I'll let you know how it goes.

Look for tip #60 soon!

~Brandon

Think Like a Publisher: Tip #58 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 58 of 100 - Think Like a Publisher

In my guide to creating a real estate web presence, I teach you how to "think like a publisher" as it applies to real estate marketing online.

In my opinion, this is a key concept in real estate search engine optimization (SEO). When you become an active online publisher, you separate yourself from most of your competitors online. You will also surprise yourself with how much you can improve the search engine ranking (and traffic) of your real estate website.

If you download a copy of the guide, you will have a blueprint of this concept. In the meantime, here are some tips to publishing your way to higher search engine ranking and traffic levels.

1. Are you serious about your online real estate marketing? Then forget the notion of a static website. To be competitive (and visible) online these days, you need to grow your web presence consistently and effectively over time. Sorry, but that’s the reality of it.

2. If you can come up with an easy web-publishing system, you will be more likely to stick with it. Hint … a real estate blog is a great way to reduce the concept of web publishing to a fill-in-the-blanks level of simplicity.

3. Venture beyond your real estate website when publishing content. Sure, you want to constantly create new resources and articles for your website. But you should also publish content on other websites. Not sure how to do this? Then get your copy of "The Real Estate Web Presence."

Related article:
5 Ways to Dominate the Web

Look for tip #59 soon!

~Brandon

Real Estate Lead Generation: Tip #57 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 57 of 100 - Understand Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of the most important pieces of the real estate marketing "puzzle." Without lead generation, you have no leads. Without leads, you have no business. Blunt but factual.

About once a week I get a call from a real estate agent who wants help with SEO [definition: search engine optimization] because they want to generate more leads from their real estate site. When ask what kind of lead-generation techniques they currently have in place on their website, I often hear silence on the other end of the line.

"But isn't that what good search engine ranking will do ... generate leads?" No, not necessarily.

If you increase traffic to a website with no lead-generation techniques in place, you will have plenty of traffic ... but no way to capitalize on it.

I won't lie to you. Real estate lead generation is hard work. It takes focus, imagination, and good old-fashioned hard work. You have to create something of value that people want badly enough they're willing to "raise their hands" in order to get it. If you'd like to learn more on this subject, refer to the article below.

Related article:
Real Estate Lead Generation - How Do I Generate Leads?

Look for tip #58 soon!

~Brandon

Online Real Estate Marketing - New Article Posted

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

As more and more consumers go online to conduct real estate research, so too must real estate agents venture online ... for marketing purposes.

I don't need to tell you the importance of a strong real estate web presence. You already know that, because you've already read or heard all of the statistics about Internet usage among home buyers and sellers.

But what I feel I must tell you is that the "traditional" approach to real estate marketing is becoming less and less effective with each passing year. This approach consisted of putting up a profile type of real estate website, and then waiting for the phone to ring.

Those days are over. And I just posted a new article to the Knowledge Center that examines this subject in more detail.

You'll find the article here:
Online Real Estate Marketing - 3 Pieces of the Puzzle

Hope you enjoy it!

~Brandon

Differentiate SEO from Lead Generation - Tip #56 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 56 of 100 - Differentiate SEO from Lead Generation

As a provider of real estate SEO services, I get at least one call per week where the person says something like, "I need search engine optimization because my website does not generate leads."

The first thing I do is to ensure the caller knows the difference between SEO and lead generation. Search engine optimization is a traffic generator. That's it. If you were under the impression that SEO generated leads, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Now, that's not to say that a good real estate SEO program cannot help you generate leads. It can certainly do that. But only when there's a lead-generation program in place on the target website.

In other words, if you increase traffic to a website with no lead-generation tactics in place, you will have plenty of traffic but no leads. But if you increase traffic (through SEO or anything else) to a website with effective lead generation, your increases in traffic will directly correlate to an increase in leads and inquiries.

SEO is a traffic generator, not a lead generator.

Related info:

• Focus on Lead Capture
• Minimize Marketing Attrition
• What SEO Can and Cannot Do
• Lead Generation Guide

Look for tip #57 soon!

~Brandon

Spread Yourself Over the Web: Tip #55 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 55 of 100 - Spread Yourself Over the Web

At various points during this blog series on real estate Internet marketing, we've talked about ways to expand your web presence. We talked about publishing articles online, syndicating press releases, and various other strategies to help you broaden your web presence.

What's the point of all this? Simple. By creating a broader web presence than a real estate website alone, you are giving people more ways to find you online. This concept will only become more important as the Internet continues to grow, and as traditional real estate websites become all but invisible.

I feel so strongly about this that I've written a 43-page special report to help you (A) understand the need for a strong web presence and (B) begin growing that presence today. If you'd like to see an example of just how fast the Internet is growing (relative to the real estate industry), check out the San Diego real estate example on this page.

Look for tip #56 soon.

~Brandon

Know Your Web Analytics: Tip #54 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 54 of 100 - Get to Know Your Web Analytics

If you own a real estate website, but you have no idea how to access your website analytics, you're operating under a severe handicap.

What Is Web Analytics?
Web analytics is an Internet marketing term with broad application. But it basically boils down to information about your website visitors. When people visit your website and interact with in some way, shape or form, that information can be captured. Analytics programs give you the ability to monitor the activity of your site visitors. Such data can be very enlightening and useful in your real estate Internet marketing program.

Even if you don't have a web analytics program installed on your website, your site log should give you some basic information, such as where your traffic comes from, home many visitors you get each day, etc. But if you really want to know what's happening on your real estate website, you should install some type of website analytics program.

Web Analytics Programs
If you'd like to go the free route (which is always a popular way to go), you could try Google Analytics. This product used to be called Urchin, until Google bought and renamed it. Google Analytics will give you such information as:

• Number of visitors per day
• Location of your visitors
• Key phrases people use to find you through search engines
• Top sources of traffic
• Top entry page
• Top exit page
• And more

This level of data is sufficient for most people, and the price can't be beat. But if you want to get more advanced with your real estate Internet marketing (and have the budget to do so), you might look into a company / product like WebTrends or WebSideStory.

Look for tip #55 soon!

~Brandon

Grow Your Web Presence - Tip #53 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 53 of 100 - Grow Your Web Presence

A real estate web presence is different from a real estate website. The website is one of many elements that make up the web presence. Other elements are press releases, online articles, real estate blogs, etc.

Why do I stress the web presence? Because I've been watching the real estate industry very closely for several years, mainly from a marketing standpoint. And I truly believe those agents who focus on growing their web presence (by adopting a "publisher's mentality") will be the agents who take the lion's share of real estate business in their market areas.

I am so convinced of this that I'm finishing up a 42-page special report on this very subject. You'll hear about it first through this blog.

Look for tip #54 soon!

~Brandon

Do Not Look Behind the Curtain - Nothing to See

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I'm not sure if you've seen this news yet, but this strikes me as being emblematic of a certain mindset in today's real estate industry:

From Inman News:

Trulia, Zillow shown the door at Prudential Real Estate convention

To the dismay of some of the company's brokers, Prudential Real Estate apparently barred two of the biggest names in online real estate -- Trulia and Zillow -- from exhibiting at the company's annual convention in San Diego this week. [Full article]

It seems Prudential has a an existing agreement with Yahoo, regarding web leads. So they said the presence of Trulia and Zillow was some kind of conflict.

Here's my take on this.

Yahoo will charge Prudential brokers a referral fee for all web leads sent to the broker. Trulia and Zillow do not charge any kind of referral fee. Trulia and Zillow have traffic levels that rival Yahoo. So who would you rather get leads from, a company that charged you for them, or a company that gave you the leads for free? Tough decision, right?

Add Your Blog to the Inman Wiki: Tip #52 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 52 of 100 - Add Your Blog to InmanWiki

July 2008, Update to the original post: This article used to contain links to various pages of the Inman Wiki. I have removed those links because Brad Inman moved his whole damn wiki. I've never understood why people do this. You create something that people are interested in, hundreds or thousands of people link to it from their own sites, and then you move it ... leaving all of your "fans" with a bunch of broken links on their websites. Amateur move.

Anyway, here's the original article. I'm not going to include links to the Inman Wiki because who knows where it will be in six months. You'll have to find it yourself, if you're interested.

If you've been in real estate for any length of time, I don't need to tell you who Inman News is.

But did you know they now have a wiki serving as a "real estate encyclopedia"? And here's the best part ... you can add your real estate blog to the wiki. If approved, your blog will have its own page on the Inman Wiki. And every time you publish content to your blog, your page on the Inman Wiki will self-update.

You can see the value of this in terms of making your blog more visible online. The more you blog, the more posts you'll have on the Inman Wiki, linking back to your blog. Nice!

P.S. - If you're wondering what the heck a wiki is, you can learn all about it in this explanation of Web 2.0.

Look for tip #53 soon!

~Brandon

Know Your Competition - Marketing Tip 51 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 51 of 100 - Know Your Competition

You wouldn't go into a sports competition without studying your opponents. Nor should you engage in real estate Internet marketing without studying your competition.

Do you know the three top-ranked real estate websites in your area? You should. You should also know how your website stacks up against those three websites. You should determine how those websites reached the top of the search engine rankings, and what you might do to mirror their success.

How about website resources? Do your top competitors online have items on their websites that you don't have, such as virtual tours? And what about general traffic levels? Using a website traffic tool like Alexa, compare your website traffic levels to the top-ranking websites mentioned earlier.

These are just a few of the things you should look at regarding the competition. The goal here is to have a good idea what other agents in your area are doing online ... so that you can do it better.

Understanding the competition is the first step to success with real estate Internet marketing.

Look for tip #52 soon!

~Brandon

Use What You've Got - Internet Marketing Tip 50 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 50 of 100 - Use What You've Got

One of the biggest challenges real estate agents have with their marketing is how to distinguish themselves.

Now, there are actually two schools of thought on this. There are those who say the agent must brand himself or herself. And then there are others who say the agent is not product ... that you must simply focus on generating a response with your marketing.

Where do I fall on the subject? Well, I can see both arguments. When it comes to real estate Internet marketing, I've always stressed the need to generate a response from people. We know from statistics that more then 70% of people choose the first real estate agent they speak to. So if you can get them to speak to you ... that's a 70% chance they'll become your next client.

As far as personal branding goes, here's my two cents. I don't think the average real estate agent can brand themselves in a strong enough way to be worthwhile. However, if there is something really unique about you ... something that will make you truly stand out in people's minds ... something that will make you the "talk of the neighborhood" ... well in that case, use what you've got!

Here's an example. There is an agent in the Fort Bragg area of North Carolina who has found a unique way to brand himself. As you know, Fort Bragg is an Army town, full of Army personnel and their families. Naturally, the military sector creates a lot of housing turnover as soldiers transfer in and out of the area.

This agent also happens to be an Army veteran. So he has branded himself as the Army agent in town. His website is called something like "Captain Bill's Real Estate." It has a camouflage color scheme, and even an illustrated caricature of Captain Bill in fatigues and drill instructor's hat.

(I wish I could remember his actual name so I could show you his website. Anyone know who I'm talking about? It's been a couple years since I saw it.)

Now let me ask you this. In an Army town like Fort Bragg, how effective do you think this branding strategy is? I served in the military, and I can tell you that I would have called this guy over a "civilian" agent in a heartbeat. His website (and persona) are easy to talk about. "Hey, have you seen this Army real estate agent guy..."

If you have something that can set you miles apart from the competition in your real estate Internet marketing (or marketing in general for that matter) ... then use what you've got!

Look for tip #51 soon!

~Brandon

Make Your Website Inviting: Tip #49 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 49 of 100 - Make Your Website Inviting

In a previous post in this series, we talked about the importance of de-cluttering your home page, and catering to the reader by putting information they would want front-and-center.

Here's a good example of these practices in action.

This Rocky Point house rentals website has arranged their home page in a way that (A) tells reader what the site is about, (B) showcases what people will probably want to see, and (C) gives a clear call-to-action in the form of a "Book Now" graphic.

Though I don't know the owners of this website, I would venture a guess that their home page does a good job of generating leads. As soon as you land on this page, you're eyes are drawn to the featured properties. And if you are in fact shopping for rental properties in this town, then those featured properties are exactly what you would want to see.

So the owners of the site are catering to the needs of visitors and making their job really easy. Two hallmarks of a good home page!

They also offer plenty of things that will keep visitors on the site, such as video / virtual tours of each property.

Lastly, notice the "Book now" graphic on the page. For those people who are ready to book a rental, this shortcut makes it easy. Once again, the site owners are respecting the needs of their visitors.

So we have the following:

• A home page tells people exactly what it offers (beachfront rentals in Puerto Penasco, Mexico)
• A home page that showcases content people will want to see (featured properties with virtual tours)
• A home page that gives people who are ready to sign an easy way to do just that!

Look for tip #50 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Get the Real Estate Blog Book: Internet Marketing Tip #48 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 48 of 100 - Download the Real Estate Blog Book

Sure, I'm the author of the real estate blog book. But I can recommend it without hesitation because I know what it can do for your real estate Internet marketing program.

You see, a blog can add a level of simplicity and convenience to your online real estate marketing efforts. Because blogs are so easy to publish, you'll be more inclined to publish content on a regular basis. And this can help you grow your web presence and increase your search engine visibility.

So a blog is good for Internet marketing in general and real estate SEO in particular. Double the benefits!

But this is all just the beginning. In my new training manual, I teach you something called the Triangle Strategy to blogging. Simply stated, this three-part publishing system can drive your blog up the search engine rankings much faster than blogging alone. And you'll learn about it in step-by-step fashion in my blogging guide.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #49 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Upload a Sitemap: Internet Marketing Tip #47 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 47 of 100 - Upload a Sitemap

Search engine ranking is a big part of real estate Internet marketing. Websites with excellent search engine ranking don't have to work as hard driving traffic, because the traffic finds the website. It's a web marketer's dream!

But achieving that kind of search engine visibility takes a lot of dedication, for there are many steps to follow and tactics to implement.

A sitemap is one of those tactics.

Now before I invite any confusion, let me clarify which kind of sitemap I'm talking about in this context. Basically there are two kinds of sitemaps:

1. A sitemap that's visible on your website and intended primarily for people.
2. A sitemap that's not visible on your website and intended for search engines.

The second sitemap is what I'm referring to here. Basically, the second sitemap is an XML file (acronym not important) that you upload to the main directory of your website. This XML file lists all of your web pages, and it's one of the first files a search engine will look for when reaching your web domain.

So if a search engine finds your XML sitemap file -- and your sitemap lists all of your web pages -- then there's a good chance the search engine will find, crawl and index (record) all of your web pages.

This is especially important if you have a large website, a website with complex navigation such as drop-down menus, or a combination of the two.

The end result is that (A) you'll have more information to feed the search engines, (B) you'll get credit for more pages and content, and (C) you'll have a better chance of ranking well for the key phrases found in those pages.

How to Generate an XML Sitemap

1. Go here http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
2. Enter your URL in the box provided.
3. Click the start button.
4. When the sitemap is generated, download the first XML file.
5. Leave the file name exactly as is (sitemap.xml).
6. Put the sitemap in the root (main) level of your web domain.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #48 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Keep Your Integrity: Internet Marketing Tip #46 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 46 of 100 - Keep Your Integrity

What is about the Internet that makes some people do things they wouldn't do to somebody face to face? It's the anonymity.

The anonymous nature of the Internet lures some Internet marketers into a dark world of spam, deceit and trickery.

An Example of Integrity Loss
Want a prime example of this? I just had to delete a bunch of comment spam from one of my real estate blogs ... left by a website that supposedly offers real estate advice to agents. In fact, that's their website name: realestateagentsadvice.com

Basically, this faceless "company" posted page content from their own website as a comment on my blog, and then put in dozens of links back to their own site to try and inflate their search engine ranking. A classic but always detestable tactic among SEO spammers with no integrity.

This is just one example of Internet marketing without integrity. Since I work online, I see this kind of thing all the time. And let me tell you something about the kinds of companies who resort to these tactics ... they always lose in the end. They use deception and trickery in marketing for so long, that it begins to bleed over into their dealings with customers. That's hardly the way to grow a business.

This Internet marketing tip has been brought to you by bloggers for a more ethical Internet (me)!

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #47 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Launch Website #2: Internet Marketing Tip 45 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 45 of 100 - Launch a Second Website

This real estate Internet marketing tip is for the advanced pupils. You know, those of you who already have a real estate blog or website that does well in the search engines.

If you fall into this group, why not launch a second website? Think about it, if you have a website that's on the first page of search engines for your key phrases, there's a 1-in-10 chance people will click on your site (over the other 9 listed on the page).

But if you eventually had two websites or blogs appearing on the first page, there would be a 2-in-10 chance people would click one of your websites. That's a significant increase in the number of people who find you through search engines.

And, provided you have some form of website lead generation in place, the double exposure would significantly add to your business growth.

What Kind of Website?
Choosing a focus for your second website depends on your business goals. If your primary website is for marketing, why not create a second website (or blog) with an educational angle. It could be sort of a "one-stop-shop" for home buying / selling information in your market area. That's just one of many ideas for a second site.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #46 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Hunt for Links Wisely: Tip #44 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 44 of 100 - Hunt for Links Wisely

In our last tip on real estate Internet marketing, we talked about the importance of seeking inbound links. I also offered some ideas on how you can build up your link profile gradually over time.

Here's a time-saving tip that will make your link-building efforts even more productive. Write down two or three websites that rank well in the search engines for your key phrases. Then find out which websites are linking to them. Often, the inbound links to these top-ranking websites will also be great link opportunities for you as well.

How do you research another website's inbound links? By using Yahoo Site Explorer.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #45 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Get Links: Internet Marketing Tip #43

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 43 of 100 - Seek Inbound Links

There are many factors that contribute to a website's search engine ranking / visibility. Inbound links are one of the biggest factors, especially with Google ranking.

As search engines continue to evolve, they adjust their ranking algorithms. But inbound links will remain at the top of their list of ranking factors, now and well into the future.

Link building today is an investment in your search engine visibility tomorrow. As a real estate professional, you know all about investments, right?

How to get links:

• Publish articles online
• Publish press releases online
• Build something worth linking to
• Submit your website to directories
• Pay somebody to do it

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #44 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Brush Up On "Do Not Call" - Internet Marketing Tip #42 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 42 of 100 - Brush Up On "Do Not Call"

Real estate Internet marketing is a leads-oriented affair. When things work well, you get leads from your website. You would then follow up on those leads to try and further the relationship.

Call it Good Business 101. Proper follow-up can increase the value of your real estate Internet marketing program by turning those email and form inquiries into actual clients.

But following up with potential clients makes some real estate agents nervous, because of the "Do Not Call" laws. There is no reason to fear this law, so long as you understand it. Here's a brief summary of what you should know about the National Do Not Call Registry, as it applies to your real estate Internet marketing program.

When Does the Law Apply?
You have to be able to make phone calls to conduct your real estate business, and the government knows this. So follow-up phone calls are obviously permitted. The registry is not intended to prevent follow-up phone calls to people who have contacted you first, nor is it intended to prevent regular phone calls to existing clients. It's those unsolicited cold calls that the legislation focuses on.

Other Key Points of "Do Not Call"

• Telemarketers and sellers are required to search the registry at least once every 31 days and drop from their call lists the phone numbers of consumers who have registered. This rule may have changed as of this writing, so you'll want to read the current requirements.


• If a consumer makes an inquiry or submits an application to a company, the company can call for three months (unless the consumer makes a specific request that you do not call them).


• In other words, if somebody calls or emails you to request information of any kind, you may call them as needed (even if they are registered on the Do Not Call list). But if they request that you do not call them, you must honor that request.


• A company that has an established business relationship with a person may call that person for up to 18 months after the consumer’s last purchase or payment [or last business meeting, in the case of real estate agents], unless the consumer asks the company not to call again.

Are Real Estate Agents Telemarketers?
Now, you might not think of yourself as a telemarketer. But by the FTC's definition, if you call a prospective client (with whom you have no existing business relationship) to offer your services ... you're a telemarketer. A good example would be calling an FSBO or an expired listing with whom you have no previous relationship. In that particular case, you fit the legal definition of a telemarketer.

Don't fear the Do Not Call Registry -- just understand it and abide by it. Avoid cold-calling a person unless you're sure they're not on the registry. Just realize that 3 out of 4 adults in the U.S. are on the registry.

The average person will not file a legal complaint against you, but it has been known to happen from time to time. And the FTC is not shy about handing out fines.

Want more info? Go to the source and ask the horse:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/alerts/alt129.htm

Want the NAR's spin on it?
http://www.realtor.org/libweb.nsf/pages/fg707


Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #43 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Real Estate Marketing Tools: Tip #41 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 41 of 100 - Use Your Best Marketing Tool

Whether you realize it or not, you have an extremely powerful marketing tool at your disposal. Not, it's not your website or a piece of software ... or anything you've purchased for that matter. It's you!

You've probably seen advertisements for marketing products (like software) that promise to take your business to the next level. Unfortunately, none of these products has the power to do that. But there is one particular real estate marketing tool that can grow your business to any sized goal. You are that tool.

Learn more about the most powerful real estate marketing tool.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #42 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing: Tips #30 - 40

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tips 30 - 40 of 100

Well it seems I've gotten behind schedule again. So to keep up with my 100 tips in 100 days motif, I'm adding another combination post. This post combines real estate Internet marketing tips 30 through 40, with a "learn more" link for each one.

Without further ado...

Real Estate Marketing Online - Lead Generation Tips
Search engine marketing and online PR can drive traffic to your website. But what do you do with them once they're on your site? This article picks up where traffic acquisition leaves off, offering specific strategies for generating website leads.

Blog Marketing for Real Estate Agents
This article is part of a series that provides insight on the unique ways a blog can be used to further your real estate marketing objectives.

11 Tips for Email Marketing Success
Email marketing is still a viable medium, but it takes more effort these days to break through the clutter. The article below gives specific tips on improving your email-marketing message.

Use Email Marketing Software for Simplicity
If you use email to keep in touch with a large list of current and past clients, you owe it to yourself to purchase an email marketing program like Constant Contact or IntelliContact. It makes it easier for people to sign up, and easier for you to manage the list and dispatch emails.

Boost Your Online Visibility
Every real estate agent wants his or her website to rank well in the search engines. With so many buyers and sellers online these days, it's a no-brainer. Search engine visibility can increase the amount of qualified traffic to your website, and that has a direct impact on client acquisition.

Generate Website Leads with a School Report
People look to real estate agents for their expertise on local home prices, local market conditions, local school information and more. You can turn this desire into a lead-generating campaign simply by giving people what they want ... local information.

Website Design: The Usability Factor
If people find your real estate website hard to navigate and use, there's a strong chance they'll leave without taking any action whatsoever. This article offers timeless tips for making a website more usable -- and by extension more profitable.

Real Estate Web Design - An Agent's Guide
In reality, real estate website design is not much different than any other kind of web design. All of the basic principles of marketing and usability apply. The only thing that's unique about a real estate website is the audience and the objective.

Improve Search Engine Visibility with a Sitemap
An XML sitemap is basically a list of all your website's pages, coded in XML format. Search engines will use your sitemap file as a map to all of your pages. This helps ensure you'll get search engine "credit" for as many of your web pages as possible, thus improving your overall search engine visibility.

Boost Your SEO with an Optimized Press Release
Did you know you can submit a press release online (with keyword-rich links to your website) for only $80? It's true, and it's a tactic I use about once a month for publicity, direct exposure, and yes ... SEO benefits.

Combine Your Online and Offline Marketing
Your real estate marketing program should cover more than one channel. When you combine multiple marketing channels to serve a common goal, you can accomplish a lot more. Here's an example using real estate postcards along with your website.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #41 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Design for People: Marketing Tip #29 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 29 of 100 - Design for People

Design is largely a subjective topic. We all have our own design-related preferences and opinions. But when it comes to website design -- specifically, real estate web design -- design becomes more of a business decision than a personal one.

Whenever you're making a design change to your real estate website, the questions you should always ask are:

1. Will this change help my visitors accomplish their goals?
2. Will this design change support my primary website goals (lead generation, for example)?
3. Is this design change in keeping with website usability standards? Or will it confuse people?

Design and usability go hand in hand. A well-designed website increases the chance that visitors will follow the path you want them to follow, and take the actions you want them to take. On the other hand, a poorly designed website can frustrate visitors and reflect poorly on the website owner.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #30 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Write One Page Per Keyword - Internet Marketing Tip #28 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 28 of 100 - Write One Page Per Keyword

Here's an easy way to increase your website's search engine ranking / visibility for important phrases. When working with client websites, this is usually the first step in my process. I consider it "low-hanging fruit" because it's one of the easiest yet most reliable ways to climb the search engines.

Write one page of web content for each of your top ten keywords.

That's it. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Yet you'd be surprised how many websites lack the most fundamental element of search engine visibility -- content!

Your first step, of course, is to conduct some key phrase research to see what kinds of phrases you target audience is typing into search engines. For starters, just make a list of the top 10 - 20 phrases. Be realistic here ... remember, you'll be writing a page of content for each of those phrases.

The next step is to write a keyword-rich page of web content on each of your key phrases. If one of your top phrases is "Condos in Happytown, Vermont," then you should write a content-rich web page about condos in Happytown, Vermont.

Want to rank even higher for the phrase? Write two pages per keyword. Like I said, it's not a hard "science" to figure out.

Of course, you'll need to point some inbound links to those new pages. But we've covered that topic already.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #29 tomorrow!

~Brandon

P.S. - If you hate to write, I can help you create web content.

Paint Your Cow Purple: Marketing Tip 27 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 27 of 100 - Paint Your Cow Purple

Seth Godin is one of my favorite business and marketing writers. In his best-selling book Purple Cow, he states the following:

"Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff -- a lot of brown cows -- but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow."

His point is simple yet often forgotten. If your real estate marketing strategies are carbon copies of the strategies used by other real estate agents, you will be a brown cow. Seen one, you've seen 'em all.

I've know a handful of agents who have more business than they can handle. As with any industry, they represent the happy minority. And they all have one thing in common -- they're all doing something in their real estate marketing that makes me say, "Wow, what a great idea. That's fantastic!"

In other words, they have come up with real estate marketing ideas that are the equivalent of a purple cow. And they're all the more successful for it.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #28 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Collaborate: Internet Marketing Tip #26 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 26 of 100 - Collaborate with Others

We all have weaknesses. And that's okay. Our strengths and weaknesses make us unique.

But when it comes to marketing, weaknesses must be identified, addressed and eliminated – as soon as possible.

One of the ways you can eliminate a marketing weakness is by collaborating with others. Determine your marketing objectives, find where your weaknesses lie, and then find somebody who can contribute in that area.

Here are some examples of how you might collaborate your way to a stronger marketing program:

• Collaborate with a mortgage expert to launch a home buying seminar series. (End goal = client acquisition for both parties.)



• Collaborate with a talented writer to create an online real estate resource center for your city or town … bigger than anything else that has come before it. (End goal = search engine visibility, website traffic, word of mouth and client acquisition.)



• Collaborate with an agent in a nearby, non-competitive area to share leads. (End goal = more leads than you would have on your own.)

These are but a few examples of collaboration in real estate marketing. Use your imagination, and you could come up with a dozen more ideas.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #27 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Experiment with Pay-per-Click: Tip #25 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 25 of 100 - Experiment with Pay-per-Click Marketing

Pay-per-click (also known as sponsored search or paid search) is one of two paths to search engine visibility. Search engine optimization is the other path -- this is when your website ranks well in the search engines naturally, due to its content, link popularity and other factors.

• With natural SEO, it takes a lot of work and patience to reach the top of the search engines.
• With pay-per-click, you could reach the top of the search engines later today or tomorrow.

So if you want search engine visibility in a hurry, pay-per-click is the only vehicle that will take you there.

The Google AdWords program is by far the most popular of the pay-per-click options. Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN also have pay-per-click programs.

How to conduct a pay-per-click program is beyond the scope of this blog post. You can find plenty of books and articles online to help with that -- and I even offer an online training module on the subject.

But for now, just know that pay-per-click is one of many ways you can start generating leads and growing your business via the Internet. Is it right for your real estate Internet marketing program? Only you can answer that. But with the ease of entry and pricing flexibility of a program like Google AdWords, there is nothing to prevent you from experimenting with pay-per-click.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #26 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Minimize Marketing Attrition: Tip #24 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 24 of 100 - Minimize Marketing Attrition

Attrition is the enemy of real estate Internet marketing. So to be successful in your marketing, you have to understand attrition and work hard to reduce it.

What is Attrition?
The dictionary defines attrition as "a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death." Now let's translate that definition for Internet marketing purposes.

Real Estate Marketing Attrition
In real estate Internet marketing, attrition refers to the people who do not take the actions you want them to take. The higher the attrition, the less successful the marketing program.

At each step in the marketing process, you stand to lose some people. The good news is, each point of attrition can be improved – that is, you can minimize the number of people who "drop off" at each step of the way.

Here are some examples of attrition points, and what you can do to reduce them.

Attrition Point #1 – Many of the people who visit your website will leave if they don't find anything of value. You can counter this by constantly adding valuable content and resources to your website.

Attrition Point #2 – Even if people find your website (and find it useful), some of them will leave without making contact with you in any way. You can counter this by having lead-generation techniques on all key pages of your website.

Attrition Point #3 - Of all the people who visit your website, some will not find what you want them to find. You can counter this by having a clean, well-organized website with your preferred path clearly identified on the home page.

You can see from this brief sample list that attrition shadows all aspects of your Internet marketing program. But you can also see from this list that for every point of attrition, there are things you can do to increase the number of people who continue along in the process.

Understanding the concept of marketing attrition is the first step in reducing it. So think about your own Internet marketing strategies. Sketch out the various steps in the process, and jot down the attrition points.

Then think of all the things you can do to minimize each point of attrition, and work hard to do exactly that. Good luck!

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #25 tomorrow!

~Brandon

Generating Website Leads: Tips 19 - 23

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tips 19 - 23 of 100 - Generating Website Leads

I have fallen behind on my real estate Internet marketing series -- 100 tips in 100 days. So to get caught up, I'll be posting some "combo" posts with multiple tips rolled into one. This one contains four tips on website lead generation.

Here are real estate Internet marketing tips 19 - 23, taking the form of website lead generation tips and ideas:

Lead Generation Idea #1
Use Yahoo School Reports, your city's website and your own personal knowledge to create a "report card" of local schools. Promote it on your website with eye-catching graphics and plentiful bullet points, and offer it by email (lead capture).

* Related: How to Generate Website Leads

Lead Generation Idea #2
Offer a home listing update service. It's a low-tech way to give people what they want. You'll also be able to pre-qualify them by asking about price ranges, location, etc.

Lead Generation Idea #3
Create a unique report based on a hot topic or current events in your area. Urban sprawl? New neighborhoods? Other major construction? Use your report to connect these events to real estate, home values and the like. Give your report a catchy title, create a graphic to promote it, and offer it to your website visitors in exchange for joining your newsletter.

* Related: How to Generate Website Leads

Lead Generation Idea #4
Offer timely and relevant information through your blog, and invite people to sign up. Hint -- a lot of consumers still aren't familiar with RSS feeds, so you can add an email subscription box to your blog with a product like Zookoda (for free).

Learn the "Do Not Call" Laws
When discussing website lead generation and follow-up phone calls, it's important to understand the FCC's "Do Not Call" laws. When somebody requests information from your website, you can (and should) follow up with them by phone regardless of whether they're on the Do Not Call list. If you haven't familiarized yourself with the FCC's rules for telemarketers, start with this tutorial.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #24 (and possibly more) tomorrow!

~Brandon

Put Keywords in Your Hyperlinks: Tip #18 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #18 of 100 - Put Keywords In Your Hyperlinks

This addition to the real estate Internet marketing series focuses on search engine visibility.

Putting keywords into hyperlinks is one of the easiest on-site adjustments you can make to improve the search engine visibility of your website or blog. Search engines read the text within hyperlinks (referred to as "link text") in order to determine what a web page is about.

Sure, there are plenty of other factors they use to determine a page's meaning -- like the page title, the page content, other websites that link to the page -- but link text certainly helps. It's an easy way to educate search engines about your website's theme or overall category.

Also Good for Usability
When you use descriptive phrases in your hyperlinks, you also improve your website's usability. A descriptive hyperlink tells people where the link will take them, as opposed to the always vague "click here."

Note the difference:

• Click here for more information. (This is vague for people and meaningless to search engines).


• Get more Internet marketing tips. (This tells people where the link goes, and it also tells search engines what the page is about.)

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #19 tomorrow!

-Brandon

Combine Postcards with Website: Tip #17 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #17 of 100 - Combine Postcards with Website

The previous post in this blog series on real estate Internet marketing talked about integration. Specifically, it discussed the value of combining multiple marketing channels to serve an overall marketing goal.

In this post, I'm going to offer a concrete example of that tactic.

Real Estate Postcards + Website Lead Generation
Many agents use real estate postcards to promote themselves within their farming area. In fact, postcards are one of the longest-lived forms of real estate marketing. Many of the same agents who use real estate postcards also have websites.

But they don't combine the two marketing channels as effectively as they might. I know this for a fact, because I've worked for the two postcard marketing companies -- one of which served real estate agents almost exclusively. (You would know who they were if I cared to drop their name.)

Missing the Postcard-to-Website Connection
After seeing thousands of real estate postcards on a daily basis over a period of years, I learned one thing above all else. Most real estate agents are not combining postcards and websites as effectively as they might.

In fact, the most common web-related "call to action" I saw on real estate postcards was the ubiquitous "Learn more at www.whatever..." No reasons were given to visit the websites, other than the exciting opportunity to "learn more." Yawn.

But what if the postcard recipient had a really good reason for visiting the website? And what if, upon reaching the website, they were captivated by what they found and immediately wanted the big "prize" mentioned on the postcard? And what if they offered up their contact information in exchange for said prize ... and sent the web link to their friends ... and revisited the website again in the future?

I'll tell you what if. You would have (A) some viable leads to follow up on, (B) some free word-of-mouth marketing and PR, and (C) the beginnings of a postcard-to-website lead generation program that you could use, modify and repeat well into the future.

What Would Your Audience Desire?
Aside from the logistics, the key to this approach is the "prize." To come up with one, you simply have to find out what your target audience would really want. Information works great, provided it's done properly and not in a lazy, lackluster fashion.

I'm not talking about the "Ten Home Buying Tips" kind of reports here. I'm talking about creating a web-based resource with a login requirement (leads) ... or a high-value information report on the local school system, delivered by email (leads) ... or ... you get the picture.

When combined effectively, real estate postcards and websites can make powerful marketing partners. But when operated independently of each other, they will never live up to their full potential.

Related Resources

• Article: Generating Website Leads with Postcards
• Article: Real Estate Postcards - How Your Website Relates
• Resource: Real Estate Postcard Book

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #18 tomorrow!

View the growing list of tips

-Brandon

Integrate Your Marketing Channels: Tip #16 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #16 of 100 - Integrate Your Marketing Channels

Real estate Internet marketing should involve multiple channels. For maximum online exposure and lead generation, strive to combine as many online and offline marketing channels as possible, with the "centerpiece" being your website.

Articles, press releases, emails, real estate postcards, blogs -- if used properly, all of these things can drive traffic to your website. But then what?

From a marketing standpoint, lead generation should be one of your website's primary objectives. You can drive traffic to a website from multiple channels, but at some point you have to capitalize on that traffic. Website traffic, by itself, will not grow your business. You have to initiate contact in order to cultivate a business relationship. Your website should accomplish this.

Think of your other real estate marketing channels as fingers or signs pointing toward the website. Sure, any one of these channels could generate new business on its own. But more often than not, people will travel on to your website to learn more. This is a good thing, as long as your website is doing its job (by engaging, persuading, and motivating people to take a certain action).

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #17 tomorrow!

View the growing list of tips

-Brandon

Add Your Blog to Directories: Tip #15 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #15 of 100 - Add Your Blog to Directories

Previously in this series on real estate Internet marketing, we talked about the importance of inbound links in increasing your search engine visibility. Blog directories are another way to acquire inbound links.

A directory is basically a big catalog of websites (or in this case, blogs) that's edited and managed by people. With a blog directory, human editors review blogs for quality and relevance, and then add them to the proper category of the directory's database.

This "human intervention" is what makes a directory different from a search engine. (Search engines also add websites and blogs to their databases, but automatically and without human intervention.)

Directories Equal Inbound Links
Every time a blog directory adds your real estate blog to its list, you gain another inbound link (from the directory to your website). If the blog directory is a niche directory focused on real estate, it's even better because now the inbound link is relevant to your blog. The more inbound links you have, the better your search engine visibility. When those inbound links are relevant to your own website / blog, it helps you even more.

Resources & Blog Directories

• List of blog directories
• More blog directories
• Inbound links explained
• Real estate blog training

Check out the new directory category we created:
http://www.ceoblogwatch.com/directory/

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #16 tomorrow!

View the growing list of tips

-Brandon

Blog on Your Website: Tip #14 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #14 of 100 - Blog on Your Website

If you have a real estate blog that you've been using for a long time, it's best to keep it right where it is. Chances are, it has built up some search engine visibility at its current location, so you don't want to relocate it to a different web address.

But if you're about to start using Blogger, WordPress or Movable Type for the first time, it's best to publish the blog onto your own website (i.e. www.JaneDoeAgent.com/blog) rather than under the blog company's domain (i.e. www.Blogspot.com/JaneDoe).

Why?

Because a blog on your own domain will contribute to your website's overall search engine visibility, while a blog hosted by a blogging company will not. Sure, the blog will eventually create its own web presence and will earn search engine ranking in time ... but it will speed things up a lot if you consolidate your blog with your main website.

If you also blog in a community such as ActiveRain, that's great too. It gives people yet another way to find you online. But if you're serious about getting your own personal website to rank well in the search engines, consider adding a blog to the site as well.

Also see: Popular Blogging Software

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #15 tomorrow!

View the growing list of tips

-Brandon

Blog Regularly: Tip #13 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #13 of 100 - Blog Regularly

If you start a blog and publish to it regularly with quality, up-to-date content, you'll be strengthening your web presence in several ways.

The SEO Factor
First, you'll be increasing your search engine visibility with additional website content. Also, if your blog is really useful, unique or entertaining, other people will likely link to it. As you increase the number of inbound links steadily over time, you also increase your search engine ranking / visibility.

Also see: Real Estate Blogs & SEO

The Buzz Factor
Good real estate blogs create a following. If you create a blog, for instance, that offers timely information on your local real estate scene, people will see it as a reliable source for information. And when people find something they like online, they share it with others!

The Authority Factor
A blog can also help you position yourself as an expert, providing you use it in an authoritative (but engaging) manner. This can help you convert website or blog visitors into clients, regardless of how they come across your blog.

In the next few tips, we will talk more about choosing blog software and setting up a blog on your own website.

View the growing list of tips

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #14 tomorrow!

-Brandon

Avoid Data-Blindness: Tip #12 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #12 of 100 - Avoid Data-Blindness

I know a lot of Internet marketers who focus so heavily on data that they lose sight of the big picture.

Granted, Internet marketing is a numbers game. A certain number of people will find your website. Of that number, a certain number of visitors will stick around. Of that number, a certain (much smaller) number will respond in some way. And so on.

It's important to grasp this general concept and try to minimize all points of attrition. But don't lose sight of the end goal. You want people to be so enlightened, educated, motivated or persuaded by your website that they contact you or respond in some way. This is the only true measure of success with real estate Internet marketing.

I know people who view website traffic as the ultimate goal of Internet marketing. These people are data blind. All the traffic in the world is worthless until you make a connection.

View the growing list of tips

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #13 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Publish Articles Online: Tip #11 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #11 of 100 - Publish Articles Online

If you write a high-quality article and publish it online through a website like EzineArticles.com, your article could be republished all across the web. This will increase the number of websites that link yours (link popularity), thereby improving your website's search engine visibility.

This approach is known as article marketing, and it's a great way to increase your website's search engine visibility / ranking steadily over time.

More about article marketing

• Search engine success w/ article marketing
• Article submission sites
• Training on article marketing

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #12 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Advance Your Internet Knowledge: Tip #10 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #10 of 100 - Advance Your Internet Knowledge

Over the last couple of years, a variety of tools and technologies have emerged that can make your Internet marketing efforts easier and more effective at the same time. From blogs to website content management systems, the current trend seems to be "ease of use."

But the only way to understand these helpful tools is to proactively seek such understanding. Understanding the Internet is the first step to success with real estate Internet marketing, so you have to educate yourself continuously.

Here are some resources to get your started:

• The marketing power of blogs
• What is RSS?
• The web-optimized press release
• 5 popular email marketing solutions
• Build your own real estate forum
• SEO seminar with yours truly
• SEO and Internet training

If you'd like to learn more about any of the topics above, let me know and I'll post some additional resources.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #11 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Bulk Up Your Website: Tip #9 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #9 of 100 - Bulk Up Your Website

Writing content is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to increase your search engine visibility. If two websites are similar in most regards, but one is twice is large as the other, the larger one will rank higher in the search engines.

Creating additional web pages is easier than you might think. For instance, I have my blog set up to save each post as a separate page. So by the time I'm done with this 100-part series on real estate Internet marketing, I'll have 100 new pages of website content. Good for my readers, and good for search engines as well.

Glossaries and Q&A pages are other ways to implement this tactic.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #10 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Share Your News Online: Tip #8 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #8 of 100 - Share Your News Online

Online press releases make an excellent addition to your real estate Internet marketing program. Using a website like PRWeb.com, you can distribute your press release across the web and have it indexed by Yahoo News, Google News, Topix.net and more.

Write it. Optimize it. Publish it.
To get the most out of this strategy, your press release should be (A) newsworthy in some way, (B) written to appeal to your target audience, and (C) optimized for search engines. By incorporating keywords and hyperlinks into your press release, you'll increase your website's search engine visibility as well.

The end goal, of course, is to increase the number of ways people can find you and learn about you online ... ideally through noteworthy coverage of some kind.

Related Resources

• Why to use PRWeb.com
• Writing SEO press releases
• Online press release distribution
• Online press release tutorials

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #9 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Be Active Online: Tip #7 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #7 of 100 - Be Active Online

Prospective clients can find you online via your website. But there are plenty of other ways to "spread yourself" over the Internet.

If you're active online, you'll be easier to find online. On the other hand, inactivity can lead to invisibility. So be active to be visible.

Ways to Be Active Online

• Publish press releases online through services like PRWeb.com
• Publish articles online through services like EzineArticles.com
• Submit articles to niche websites like Home Buying Institute
  
• Blog on a regular basis
• Participate in forums, and link to your website from your forum signature

Think of each action you take online as an investment in future visibility. The more investments you make, the more visible you'll be to your target audience.

Look for real estate Internet marketing tip #8 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Create a Resource Section: Tip #6 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #6 of 100 - Create a Resource Section for Your Website

Any website can benefit from having a "Resources" section. Real estate websites, marketing websites ... websites about basket weaving. You name it!

When you add quality articles, resources or tools to your website, you're improving your real estate Internet marketing program in three major ways:

1. First, you're making your website more visible to search engines, because search engines love content. And by developing content around your website's key phrases, you'll improve your search engine ranking for those phrases.


2. Secondly, you'll be positioning yourself as an authority in your subject. Everyone knows you have to understand a topic well to write about it well. So by building a resource section, you'll demonstrate your expertise.


3. Also, by adding useful content to your website, you'll keep people on the site longer. It's logical that the longer people stay on your website, the better chance you'll have of getting a response or capturing a lead.

Look for tip #7 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Forget You Own Your Website: Tip #5 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #5 of 100 - Forget You Own Your Website

If you're as familiar with your website as I am with mine, then you may be blind to certain weaknesses. It's only natural. When you see something on a regular basis, you begin to not see it after a while.

Just the other day somebody pointed out a spelling error on my home page (in a bolded sentence no less). I had probably looked at the sentence a thousand times. But because I knew what it was supposed to say, I was blind to the mistake.

What does this have to do with real estate Internet marketing? Everything. From a marketing standpoint, we all have flaws with our websites. That's okay, as long as you work to identify them and improve them. But identifying them is the hard part!

Internet Marketing Exercise
This little exercise will help you "step outside" of yourself and see your website with fresh eyes. Pretend for a moment that your website belongs to a stranger, and you're being paid to evaluate it honestly. Now print out the following questions and visit your home page:

• Is the navigation logical? Can you immediately find your way around?
• Within the first ten seconds, do you see anything of value to you?
• Do you see anything worth digging deeper for?
• Does this website give you confidence in the owner?
• Does the website suggest professionalism and attention to detail?
• Does the website make you want to learn more? Why or why not?

I hope this exercise helps you find areas you might improve. Once you've done it with your home page, you might even want to visit your other important pages and ask the same questions.

Better yet, ask a friend to do it for you ... somebody known for their brutal honesty.

Look for tip #6 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Minimize Distraction: Tip #4 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #4 of 100 - Minimize Distraction

On a real estate marketing website, the goal is usually to lead visitors down a certain path. You can't control where people will go or what they will click on, but you can at least offer your preferred path and make it easy to follow.

But when you overload your web pages with too many items, you end up dividing the reader's attention, creating unneeded distraction, and increasing the likelihood visitors will leave your site altogether.

I see this a lot on the home pages of personal marketing websites. Often, agents participate in real estate link exchange programs that require them to put logos with outbound links onto their home pages. The only problem is, when you take this to the extreme, you dilute your own brand and invite unnecessary distraction.

You're also giving people plenty of things to click on that will take them away from your website. Is that the best strategy for a home page? Distraction is the enemy of real estate Internet marketing.

Visit your home page and ask yourself, what is the most desirable action you want people to take? What is the second most desirable action? From a visual standpoint, does the placement and prominence of these two paths support their importance? Or do they battle for attention with a dozen or more distractions?

Recommended Reading:

• Web Style Guide: Home Pages


• Biggest Mistakes in Web Design


• Home Page Goals


• Real Estate Websites: Your Home Page

Look for tip #5 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Increase Website Usability: Tip #3 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #3 of 100 - Increase Usability

Picture this...

You're standing behind your website, eager and ready to take on a new client. A potential client stands in front of your website, eager and ready to hire a friendly, professional agent just like you.

The only thing is, you don't know the potential client is there. How could you? They haven't contacted you yet. So in order for you to connect with them, they first have to enter your website, navigate through it, like what they find, and then contact you in some fashion.

But what if they can't use your website? What if they find the navigation confusing? Or they can't find your listing information?

That's right ... they'll leave as quickly as they came. After all, there are plenty of other real estate websites to look at and other agents to consider.

Earlier in this Internet marketing series, I talked about the importance of lead capture. Website usability is equally important, because if a person can't use your website, you have no chance to connect with them. You don't have the luxury of personally guiding them through your website. They're on their own.

Usability Hot Spots
Entire books have been written on website usability (like Don't Make Me Think). So for the purposes of this post, let's just cover some usability hot spots. Here are some areas that can always use improvement.

1. Navigation. Label your navigation in a clear way. Don't be cute or clever.

2. Home page. Keep your home page clean, inviting and uncluttered.

3. Action paths. Define the actions you want people to take, and present them in a clear way.

4. Calls to action. People will go where they want on your site, but it helps to offer direction.

5. Interactivity. If you have listing data and searches, be sure to offer clear and ample instructions.

6. Web conventions. Following web conventions (like making your logo a link to the home page) helps visitors get around by using things they're familiar with.

Related Links:

• Real Estate Websites: The Usability Factor
• Usability Equals Visibility

Look for tip #4 tomorrow!

Until then,

-Brandon

Focus on Lead Capture: Tip #2 of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #2 of 100 - Focus on Lead Capture

I firmly believe that the average business website gets enough traffic to support sales goals, but does a terrible job capitalizing on that traffic.

When a client or potential client says they want to increase the amount of traffic to their website, I ask two questions right off the bat:

1. How are you measuring your traffic now?

You'd be surprised at how many people say, "Well, I don't really have any way to do that." If you don't measure your traffic, how do you know you're not getting enough? Most website server logs will give you basic info on traffic volumes, traffic sources, etc. More advanced programs like WebTrends and NetTracker will tell you everything you want to know about your website visitors.

2. How are you capturing leads or prompting a response?

Once again, you'd be surprised at how many people offer blank stares at this question. That's a poor way to play a numbers game that's based on attrition. What's the point increasing traffic if you're just going to hope that people contact? Hoping will not deliver results.

Real estate Internet marketing is a process of attrition. You start with a large number -- qualified prospects who use the Web. Then the number gets smaller, because only a percentage of the first number will find your website. The number shrinks yet again as people visit your website (statistics show the majority of website visitors leave without taking action).

Two Sides to Internet Marketing
Getting people to your website is only half of the real estate Internet marketing equation. Once they get there, you need to offer some form of reciprocation to get them to "raise their hands." This is the essence of real estate lead generation. Maybe you'll offer access to exclusive listings or virtual tours in exchange for signing in. Maybe they'll get a detailed 12-page report on local schools in exchange for joining your newsletter.

Whatever form it takes, you need some way to capture leads and encourage action. Without that, your website is merely a reference source -- helpful for readers, but not very profitable for you.

Look for tip #3 tomorrow!

-Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing: Tip #1of 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip #1 of 100 - Overcome Skepticism

We are all naturally skeptical online. The reasons for this are obvious. The Internet can be an anonymous and scary place, used for deceitful purposes by everyone from con artists to pedophiles.

Of course, these shady characters represent the minority (or so I'd like to believe). But it still poses a challenge you must consider in your real estate Internet marketing program.

I encounter a lot of "faceless" websites that use a lot of pronouns like "we" and "us" ... websites that make it nearly impossible to find a person's name. You've seen websites like this, yes? What's your first reaction when encountering a mystery website?

Distrust? Uncertainty? Fear?

Yeah, me too.

Take a look at your own website right now. Go ahead ... I'll wait.

Are you done? Good. Now tell me what you've done to make the visitor comfortable in who you are? How have you demonstrated integrity? How have you encouraged trust and confidence?

Better yet, why not ask a half-dozen friends to visit your website and navigate around like a potential client would. Have them jot down on paper anything that makes them uncomfortable, uncertain, or just confused. Correct these things immediately, and keep them in mind through all of your Internet marketing endeavors.

Internet marketing is marketing with an extra dose of uncertainty. It's your job to remove that uncertainty every chance you get.

Until tomorrow,

-Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing: 100 x 100

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I'm posting today to introduce a new blog series I'll be publishing over the next few weeks. It is exactly what the title says, 100 real estate Internet marketing tips in 100 days (non-consecutively, of course ... what am I a masochist?).

I thought this might be a good way to help you entertain new (and hopefully productive) marketing ideas as we march into the new year.

100 Tips in 100 Days:

1. Overcome Skepticism - 12/22/06
2. Focus on Lead Capture - 12/23/06
3. Increase Usability - 12/24/06
4. Minimize Distraction - 12/26/06
5. Forget You Own Your Website - 12/27/06
6. Create a Resource Section - 12/29/06
7. Be Active Online - 12/31/06
8. Share Your News Online - 1/3/07
9. Bulk Up Your Website - 1/4/07
10. Advance Your Internet Knowledge - 1/6/07
11. Publish Articles Online - 1/9/07
12. Avoid Data Blindness - 1/10/07
13. Blog Regularly - 1/13/07
14. Blog on Your Own Website - 1/13/07
15. Add Your Blog to Directories - 1/15/07
16. Integrate Your Marketing Channels - 1/16/07
17. Combine Postcards with Website - 1/18/07
18. Put Keywords In Your Hyperlinks - 1/19/07
19 - 23. Generating Website Leads - 1/23/07
24. Minimize Marketing Attrition - 1/25/07
25. Experiment with Pay-per-Click - 1/29/07
26. Collaborate with Others - 1/31/07
27. Paint Your Cow Purple - 2/3/07
28. Write One Page Per Keyword - 2/5/07
29. Design for People - 2/7/07
30 - 40. Eleven Marketing Tips in One - 2/11/07
41. Use Your Most Powerful Tool - 2/14/07
42. Brush Up On "Do Not Call" - 2/16/07
43. Acquire Inbound Links - 2/21/07
44. Hunt for Links Wisely - 2/21/07
45. Launch Website #2 - 2/27/07
46. Keep Your Integrity - 2/28/07
47. Upload a Sitemap - 2/28/07
48. Get the Real Estate Blog Book - 3/4/07
49. Make Your Website Inviting - 3/4/07
50. Use What You've Got - 3/13/07
51. Know Your Competition - 3/21/07
52. Add Your Blog to Inman Wiki - 3/21/07
53. Grow Your Web Presence - 3/27/07
54. Know Your Web Analytics - 3/27/07
55. Spread Yourself Over the Web - 3/31/07
56. Differentiate Lead Generation from SEO - 4/18/07
57. Practice Real Estate Lead Generation - 4/20/07
58. Think Like a Publisher - 5/2/07
59. Create a Squidoo Lens - 5/16/07
60. Submit an Article to Home Buying Institute - 5/17/07
61. Learn the Laws of Lead Generation - 5/23/07
62. Address Popular Topics Online - 6/22/07
63. Increase Your Onsite Conversions - 1/14/08
64. Experiment With Online Chat Tools - 5/26/08
64. Grant Special Access for Lead Generation - 6/21/08

Do You Hate Spam This Much?

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

How much do you hate spam? Enough to condemn a spammer to a duck-hunting session with the always-dangerous Dick Cheney?

If you've ever deeply despised or harbored hatred toward the smut pushers, Viagra salesman and Paris Hilton heralders ... you'll enjoy this creative rant.

21 Things I'd Like to Do With Spammers

Enjoy!

-Brandon

Realtors Online - 5 Ways to Dominate the Web

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

I was reviewing the main website yesterday when I came across this article on real estate internet marketing. I would call it an oldie but a goodie, but it's really only a couple of months old. I just never promoted through the blog or newsletter like most new articles.

This article addresses the need for a multi-faceted online marketing program. Sure, each of these strategies can work well on its own, but for maximum effect they should be used together.

Hope you enjoy the article:
Real Estate Marketing Online: 5 Ways to Dominate the Web

Until tomorrow,

-Brandon

When Pronouns Go Bad - A Marketing Tale

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

One thing I don't understand is why — in this age of social media and customer empowerment — so many companies strive for greater anonymity. Don't they get that anonymous is out?

You know the websites I'm talking about. You go to the "About Us" page and it's a bunch of talk of "we" and "us" with not a face or a name to be found. You go to the "Contact Us" page, and it's a plain old form without a name.

Surprisingly, I see this happen with smaller companies just as much as I see it with the mega-corporations. The difference is, a big corporation can afford to pump its message through multiple channels, while smaller companies often rely more heavily on their website.

There's a cost to anonymity. And if you ask me, it's too great a cost for any company, small or large. People don't trust anonymous businesses ... and why should they?

Is your website anonymous? Or do you welcome dialogue and interaction with your audience? What are your thoughts?

Comments welcome!

-Brandon

Real Estate Internet Marketing - Get Focused

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Real estate Internet marketing has become a hot topic among real estate agents for one reason above all else -- necessity.

Agents need to be online because that's where all the buyers and sellers are. A real estate marketing program without an Internet component simply won't suffice anymore.

But before you start throwing up websites and blogs, take a moment to focus. Ask yourself the following questions, answer them, and write the answers down. This will help you shape your goals and work toward them in a controlled, focused way.

* What's the purpose of my internet marketing campaign?
* What's my overall business objective?
* How does my marketing support this objective?
* Who, exactly, is my target audience?
* How does my target audience use the Internet?
* How does my audience use the search engines (key phrases)?

These are only a few of the questions you should answer before taking your real estate marketing program online. But it's a good start.

Related article:

Real Estate Marketing Online - Fundamentals of Success

Related product:

Agent's Guide to Websites & Web Marketing

Real Estate Internet Marketing - Search Engine Tips

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

If your real estate marketing program involves the Internet, you have to make search engine visibility part of your marketing program too.

After all, a real estate website is a single grain of sand in a vast desert. But with a strong focus on search engine optimization, your website becomes something more. It becomes a web presence.

For this reason, I'm pleased to announce that we've recently added a search engine section to the Agent's Guide to Websites & Web Marketing. Now this 57-page E-book is more helpful than ever, covering every aspect of real estate internet marketing.

* Learn more about this guide