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.
Reviews are very important because it helps readers to learn about information they are looking for. I like your recommendation about the improvements of Crossroad realty. PPC, SEO and SEM is really good.
I don’t think I ever said thank you for the review Vlad. We have been taking all your suggestions into consideration. Although, the stats you used for “pay per click” advertising is not accurate. At no time have we ever eliminated, or even lowered, any online advertising, we have only increased it.
RJ,
Thanks for stopping by and clarification about the PPC campaigns. I used the data from spyfu.com: http://spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=-2485476733072205990 in the article. And at the time it seemed as if Crossroads decreased PPC advertising. I should probably update the fact that spyfu is a third party software and should be look at as a “guestimate”. It also only provides the data from Google Adwords, so if you advertise on other networks it is even more inaccurate.
I am happy you are using PPC – it is one of the best methods to bring quality traffic to your website.
Reviews are very important for anything it really help you out to learn about information they are looking for. I like your recommendation. Great post