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 “link popularity”(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 – 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 – 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.

Amazon.com: 

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.

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.

* Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett. You may republish this article online provided you keep the byline, the author’s note, and the active hyperlinks.

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_Cornett

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.

Zillow Blog:

Just now the Zillow engineering and operations teams “propped” a new version of Zillow.com 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.  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.