Recently though, I became aware of an agent that ran into a problem that I’d thought I’d touch on, because not only is it an important lesson in real estate, but also when running any kind of website open to the public. I won’t go too far into details, but this agent essentially published some information on their blog that had some problems. First off, it was taken from other sites around the web, and not original content written by the agent. Second, the information wasn’t really relevant to the client base they were targeting, and could have been considered misleading based on current market situations and conditions.

Now typically, this wouldn’t be a problem. Millions of sites lift content from the web, and there’s a gray line when it comes to the legality of it all. Also, as an agent, how many people actually read your blog? You could probably write about aliens coming down and putting an offer on your listing and pass it off as non-fiction given the clout users give an agents’ writings. Most agents could get away with this, and of course most have. It’s almost an accepted practice to provide as much mindless, keyword-rich content within your site simply to appease the search engine gods and their sacred algorithm, in hopes of getting that one extra email address. What’s the harm?

In this case, that neglect came back to bite the agent. The information this agent posted was found by a high-profile politician / writer with a very popular blog, and the agent was taken to town with a very scornful post and subsequent lynching by the followers of this popular writer. Sure, there were other factors in this example, but it goes to show that sometimes you may be held accountable for what has your name on it. Personally, I think this case was simply an example of an agent needing to invest a little more thought into what is on their site, and it got blown way out of proportion, but the whiplash was not an experience anyone wants to go through.

What’s the moral? Don’t assume you’re not writing for an audience. Consider them interested, and provide content that is original, valuable, and relevant. Adding regular content to your site through a blog can be one of the best ways to connect with an audience and gain additional exposure through the engines, but don’t forget about your readers. Do some research, and make sure what you write will benefit them. If it’s too much work, write about the community, local events, or your personal opinions on real estate, or hire someone to write original content for you. Bottom line, every word you publish online needs to be thought out, because we never know who might be reading your blog.

One of the best ways to make your website attractive to the buying consumer and capture them as a lead is to incorporate IDX into your website. IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange, and in real estate, it’s essentially a feed that’s provided by the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) that includes all the data for available properties in a given geographic region. IDX allows users to search homes for sale by a large number of variables and provides very detailed property information. Having IDX on your website makes your site valuable to a consumer by providing exactly what they’re looking for – data, pictures, and interactive maps. It encourages a user to explore more of your website, increasing the chances that visitor will result in captured lead or potential client. Advantages of a robust IDX system include:

• Built-in lead capture technology for user personal data and preferences
• Niche-based searches with variables such as location, price, REO, etc.
• Automatic user notification of new properties in their search criteria
• Interactive map searches for real-time, compelling search results

To implement IDX on your website, you’ll need to contact your local Realtor Association or MLS to request their IDX solution. You can also purchase IDX from 3rd party vendors that can provide the data once they have received authorization from the local MLS. Remember that not all IDX solutions are created equal – some systems offered by 3rd party vendors include complete management systems that can deliver benefits like marketing campaigns and client management, as well as improved user interfaces and data delivery.

Integrating IDX into WordPress Websites

Once you’ve been provided an IDX solution through your MLS or 3rd party vendor, you’ll want to get it implemented on your WordPress website. The most common way to do this is through an iFrame, which is the process of framing the IDX solution into your site through simple html instructions. This will allow all the functionality of the IDX to be accessed within your site, keeping your visitors interested and increasing the potential for lead capture. With additional coding, it sometimes can be possible to integrate the IDX search functionality into search processes within your WordPress site, although this typically requires software, plugins, or coding solutions beyond typical WordPress customization.

Implementing IDX on your site not only gives users a reason to visit, it also gives them a reason to stay. With consumers spending a significant amount of time on online property research prior to a buying decision, IDX can make the difference between having a real estate site and converting traffic into clients.

So what’s the secret? What’s the best plan for getting found by clients looking for what you offer, and capturing the lead? Search engine optimization is the smartest foundation for any online marketing campaign, besting all other approaches on cost, results, and strength. Bottom line, being on the first page is the holy grail of internet marketing, and it comes with many tall tales. Let’s brush aside the rumors and all the writing on the wall to look at the basic fundamentals of a successful real estate SEO campaign, and how we can use WordPress to make it all come together.

Keyword & Market Research

The first step in a SEO campaign is research. There are various online tools available for keyword research, some available for free, and all it takes is some time. The most effective method to finding good keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of your targeted visitor. What are they looking for? What would they type in to find this information? Concentrate on geographic specifics, as real estate is typically focused on an area. Find the most popular keywords, and create a list of 20-30 phrases you’ll use in your campaign. This will be the framework for most of your optimization techniques and will also serve as the ranking goals. For example, want to draw in potential home buyers in the Seattle area? Strive to be on the first page of Google for the keyword phrase “Seattle homes for sale” and you’ll know the rewards are coming.

Title and Description Optimization

When it comes to internal website optimization, ensuring your page title and description match your campaign and contain your keywords is vital. Use your researched keywords in your titles and descriptions throughout your site, and engines will naturally rank you for the phrase. Fortunately, WordPress is excellent at providing tools for optimizing your site for engines from the inside out, and specifically, the AgentPress WordPress Real Estate theme provides this advantage by including the feature standard with the theme. When optimizing the title and description, keep your users in mind. Don’t just stuff keywords where you can, but instead craft thoughtful sentences that appeal to both visitors and engines alike.

Article and Blog Post Writing

In this fast-paced internet revolution, if you stand still, you’re moving backwards. Same goes for SEO. Creating a site and optimizing it isn’t enough – you must consistently contribute to the engines and their thirst for content. In this respect, WordPress makes it easy by providing the most advanced blogging platform available. Fresh, relevant content goes very far in helping the engines find your site more often and ranking you higher, so take advantage of your site’s blog feature and write as much as you can. Again, use your researched keywords in the post titles and throughout the content, and keep your posting schedule routine. Having regular additions to the site are better than posting everything at once; we always want to give engines and users a reason to come back.

Community Content

Like I mentioned in my previous post on this topic, being a community resources is a smart way to appeal to users and provide them with what they’re looking for online. It’s similar with SEO, as search engines will index, or read this information, and classify you as a valuable site when it comes to geographic searches. Provide school and community data, recent trends in the neighborhood, or even maps and events, and you’re labeling your site through various channels, providing unlimited avenues for visitors and engines to find you, and potentially increasing conversions and rankings. All the information is out there, it’s simply a matter of putting it together in one place.

External Factors

Link popularity is a very sought-after stat in SEO. Essentially, this boils down to the number and value of the sites linking to your site, and is probably just as important as internal optimization factors when it comes to ranking. The best thing about link popularity is that it’s natural. Site owners will link to your site for good reason when you provide resources, data, and articles about a specific topic or market, and that builds your credibility with engines exponentially. You can also go out and participate in the online community and submit your site to various places that provide links to increase this stat, although it pays to be picky when choosing who you want to link with. Again, because WordPress is such an active community, taking advantage of that will help in building link popularity and driving your site to the first page.

Planning is Everything in Real Estate Marketing

The steps needed to capture these kind of leads are not simple. They involve good web design and development, a great user experience, and superb marketing. They often are very expensive, and very time-consuming. But in the end, results matter, and if the work pays off, it’s always worth it. Let’s focus on one of the most important pieces to this formula, being a community resource. This really serves two purposes: First, providing community information and material to your users is giving them something they need, for free. Second, with search engines, content is king. Provide comprehensive community information, and you’ll be rewarded. This is of course assuming we have the other pieces to the puzzle in place, but if we do, it’s the best thing we can do to garner more exposure, credibility, and eventually, leads. It’s not an immediate process, but the best marketing rarely happens overnight.

Researching Your Market is Also Key

How do we become a community resource? The first step is research. Use the search engines to your advantage, and conduct searches on the community you’d like to target. Keep notes on all the different websites you find, and bookmark those you might want to feature that may be of use to your users. Studies and statistics are always great for providing community overviews, so find sources of those and again, make notes. Other pieces of information that will help your research are maps, recent news, articles, and events. Keep all the data you find together, and prepare it for publishing.

The second step is to publish your research. There’s no better place to put everything you’ve found right onto your website. Create a community page or section, and build sub-pages off of that main page with different geographic areas or categories. Organize your information according to what a user would look for; it’s always better to keep the user in mind because they’re our most important visitor. Although engines are valuable, they’re not going to buy or sell a home with us. This step will involve some writing, so don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty; the more information the better. I prefer to summarize my community information on the main page, then have several paragraphs of writing and links to those researched websites on my sub-pages. Don’t forget to link the keywords in your content to relevant areas of your website and form a logical pathway for users to follow.

Stop Reading and Start Marketing

Lastly, it’s time to market yourself. Now that you have a real estate website filled with valuable community information, links, events, news, etc., you need to get it out to those who are looking for it. Thankfully, if you’ve setup your site correctly, the engines should find this information automatically. However, beyond those engines we need to get into directories, networks, forums and other places that will provide another place on the web for us to showcase ourselves. The easiest method for finding these places is again, the engines. Perform keyword searches for these places and follow each procedure to get your site listed. This can be a very long process, as each place has their own steps for getting listed, but the payoff is worth the work. When I’m performing this kind of marketing, I set a goal for myself. I’ll try to get into at least three different directories, forums, networks or similar each day, for a whole month. It can take 30 or so minutes, but at the end of 30 days I’ve manufactured almost 100 different areas to showcase my site, my community information, and what services I have to offer. From there, most of the exposure in the search engines takes care of itself.

Although this is just one step in the bigger picture of marketing, being a community resource can really pay dividends. Having the valuable content will be rewarded with better rankings and exposure in the engines, and users will thank you for putting everything they might need in one place.

Ask your typical real estate agent about their online presence, and they’ve certainly got a website. Ask your typical real estate agent about WordPress, and most won’t know what you’re talking about. If they have heard of WordPress, chances are they think it’s simply a blogging platform, maybe something to use in conjunction with their main site, if at all. However, WordPress can provide the kind of unmatched flexibility, affordability and power to provide a comprehensive, all-in-one real estate solution for even the most demanding of agents.

Real Estate and Web 2.0

Before we discuss the advantages of using WordPress for a real estate website, we have to determine what goes into a successful real estate site and marketing campaign in the age of Web 2.o. Gone are the days of monolithic marketing messages designed to convince the client of an agents’ prowness. You can’t expect to be taken seriously with a gaudy, clumsy website full of mismatched images and animated gifs.

Today, agents must master the ins and outs of marketing to the search engines and social media crowd, and they must also have a sleak, feature-rich website with all the bells and whistles, professionally designed to impress and convince that client that they know what they’re doing. Let’s face it, clients want someone savvy enough to represent themselves well online, especially those sellers who hand over their most important investment. Also, real estate agents are not hard to find. How you stand out in the crowd, and if you’re found at all, can make a world of difference.

The Fundamentals of a Real Estate Website

All in all, there are a few basic fundamentals for having a successful online real estate presence. On the marketing side, it includes great search engine marketing and optimization, social media integration, blogging, and general community and link building.

When it comes to a real estate website, it must look great, provide all the information people need, have a search function or IDX solution built in, show off those beautiful listings, and capture leads. A tall order indeed, but not impossible. This is where we turn to WordPress, because there is no other platform that can do all this at the same level of affordability, ease of use, and flexibility it offers.

The Advantage of WordPress and how it Pertains to Real Estate

• Marketing – As an original blog platform, WordPress naturally communicates extremely well with search engines. Pages and posts can be indexed by engines almost immediately, and there’s also a large amount of great plugins available to improve search engine optimization. Social Media can easily be integrated into WordPress sites, so there’s no excuse not to connect with potential clients through every medium. Setting up social networking and bookmarking is as simple as a few clicks. The ease in which posts and pages can be created lends itself to more frequent content creation, and as every SEO knows, content is king. Keeping your WordPress website updated with fresh, relevant information is a snap. Finally, blogging has proven to be a valuable tool to build an audience, rank higher, and capture leads, so we know WordPress has all the bases covered there. When it comes to marketing, WordPress is an out-of-the-box solution that has few competitors.
• Web Design – One of the best features of WordPress is the active theme community. Premium themes enable you to have a gorgeous site in just a few minutes. Many premium real estate themes come pre-loaded with great options for displaying listings and have additional features like photo galleries, maps and advanced search functionality. Customizing a theme is much easier than most people think, and in some cases it’s not even necessary to know any code at all. There are also plenty of resources out there for the do-it-yourselfer, as well as a wealth of affordable design and customization services. Setting up WordPress, installing it and hosting it is easier than most platforms, requiring just a few steps and some basic info. WordPress can even be used to host an IDX solution so users can search the MLS on your site. In summary, WordPress provides both the power and flexibility to achieve anything for your web design, while keeping the management and setup as simple as possible.
• Affordability – Finally, there’s the question of price. As an open-source platform, WordPress is free. You’ll have to pay for a domain and hosting, and professional themes and customization could also run extra, but when you compare it to any other solution, WordPress will always be more affordable.