Real Estate Marketing Company Provides Tips for Real Estate Website Success

June 11, 2009 - PRLog -- When it comes to selling real estate on the internet there are a lot of opinions and sources on what works best but Internet marketing consultant
Sean Callahan says that the only advice agents should take is from someone who is actually putting it to use and selling a home or two plus a month online.

That is why he has put together some advice and tips on how to set up a successful real estate internet marketing campaign for agents.

According to Callahan the most important thing an agents needs to be successful online is "website conversion".

"Most real estate agents fail to make serious money online because their website does a poor job converting traffic into leads or contacts", said Callahan.

"The most important factor for selling homes online is getting a real estate website that will convert traffic into leads". he continued. "Most real estate websites capture 1-2% of the traffic they are sent and that creates an uphill battle for the agent to be successful". "Since the average closing ratio of internet leads is 3%, an agent will need to get 35-40 leads on average to sell a home...."If the website has a 1% conversion rate then that requires the agent to get somewhere between 3,500 to 4,000 visitors to get the leads they need to sell a home and that will normally take several months or longer to happen which is why most agents only sell 2-3 homes per year online".

Callahan who founded the "Real Estate Marketing Nerds" marketing company is able to fix up real estate websites to capture as many as 10-15% of the visitors, thus making them much more productive for selling homes online.

Callahan who worked for a large real estate website comany found out the hard way that what he was selling did not work for getting leads once he ventured out on his own and started marketing his own websites online.

"I thought that I would have immediate success and found out real quick I did not know as much as I thought I did and that is when I bought 10 real estate websites and began a full time endeavor of trying just about everything to see what actually brought in the best results.....not based on "opinions" but rather factual research and taking seminars from some of the best internet marketing professionals in the world"

Today Callahan has a resume of having helped thousands of Realtors around the country and the results he has produced rival or exceed that from companies much larger than his own.

Callahan put together a checklist if tips and advice for real estate agent websites to ensure they do the best possible job for converting traffic and also on some quick and fast ways to get traffic. His tips and advice are below.

1. Make sure the home search feature is on the top of the website and that you immediately identify what markets you service. If you live in San Diego then make sure people know you specialize in Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla, Del Mar etc....people need to see that there is relavent information for what they are looking for within the first 5-8 seconds of coming on the landing page.

2. Do not make people have to scroll down to find your home search feature along with your featured communities. All the information should be right in the top 1/3 of the page. Since a home search is the most popular tool on the website, make sure it is easy to access.

3. Whenever possible make sure you provide direct search links to the cities and communities you service in you "search for homes" feature. If someone comes on a landing page for San Diego make sure they can also click on "Del Mar homes", or "La Jolla homes" and immediately access that inventory. It is called a "direct path" link and is important to do whenever possible since it reduces the number of buttons and screens a visitor has to fill out to get to what they are looking for. This tip alone can increase your leads by %25-50%.

4. NEVER use anything but black text with a white background for presenting information on your website. Many amateur webmasters like to sacrifice the looks of the website for the functionality of capturing leads. You will never see any major website like the New York Times or The L.A Times with a professional marketing team in place do this and you should not either.

5. Never put large banners and pictures on the top of your website. That causes people to have to scroll down to find the key lead capturing tools including your home search, auto email and CMA request. Make sure those tools are "above the fold" so people do not have to scroll down to find those.

6. Put a many local links and resources on your website to make it as useful as possible for not just finding homes but also getting to know more about the community. Information on parks and recreation, things to do, upcoming events, farmers markets etc....bring your guests back many more times and make your website more friendly for search engines.

7. Try to incorporate YouTube.com videos into your website. We are moving into a video age and the faster that agents can take advantage of this technology the better!
Some ideas are to shoot videos of the agents greeting website visitors and telling them a bit about themselves, shooting featured video listings and also where to go and what to do in the community. Video content not only provides a ton of free traffic from YouTube.com but it also makes your website cutting edge and much more useful, seperating you from your competition.

8. Build inbound links to your website with a blog and free online classified ads in Craigslist and Backpage.com. Many people think that search engines do not follow the  tags in Craigslist, but they do and it helps bring up your page rank and thus your position in the free sections of the search engines. A blog is also helpful for directing links back to your website and is a worth while task to start. Agents can also get a new FREE link building software from the www.realestatemarketingnerds.com website home page.

By following some of these tips and advice real estate agents and companies can help produce many more sales and leads from the internet, and thus make tens of thousands more in commissions each year.

"In a day where 80% of real estate sales are coming from the Internet it is important agents increase the productivity of their websites and internet marketing campaigns", Callahan finished.

For more information:Call Real Estate Marketing Nerds at (858)731-7278 or visit www.realestatemarketingnerds.com
Visit our website: http://www.realestatemarketingnerds.com

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Real Estate Marketing Nerds has helped thousands of real estate agents around the country make money and sell millions of dollars in real estate by offering results orientated marketing packages and websites. Call our company for more information at 858-731-7278