Go Beyond MLS » Real Estate and Technology

PropertyMaps- Cutting Edge Real Estate Website

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 05:28:31 +0000

PropertyMaps, a free map based real estate search website, is gaining in popularity. According to a recent press release, the website added all the MLS listings of Naples, FL area to their database.

PropertyMaps uses real Multiple Listing Service in combination with popular mapping tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth. Visitors can quickly and easy search and visualize millions of real estate listings.

While anyone can use the website to search for a property, there are certain benefits real estate brokers should not pass the opportunity to sing up for free- main of them being lead generation.

PropertyMaps when working with real estate brokers, does not require any up-front cost, while offering up to 10 contacts/leads for free.

From the technical point PropertyMaps is designed very well and provides a superb user experience. Unlike ePrerks, PropertyMaps focuses its services exclusively to real estate.

In the future we will continue coverage of PropertyMaps as well as other “cutting edge” real estate websites, so please stay tuned and subscribe to our website.Similar Posts:

Get More Traffic And Exposure With BlogRush

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:03:22 +0000

As you can see in the video below, BlogRush offers a unique opportunity to get more exposure and more traffic to your blog.

Unlike many other traffic exchange website out here, you are not required to visit other blogs in exchange for traffic. Simple, easy and free. Don’t miss out on this opportunity – sign up today.

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Realtor.com Introduces Blog To Their Website

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:49:57 +0000

If you are a real estate agent and you still think that blogging is only for the teenage generation that spends way to much time on websites like MySpace- think again! Or even better, follow the example of Realtor.com!

Realtor.com has introduced an addition to their website just over one month ago. Any guesses what that addition is? A WordPress powered blog- The Official Blog of the Realtor.com Blog Community! Coincidently there is a small video tutorial Realtor Talk today that will teach you how to write a blog post.

Congratulations Realtor.com- a little too late (blogging has been around for some time now), but nonetheless congratulations!!!Similar Posts:

A Web2.0 Approach To Real Estate: Hawaii Life

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:25:01 +0000

Searching for a property in Hawaii? Than you should consider take a closer look at Hawaii Life- a real estate search engine that maps properties in Hawaii MLS with the help of Google Maps. Any visitors can search for Hawaii Real Estate property, but there are benefits to register an account so you can save the properties you are interested in for the future review.

At the moment Hawaii Life offers your an opportunity to search for Kauai Real Estate and Big Island real estate. Hawaii Life is promising to also include Maui and Oahu real estate listings some time this months.

Hawaii Life provides a unique way for a potential buyer to find their home in Hawaii Real Estate Market. In the snapshot below you can see that after performing your search for the properties, hovering with the cursor over the property picture will match the location of the property on integrated Google map an vice versa, if you point your cursor to a property on the map it will match with the picture of the property on the right of your screen:

With just one click you can save the properties you are interested in for a later review or even if you need to find out more information about properties, send a request to Hawaii Life:

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RealEstateLimeLight Offers SEO Optimization To Real Estate Websites

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 24 May 2007 05:00:55 +0000

In the competitive world of real estate, agents can pay thousands of dollars for a web site that produces just a few leads a year. At last, real estate agents have a solution to getting high quality, area exclusive exposure from the Internet. The leading authority on search engine marketing for real estate agents and creator of Real Estate Limelightâ„¢, Shaylor Murray, puts it this way, “Our goal was to give consumers an easy way to find the expert agent in their local area, without having to sift through a mess of data or competing agents.

We use SEO techniques to optimize real estate agent profiles with every major search engine in the country. This includes MSN, Yahoo and Google, plus hundreds of more specialized search engines.” And unlike other services, RealEstateLimelight.com doesn’t make customers wait days for a response from an agent. Contact information for each local RealtorÂ® is right on the agent profile page so the customer can contact them directly. No cryptic message system to put off potential customers. “In a highly competitive business like real estate,” says Shaylor, “it’s our goal to give the best local agents an edge by providing national exposure through this new, dynamic Internet tool.”

Source:

Unique Internet Tool Breaks New Ground for Real Estate Agent MarketingSimilar Posts:

New Jersey Realtors Are Beginning To Use Pay Per Call

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:12:02 +0000

If you search at AOL for the terms â€œrealtor, njâ€ or â€œfsbo, njâ€ following adds appear on the top of the search results:

Pay Per Call seams to be gaining in popularity among New Jersey Realtors. In comparison to well known pay per click advertising, which does not suites real estate industry as well as other businesses, pay per call may become much better solution.

One problem that many real estate websites have when it comes to pay per click advertising is that transaction does not happened on the website itself. There are no shopping carts nor thank you pages where you would insert necessary HTML code to keep track on ROI (return on investment). Many people may visit your website but until they actually pick up the phone and call you, these visits can be hardly seen as â€œleadsâ€. Until such time (likely never) as we will be able to sell or buy real estate property with a click of a button, there will be no certain way to calculate ROI.

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Is Pay Per Call Effective?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:06:15 +0000

Just as we posted recent article about Pay Per Call advertising, we have come across this excellent article describing the effectiveness of pay par call advertising.

Without a doubt pay per call advertising will come handy. Unfortunately there is no certain way for a real estate company to calculate return on investment when it comes to traditional pay per click advertising, since the actual transaction does not take place on the website therefore the “tacking” codes are useless.Similar Posts:

Truth In Advertising for FSBO Sellers

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:03:04 +0000

By Raynor James

When selling your home for sale by owner, you will be handling your own marketing. This leads us to the issue of what you put in your marketing materials in relation to your home.

The real estate industry is somewhat like the used car industry when it comes to certain areas. Each is known for using terminology that could be considered to perhaps stretch the boundaries a bit. â€œNew paint jobâ€ in a car add can often be translated to â€œnew paint job because the car was damaged in an accident.â€ When it comes to real estate, a unique set of terminology also applies. â€œCozyâ€ is often a term interpreted as meaning small. â€œVery cozyâ€, of course, means a home that is basically two closets hammered together!

As a FSBO seller, you need to give some thought to the terminology you will use when marketing your property. I am not so much referring to legalities as I am to common sense truth in advertising. It is tempting to list the possibilities of a home despite the fact the property offers no such basis for doing so. Such phrases I often see are things like â€œpotential for viewâ€ without mentioning the buyer will need to add two stories to the property to get a sliver of a view! In my opinion, such advertising is a bad approach.

When marketing your property for sale, it is important that you be accurate. Yes, you can use terms that promote the strengths of the property. You should not use terms that are not based on how you use the home. If you have a two bedroom property in which you sleep in one bedroom and your child in the other, language regarding a home office, game room and such is probably misleading unless you have other rooms that specifically are being used for that purpose.

The problem with stretching the boundaries with your marketing has to do with expectations. If a potential buyer reads your ad and thinks it matches what they are after, they expect to see the attributes when they arrive. If they do not, they certainly will not be making an offer. This will lead to negative commentary among buyers regarding you and your home. You should never require a buyer to have a vision of the far reaching possibilities of a home.

As a FSBO seller, being accurate in your marketing materials is critical. Yes, you may get fewer buyers visiting your property, but you will get a better quality of buyer, to wit, a buyer more like to make an offer. At the end of the day, that is the point after all.

Raynor James is with FSBOAmerica.org – real estate articles on selling your own home.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Raynor_JamesSimilar Posts:

Century 21 Property Search Gold Beta

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 02:34:05 +0000

Century 21 has introduced new â€œgadgetâ€ to their website. Property Search Gold Beta still in testing is a combination of MLS and map technology. Microsoft Corporation is providing map data.

This new feature provides new and improved way to find a home. Century 21 warns their visitors that to have complete list of properties, the standard property search should be used.

Introducing new â€œgadgetsâ€ to Real Estate is not new. A week ago Coldwell Banker has introduced a feature that will notify â€œhome-huntersâ€ about new properties via RSS feed.

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RealEstateABC.com

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 06:31:43 +0000

RealEstateABC.com has been around since 1998. The website was created to â€œcandidlyâ€ inform buyers and sellers about the â€œreal worldâ€ of real estate. They website indeed has many useful articles and tips on buying and selling homes. There are all sorts of calculators available, some mortgage related information. While some people may find the website useful, many may bypass this kind of website going straight to the websites of Realtors.

Not so long ago, RealEstateABC.com has introduced a page where visitors supposedly can find the value of their homes, maybe trying to put out some competition to Zillow. As with Zillow, RealEstateABC.com offers visitors to find the value of homes, the results come back in a format of a map where subject property is displayed on a Google Map. But either site lucks data to back their findings on homes value. Some properties that we have checked where marked at the price they were sold or bought last time, in some cases 5 years ago; far cry from real value.

If RealEstateABC.com and other similar sites would reach out to real estate companies, they can create great source of information available to sellers and buyers. This kind of partnership can benefit everyone around. The web masters of these website would have â€œrealâ€ data, Realtors can learn from web masters what Internet users are looking for, and all off us can use some good information that turly would be without â€œpuff, hype or sensationalismâ€.

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Great Website but no visitors?

Vlad Zablotskyy — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:00:00 +0000

Developing good website is only one step toward successful Internet marketing. If you are new to the Internet, one thing you should know right away: it takes long for search engines to index your site. It will probably take even longer for your site to come up in the natural search. Most search engines take into account many factors when examining your site. Over some factors, like â€œlink popularityâ€(the number of other quality site pointing to your site) and content you have control. Some factors, like age of your site will help you in future.

Pay Per Click Advertising in Real Estate.

One of the fastest methods to have people visiting your website is through placing pay per click advertising on Search engines like Google and Yahoo. What pay per click advertising does is display your ad or link at the top of the search for the keywords that you bid on. If your campaign is set up properly, you may enjoy much higher ROI (return on investment) in comparison to the conventional advertising media.

Choosing your keywords.

You need to consider wisely before choosing your keywords and be as specific as possible. You do not want to sped you money on a visitor that was brought to your website looking for chocolates and candies. As you well know that main factor in real estate is location.

Bad Keyword Selection:

Real Estate â€“ this keywords is too broad, and while may bring people to your website who are looking for real estate, they may not be interested to leave in the area you service.

Albany, NY â€“ again you may bring wrong audience to your website, that may be interested in Albany NY, but have no interest in real estate.

Condos for Rent- to broad. May generate visitors but who may be looking for condos in Manhattan.

Good Keywords Selection:

Albany NY Real Estate- Very specific example that will bring to your website very targeted audience.

Condominiums Albany NY- again a more specific example that will target the right audience.

Combination of good SEO and pay per click advertising can greatly contribute to the success of your website.

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Act! By Sage Premium for Real Estate 2006

Vlad Zablotskyy — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:32:23 +0000

Amazon.com:Â

Stay on top of appointments and tasks by scheduling activities using one of more than 20 activity types. Or, set up an Activities Series using one of the nine custom Activity Series specific to real estate including active listing, new listing, listing prospect, active buyer, new buyer, buyer prospect, and more. In addition, ACT! Premium for Real Estate offers multiple Calendar Views including daily/weekly/monthly/today views, as well as activity alarms, so you never miss an important appointment or deliverable.
You can also import leads from a variety of sources so you can start turning those prospects into customers immediately. You can segment leads into relevant groups, schedule an activity series for all leads that you imported so you have a set marketing strategy with reminders of upcoming tasks, and send your first personalized communication using mail merge. The software also enables real estate agents to track sales opportunities through close utilizing the standard sales process or a process customized to suit your business.
In addition to the more than 40 standard reports in ACT! Premium for Real Estate — including phone lists, activity reports, and sales summaries — you’ll also have nine custom report templates for real estate at your disposal. These include: buyer completed activities, seller completed activities, activities by type and activities by contact so you can actively update your buyer or seller, see which marketing activities converted to sales, and determine the most effective communication vehicles. And best of all, you can synchronize your ACT! Calendar, Contact and To-Do Information to your Palm OS or Pocket PC device, so you always have access to your critical contact information while you’re on the road.

If you have used this software please share with us your experience.Similar Posts:

Real Estate SEO

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:02:54 +0000

Real Estate SEO – Are You Googling Yourself Again?
By Brandon Cornett

Advanced Summary:
This article pertains to real estate search engine optimization (SEO). In this article’s usage, real estate SEO is the act of improving a real estate agent’s website for better search engine visibility.

I know a lot of real estate agents who are fixated on how they rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN for their company name and/or their own name.

From an SEO standpoint, this is usually a waste of time. These agents could spend their time better doing any number of things — publishing articles, writing new web content, posting to a blog, acquiring inbound links.

“Don’t sweat it,” I say to them. “Don’t bother Googling yourself.”

Here’s why:

Don’t Sweat It – Reason #1
You will almost always rank #1 for your company name, because (A) it’s probably unique and (B) it’s probably all over your website. For instance, if you Google my company name (“Arming Your Farming”), you’ll see I’m #1 for the phrase. Why? Because I’m the only “Arming Your Farming” company around, so it’s easy to rank first.

Don’t Sweat It – Reason #2
You should focus your real estate SEO efforts on those people who don’t already know who you are. If somebody knows you, they’ll find your website easily enough. But there are plenty of strangers out there looking for an agent like you by searching generic phrases such as “Dallas real estate agent” or “Tallahassee real estate.” Use your search engine optimization program to get in front of those folks. There are a lot of them!

Your Real Estate SEO Toolkit
Once you’ve kicked the self-Googling habit, you’ll have more time for the kinds of SEO efforts that are worthwhile — like key phrase research, link building, and learning. Here are some tools to help you in each of those departments.

Research Tools – WordTracker
The key to search engine optimization is finding out how your target audience is using the search engines. When you discover the kinds of phrases people are using to find the real estate services you provide, you can incorporate those phrases into your SEO program.

On the flip side of that coin, if you optimize your website for phrases people aren’t using, your SEO program will be a wasted effort.

There are a lot of keyword research tools online. WordTracker.com is one of the most popular and trusted of these tools. I use it every day as part of my SEO job. It costs about $200 per year to subscribe, but if you’re serious about optimizing your real estate website for the search engines, it’s well worth the price.

* Learn more at: www.wordtracker.com

Link Building Tools – Yahoo Site Explorer
Inbound links (from other websites to yours) contribute to your overall ranking. So you’ll need a way to track your link-building success. With Yahoo Site Explorer, you can quickly and easily find out which websites are linking to yours. You can also export this information into a spreadsheet for further use.

* Learn more at: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
* Notice there’s no “www” on the above address.

Educational Tools – SEO Books & Websites
Search engine optimization is an ever-evolving practice that requires constant education. Fortunately, there are a number of online resources to help you stay up to speed. Some of the resources below cover general SEO topics. The last resource covers real estate SEO specifically.

* SEO Chat: www.seochat.com
* Search Engine Watch: www.searchenginewatch.com
* High Rankings Advisor: www.highrankings.com/articles.htm
* Real Estate SEO Guide: www.armingyourfarming.com/search

I hope this information helps you improve your website’s visibility. If you’d like to learn even more on this topic, refer to the resource below.

Additional Resources
Brandon Cornett is the author of the “Agent’s Guide to Search Engine Visibility,” available for immediate download at ArmingYourFarming.com. Learn to practice real estate search engine optimization the right way. Download your guide today at: http://www.armingyourfarming.com/search.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brandon_CornettSimilar Posts:

EzineArticles and Real Estate Website

Vlad Zablotskyy — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:08:12 +0000

EzineArticles is well known in the web masters community. As described on their web-site EzineArticles is:

article marketing, publicity generating, traffic building, and article distribution service designed to get your expert articles in front of our content-hungry ezine publisher audience.

So how can a Realtor benefit from EzineArticles?

By writing and submitting a high quality article to EzineArticles, you have a wonderful publicity tool. If you provide good and relevant content, there is a good chance that your article will be picked up by hundreds if not thousands of publishers who would like to feature your article on their website. This in turn can result in surges of traffic to your website. EzineArticles will also help you to increase high quality links to your website.

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Zillow: Home owners can update data on their homes.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:26:18 +0000

Zillow Blog:

Just now the Zillow engineering and operations teams “propped” a new version of Zillow.com Â that allows homeowners to save and publish personal additions and edits to Zillow’s data on their homes.
Homeowners can now add remodel information, update or change facts (like beds/baths, square footage, etc), or add more specific stuff like a waterfront view, finished basement, or type of parking.Â This is a milestone release for the company as it represents our first step in opening Zillow up to our customers, inviting them to add to and improve Zillow for everyone.Â

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Yahoo! Real Estate.

Vlad Zablotskyy — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 03:20:26 +0000

There is no doubt that Yahoo! Has taken Real Estate business to yet another level altogether. Combining the power of search industry with map technology can be very powerful for real estate.

If you never visited Yahoo! Real Estate before we recommend you to do so now. The amount of information you will find researching real estate properties is unmatched so far. After you submit a query for a particular property the results come back in a form of a map so you can see exact location of the property your are interested in. It is very easy with Yahoo! Real Estate to check out the local market conditions, where you can findÂ other valuable information.

Yahoo! Real Estate is revolutionizing the Real Estate business. Internet changes the way Realtors generate leads and even sales.

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21st Century Farming

Vlad Zablotskyy — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:14:49 +0000

RealtyBlogging:

For several years Realtors have been trying to figure out the “online neighborhood” solution to effective marketing. There have been a number of attempts at creating sites that drill down to very local targeted markets. At the same time, it appears that more and more large size broker/owners are coming to the conclusion that in order to effectively marry these online attempts at neighborhood marketing with effective lead management, they need to involve their Agents; i.e., take an Agent-centric approach.
Blogging Systems Group believes it has the most effective solution to this opportunity and it takes the form of using a blog as a farming tool. In particular, using a Community Blog, which consists of content from a wide variety of participating local civic minded organizations, can be a remarkable way to network with dozens of organizations and their members.

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Real Estate and RSS

Vlad Zablotskyy — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:24:49 +0000

SYS-CON Media:Â

Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation has taken the next step in simplifying the home search process for consumers with today’s launch of the new Coldwell Banker Personal Retriever(R). Utilizing Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology, the online Personal Retriever now has a downloadable ‘widget’ application that automatically delivers daily, personalized real estate listings directly to a computer desktop. Each day it showcases all newly listed properties that meet a consumer’s specifications (e.g., location, price range, etc.), complete with a link directly to more fully detailed information about the property on http://www.coldwellbanker.comÂ In addition, the widget provides updates to daily mortgage rates.

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