It has been long time since I have reviewed a real estate website. When I was contacted by Crossroads Realty to review their website, I knew that I have an opportunity to offer some spotlight to another New Jersey business. But I also hope that suggestions I am about to offer will be welcomed and used to improve their website and their Internet marketing efforts.

Website’s usability – user’s prospective…

When you visit Crossroads Realty’s website, it is hard to be confused as to where you are. You know immediately that you are on website of a real estate firm. It is very easy to search for properties or if you prefer you can search real estate agents.

Crossroads Realty website offers visitors to register a user account where they can save and organize the listings they are interested in- good feature for those of us whose browser’s favorites are miles long.

If there were any improvements to be made to the website, I would highly recommend adding additional “sharing” channels for visitors to use. Currently visitors can share listings with their friends via e-mail.

But there is no option to share listings (or agent profiles) on social networking website like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and many others. There are many solutions that will allow you sharing the content of your website on social networking website- ShareThis, AdThins, AdToAny just to name a few. Most of these solutions offer a simple “copy and paste” implementation.

Marketing, SEO/SEM suggestions…
The current state of traffic.
Quick comparison to another local real estate websites reveals that although Crossroads Realty ties with Diane Turton Realtors – it has some catching up to do with Gloria Nilson’s website:

Pay Per Click advertising…
It appears that Crossroads Realty has reduced pay per click advertising budget in October 2008:

Most likely a move to cut spending in the face of the economic decline and market conditions. I somewhat disagree with the decisions to completely cut down the pay per click efforts- the pay per click does help visibility. Although the decision on pay per click advertising has to be made considering other factors. My instinct tells me that the return on investement did not justify

Incoming Links…
Search engine optimization requires a long term effort and dedication. But it of course has a potential to bring great results. One of the first thing I look analyzing a website is the amount and quality of incoming links. Comparing to the other two above mentioned real estate websites (Diane Turton and Gloria Nilson) Crossroads Realty has half the number of incoming links (source: Yahoo! Site Explorer). Use online press release distribution services such as PRWeb.com can help to increase incoming links as different publishers may feature company’s press releases.

In addition I would recommend that Crossroads Realty would start a corporate blog and increase presence and interaction on social media websites. Crossroads is poisoned well against the competitors, improving on certain aspects of online marketing can dramatically improve their visibility and reach online.

Disclosures: I briefly worked for Diane Turton Relators in the past under the management of Margaret Ann Cesta -currently the office manager of Crossroads Realty in Brick, NJ.

AgentRank is attempting to rank real estate agents based on professional experience, home sales, endorsement from former clients and other variables.

The founders of the AgentRank are very clear that rankings can not be manipulated and if you want to rank well in their system all you need to do is to sell homes and keep your clients happy. One of the factors that will affect agent’s rankings is based on whether or not the agent publishes a blog. Hopefully it will encourage agents using the system to start their own blog.

Out of curiosity I used the system to search for the real estate agents in my area. I found 7 agents, whose rank varied from 8 to 1. I presuming that 10 is the most an agent can be ranked at.

While I did not find any familiar faces, few things about AgentRank system jumped at me. While claiming to rank real estate agents based on endorsements from former clients, there is no mechanism for that if you would like to endorse an agent you worked with in the past. Since some of the agents do have endorsements at AgentRank, it leaves me to think that these endorsements are completely under control of individual agents.

While one agent on the list is in the real estate for 230 years- a clear advantage as far as rankings are concerned based on professional experience.

To provide unbiased ranking can be a difficult task. I learning that from my attempt of ranking real estate blogs. So I am sure AgentRank is working hard to improve their website and it’s features.

At the end of the day you have nothing to loose when you decide to join AgentRank. The membership is free and you will get some extra exposure and a link to your blog. You can also follow AgentRank Blog for further news and developments. Feel free to come back and share your experience with AgentRank.