If you’re a real estate agent, you already know that more than 90% of your customers are searching online before they make a decision on an agent.  Did you also know that Google accumulates more than 2.5 Billion searches per day and each of those searches ends up at someone’s website?  How many times per day do you think SOME of those searches pertain to your local market in either real estate or community news?  My guess is quite a few. So the question becomes, what can you do to capture some of that local search volume if anything at all?  The answer simply is get an independent website where you own the domain name “www.(you or your brand).com” and you own the hosting, i.e. www.bluehost.com .

Usually when I tell someone this, the response I get is either, “My company gives me a website” or “The real estate program I pay for monthly comes with a website.”  Unfortunately, both of these websites are a waste of time and money for real estate professionals, and here’s why:

• Company provided sites are usually generated within the framework of the company’s web platform.  In essence, they arent giving you your own site, rather, they are giving you a page, or a series of pages within their website for example - www.BIGCOMPANYNAME.com/(your name) - This is great for the overall company because it adds pages and content to their site which basically increases their overall ranking on search engines which in turn drives more leads through page one which they then divide up among agents and maybe you get a lead which you then pay for in some way.  You also get almost no customization, and no search engine optimization capability.
• Software provided sites are often templated with very little customization so often, if you are not tech savvy, you end up with a site that looks just like everyone else’s.  They are often difficult to use and require multiple calls to tech support and they have limited if any optimization features.
• Also, neither of these options does a good job if any of telling you how much traffic you’re getting, and in the world of online marketing, if you can’t track it, you don’t really have a strategy.

Being on page one of Google is the difference between tons of search engine traffic and no search engine traffic.  Have you ever appeared on page one?  When was the last time you did a Google search for “Real Estate Agent Virginia Beach” (or your specific area) ?  In our area, page one of Google is dominated by major real estate companies, however, in the mix of the top 10 organic results we do often find www.agentfaircloth.com.  How did she do that?  Though Chris Faircloth is very successful in Hampton Roads real estate, her page ranking is not a result of her success in real estate, its because of her progressive approach to online marketing specifically in the area of having her own domain name and website and implementing to some degree a purposeful search engine optimization campaign.  Your company or software systems are using your content to bring themselves traffic.

After you get your domain and hosting, create a website with WordPress, (I recommend www.wordpress.org) or have a good local web designer build one.  A good designer will even be able to provide you with hosting and help you in acquiring a domain.  Basic optimization should be included in the building of the site along with Google Analytics which does an awesome job of helping you determine how much traffic you’re getting.

Damien Smith

Social Media Sensei

Guerrilla Social Media

Norfolk, Virginia

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