Brokers and Their Web Partners: Anticipating Change
In light of impending alterations stemming from the settlement agreement in the anti-trust litigation, updates to broker and agent websites are inevitable. It is imperative to initiate planning for these modifications immediately. Do not assume that your vendor is already addressing these changes; it is crucial to initiate the conversation proactively. While it may seem like the sky is falling, there is potential for brighter outcomes.
"The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated." – Mark Twain
Two decades ago, the emergence of IDX and VOW sparked concerns about the future of real estate and the role of agents. However, the enduring value of real estate agents transcends mere gatekeeping for property searches. Despite fluctuations in commissions, driven by home value inflation (more commission per trade) and escalating referral fees to portals (less commission per trade), the necessity of real estate agents remains robust. Even during crises such as the housing bubble burst in 2008, real estate professionals proved indispensable, safeguarding home sellers through tumultuous times.
Facing another pivotal moment, the traditional practice of offering compensation to buyer's agents via the MLS is ending. While apprehension abounds, there are compelling reasons to believe in the enduring value of real estate agents. Consumer satisfaction with real estate services remains high, and alternative models like discount brokers and FSBO have failed to gain traction. The full-service approach continues to resonate with consumers and investors alike.
Key Rule Changes Impacting Broker Websites:
1. Publication of Buyer Agent Compensation
Listing brokers are the only ones allowed to display seller concessions on their websites, enhancing transparency. Collaborate with your vendor to effectively showcase these concessions, leveraging features to make listings more appealing. This presents an opportunity to drive increased traffic and capitalize on lead generation.
2. Requirement of Buyer Representation Agreements
Buyers must sign representation agreements before viewing properties. This mandate can serve as a catalyst for enhanced lead conversion. Brokers should focus on streamlining the process and offer seamless digital solutions for negotiating commissions and signing contracts.
Planning Ahead for Success
It is evident that proactive planning is essential to navigate these impending changes successfully. With the industry likely to undergo simultaneous transformations, the time to act is now. Collaborate with industry experts like WAV Group and your real estate technology vendors to devise strategies that align with the evolving landscape. Waiting until the changes take effect could put your brokerage at a disadvantage. Strategic planning sessions can provide clarity and direction, ensuring readiness for the forthcoming shifts.
In conclusion, while change may be daunting, it also presents opportunities for innovation and growth. Embrace the evolving landscape and position yourself for success by planning ahead, and staying ahead of your competition.
What's at Risk?
Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Movoto, and Redfin are all brokers with billions in revenue at risk. They have robust buyer agent networks, but are prohibited from displaying the seller's concession of listing brokers (except Redfin). Only the listing firm can do that. Not sure how their business model changes, but they are planning.
P.S. Does the QR code on your yard sign take you to the landing page of the listing that displays the seller concessions? What about your virtual tours, or automated marketing tools for new listings, pendings, solds, etc.? You need to evaluate everything to get ahead of this. It is an enormous project that will take time. Start now.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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How to Structure URLs for Your Real Estate Website: A Guide
Welcome to the world of real estate website URLs — it's a bit like a digital maze where every slash and dot has a role to play. But don't worry, we're here to be your friendly guides through this online journey.
Imagine us as your digital map, helping you navigate the twists and turns of web addresses.
Together, we'll make understanding real estate website URLs as easy as a walk in the park. So, let's embark on this adventure with a simple and smile-inducing guide to tackle those sometimes-tricky website addresses!
Why is a Well-Structured URL Important for Real Estate Websites?
Having a well-structured URL is crucial for both search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience. A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, serves as the address of a webpage on the internet. It not only helps search engines understand the content of a page, but also impacts how users perceive and interact with your website.
A well-structured URL provides clear and concise information about the content of a webpage. It should be descriptive, relevant, and easy to read. By optimizing your URL structure, you can improve your website;s SEO and make it more user-friendly for potential homebuyers or sellers.
Let's dive deeper into the components of a URL and explore best practices for real estate websites.
Components of a URL
Let's break down the different components of a URL. A typical URL consists of several parts, each serving a specific purpose:
Protocol: The protocol determines how data is transmitted between a web browser and a web server. The most common protocol is http:// or its secure counterpart https://.
Domain: The domain is the main part of a URL and represents the specific website you're visiting. In the case of a real estate website, the domain could be something like www.realestatecompany.com.
Subdomain: A subdomain is a part of the main domain and precedes it with a dot. It can be used to organize different sections of a website or target specific markets. For example, blog.realestatecompany.com could be the subdomain for a blog section.
Path: The path refers to the specific location of a webpage within a website. It's often represented by a series of slashes ("/") and can include directories, categories, or individual pages. For instance, /listings/properties could lead to a page showcasing available properties.
Parameters: Parameters are additional information included in a URL that provides instructions or data to the webpage. They are usually represented by question marks ("?") and ampersands ("&"). For example, /listings/properties?city=NewYork could filter the properties based on the city of New York.
Now that we have a clear understanding of the components of a URL, let's move on to the next steps — how we can optimize it for real estate websites.
Ways to Optimize URL Structure
To optimize your real estate website's URL structure, consider the following best practices:
Incorporating keywords in your URL
Including relevant keywords in your URL can significantly improve the visibility of your real estate website in search engine results.
When search engines crawl and index your website, they analyze the URL to determine its relevance to a user's search query. By incorporating keywords related to your real estate niche or specific property listings, you increase the chances of ranking higher in search results.
For example, instead of using a generic URL like /properties/12345, consider utilizing a keyword-rich URL such as /luxury-villas-for-sale-in-malibu. This not only helps search engines understand the content of the page, but also provides potential visitors with a clear indication of what they can expect.
If you want more information about keyword strategy of your website, check out this article: Real Estate Keywords.
Make it easy to read and understand
It's crucial to create user-friendly URLs that are easy to read and understand. A user-friendly URL should provide a clear indication of the content on the page and help visitors navigate your real estate website more efficiently.
Avoid using long, complex URLs with unnecessary characters or numbers. Instead, opt for shorter, descriptive URLs that accurately represent the content of the page. For instance, a URL like /listings/condos/central-park-view is much more user-friendly than /listings/12345?property_id=6789.
URL structure listings and property pages
Real estate websites often feature a vast number of listings and property pages. To optimize the URL structure for these pages, it's crucial to follow a logical hierarchy and incorporate relevant keywords. For instance, consider structuring your URL as follows: /listings/city/category/property-name.
This structure provides clear navigation paths and helps search engines understand the context of each listing. Additionally, incorporating relevant keywords, such as the city name and property type, can boost your website's visibility in local search results.
More Tips to Maximize Your URLs' Effect on SEO
Keep it simple and concise: Long and complicated URLs can be difficult for users to remember and share. Aim for shorter URLs that accurately describe the content of the page. For example, www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/condos-for-sale is much simpler and more user-friendly than www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/listings/condos/buy/marketplace/sale.
Use hyphens to separate words: Hyphens are preferred over underscores or spaces in URLs because they are more readable to both users and search engines. For instance, www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/3-bedroom-homes is more readable than www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/3bedroomhomes or www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/3_bedroom_homes.
Avoid using unnecessary characters: Special characters, such as exclamation marks or ampersands, can make URLs appear cluttered and confusing. Stick to alphanumeric characters and hyphens to ensure compatibility across different platforms and devices.
Be consistent in URL structure: Consistency in URL structure not only helps users navigate your website more easily, but also assists search engines in understanding the hierarchy of your site. For example, if your main categories are "buy" and "rent," use a consistent structure like www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/buy/property-type and www.yourrealestatewebsite.com/rent/property-type.
That's it! Utilize these simple tips and tricks to help improve your website visibility in search results.
If you enjoyed this article, you might like these two, too:
Optimizing Crawl Budget for Real Estate Websites
SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions for Real Estate SEO
Thank you — let's keep SEO-ing!
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
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Optimizing Crawl Budget for Real Estate Websites
In the fast-paced world of real estate, having a website that is easily discoverable by search engines is crucial for attracting more visitors and staying ahead of the competition.
One key aspect that can significantly impact your website's visibility is its crawl budget. This guide aims to provide you with effective strategies to improve your website's crawl budget and ultimately enhance your real estate SEO.
What Is a Crawl Budget?
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages search engines are willing to crawl on a website within a given timeframe. It is determined by the search engine's algorithms and is influenced by various factors such as the website's authority, relevance, and overall structure. Essentially, the crawl budget dictates how efficiently search engines can discover and index the content on a website. Optimizing the crawl budget involves ensuring that search engine bots prioritize crawling and indexing the most important and relevant pages on a website.
Understanding the concept of crawl budget is crucial for real estate websites, as it directly impacts their visibility in search engine results. By optimizing the crawl budget, real estate websites can ensure that their most valuable content is effectively crawled and indexed, leading to improved organic traffic and higher search rankings.
Importance of Optimizing Crawl Budget For Real Estate Websites
In the highly competitive real estate market, the visibility of property listings, neighborhood guides, and other relevant content is critical for attracting potential clients. Optimizing the crawl budget for real estate websites ensures that search engines prioritize crawling and indexing the most valuable and relevant pages, such as property listings, neighborhood profiles, and informative blog posts. By effectively managing the crawl budget, real estate websites can enhance their overall SEO performance.
Moreover, with the ever-changing nature of real estate inventory and market trends, ensuring that new listings and updated content are promptly crawled and indexed is essential for maintaining a competitive edge. By optimizing the crawl budget, real estate websites can ensure that search engines promptly discover their latest property listings and market insights.
Now a question must be answered! How to optimize the crawl budget for your website?
Improving Site Structure for Better Crawl Budget Allocation
The structure of a real estate website plays a crucial role in determining how search engine bots prioritize crawling and indexing its pages. By organizing the site's architecture logically and hierarchically, real estate websites can influence how the crawl budget is allocated across different sections and content types. Implementing a clear and intuitive site structure not only enhances user experience but also facilitates efficient crawling and indexing by search engines.
Utilizing a flat and organized hierarchy, real estate websites can ensure that important pages, such as property listings, neighborhood guides, and market insights, are easily accessible and prioritized for crawling. Additionally, implementing internal linking strategies can further guide search engine bots to discover and index the most valuable and relevant content, ultimately improving crawl budget allocation and SEO performance.
Utilizing Robots.txt and XML Sitemaps for Crawl Budget Optimization
Robots.txt and XML sitemaps are powerful tools for controlling how search engine bots crawl and index a real estate website's content. By strategically utilizing Robots.txt directives, real estate websites can instruct search engine bots to prioritize crawling certain sections while excluding less important or duplicate content. This can help optimize crawl budget allocation by ensuring that search engine bots focus on discovering and indexing the most valuable and relevant pages.
In addition, creating and regularly updating XML sitemaps allows real estate websites to provide search engines with a comprehensive roadmap of their content, guiding search engine bots to prioritize crawling and indexing essential pages. By leveraging robots.txt and XML sitemaps, real estate websites can effectively influence crawl budget allocation and ensure that their most critical content is promptly discovered and indexed.
Managing URL Parameters and Duplicate Content
Real estate websites often feature dynamic content and URL parameters, such as search filters and sorting options, which can lead to the generation of numerous variations of the same content. Managing URL parameters and addressing duplicate content issues is crucial for optimizing the crawl budget and preventing search engine bots from wasting resources on crawling and indexing redundant pages.
Implementing best practices for handling URL parameters, such as using canonical tags and configuring URL parameter settings in Google Search Console, can help real estate websites consolidate the indexing of similar content variations, ultimately improving crawl budget allocation. Additionally, regularly auditing and resolving duplicate content issues through proper canonicalization and redirects can further enhance crawl budget optimization and SEO performance.
By using site audit reports, you will have a great sight of how many of your pages are crucial for your indexing and ranking. Visit our article titled Site Audit Report For Real Estate Websites for more info about how to generate and use these reports.
Monitoring and Analyzing Crawl Budget Utilization
Continuous monitoring and analysis of crawl budget utilization are essential for real estate websites to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. By utilizing tools such as Google Search Console and third-party crawlers, real estate websites can gain valuable insights into how search engine bots are crawling and indexing their content, allowing them to make informed decisions regarding crawl budget optimization.
Analyzing crawl data, identifying crawl inefficiencies, and addressing crawl errors are pivotal for maintaining an optimal crawl budget allocation. By proactively monitoring and optimizing crawl budget utilization, real estate websites can ensure that their most critical content is effectively discovered and indexed by search engines, ultimately improving their online visibility and SEO performance.
Monitoring Google Search Console and other SEO tools' statistics might not be for everyone. You can seek help from professionals and real estate SEO experts.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
In conclusion, optimizing the crawl budget is a crucial aspect of improving the visibility and SEO performance of real estate websites. By understanding the concept of crawl budget and implementing effective strategies such as improving site structure, utilizing robots.txt and XML sitemaps, managing URL parameters, and monitoring crawl budget utilization, real estate websites can enhance their online presence and attract more potential clients.
Real estate professionals need to prioritize crawl budget optimization as part of their broader SEO strategy, ensuring that their most valuable content and listings are promptly discovered and indexed by search engines. Ultimately, All real estate agents want to have their property pages displayed in search results.
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
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The Power of Data Integration in Real Estate Listings: A Path to Success
A Paradigm Shift in Real Estate
As technology advances, so do the expectations of today's home buyers. They crave detailed, informative, and insightful content when browsing property listings. The days of merely listing the basics, such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, are long gone. Real estate brokers and agents need to recognize this shift in buyer behavior and adapt accordingly.
A Partnership That's Changing the Game
To illustrate the power of data integration in real estate listings, we turn to a fascinating partnership between Sotheby's and Local Logic. In a recent YouTube discussion with Rob Love, Director of Marketing Technology at Sotheby's, we gained insights into how this partnership is revolutionizing the real estate brokerage website experience.
Sotheby's, a renowned name in the real estate industry, has joined forces with Local Logic, a technology company specializing in location-based insights, to provide home buyers with a wealth of contextual information about the homes they're considering. This partnership is a prime example of how real estate professionals are embracing the data-driven future of the industry.
The Value of Contextual Information
So what exactly is the value of contextual information in real estate listings? In the words of Rob Love: "The key to keeping potential buyers engaged lies in the depth of information provided on the listing detail page." Today's home buyers are not just interested in the property itself but also the neighborhood, nearby amenities, schools, transportation options, and more. Contextual information bridges the gap between a property listing and the lifestyle it offers.
Imagine a potential buyer searching for a family-friendly neighborhood. With the integration of contextual data, they can quickly identify neighborhoods with the best schools, parks, and safety ratings. This not only makes the search process more efficient but also builds trust and confidence in the agent's understanding of each property listing.
AI and Data-Driven Insights
The discussion with Rob Love also touched upon the exciting intersection of contextual information and cutting-edge AI technology. AI can analyze vast amounts of data to provide personalized recommendations to home buyers. It can identify properties that align with a buyer's preferences, taking into account their lifestyle, needs, and desires.
As AI continues to evolve, it offers a glimpse into the future of property search methods. With the integration of AI-driven insights, real estate professionals can provide a level of service that was previously unimaginable.
Propelling Prospective Buyers Forward
The integration and curation of data on listing detail pages do more than just attract potential buyers; they also propel buyers further down the sales funnel. When buyers find the information they need, they are more likely to engage with the listing and ultimately reach out to agents for inquiries or schedule property visits. This not only streamlines the buying process but also increases the chances of successful transactions.
Reevaluate Your Technology Stack
The real estate industry is evolving, and buyers are demanding more details than ever before. To stay ahead in this competitive market, real estate brokers and agents must recognize the importance of integrating and curating more data in their listing detail pages. The partnership between Sotheby's and Local Logic is a prime example of how this approach can enrich the real estate brokerage website experience and lead to more conversions.
By offering valuable contextual information and harnessing cutting-edge AI technology, brokers and agents can not only attract potential buyers but also provide them with the insights they need to make informed decisions.
It's time to embrace the data-driven future of real estate and ensure your brokerage is positioned for success. Don't miss your opportunity to adapt, thrive, and lead the way in the ever-evolving world of real estate.
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Want to Get More Quality Leads? Use Client Feedback to Refine Your Website
Thank you to Real Estate Webmasters for sponsoring this article on RE Technology:
In the real estate industry, user feedback is paramount to a Realtor's success. It's not just a mundane business process, but an invaluable wealth of information that can elevate your website, PPC, and SEO strategies. Realtor websites consider a lot of factors, but taking a user-centric approach will never lead you astray.
User Feedback Benefits
Listening to your clients' voices can reveal areas for improvement, hidden insights, and effective solutions. Additionally, showing your genuine attentiveness to client feedback can foster loyalty, resulting in better reputation, increased referrals, and repeat business. Remember to regularly schedule feedback sessions to be up to date with your clients' reviews and concerns.
An example testimonial for Smith & Associates
Another benefit of listening to user feedback is being able to refine your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns. By understanding the needs of your clients, you can fine-tune your strategies to accurately and effectively target your prospective audience. For example, if your feedback reveals that most of your clients are searching for eco-friendly homes, you can adjust the keywords, landing page and ad copies you use for PPC and SEO.
Being attuned to your clients' feelings and preferences bring a lot of benefits, including the ability to create a user-friendly and effective website. Typically, your website serves as the initial point of contact with prospects, showing how critical having a user-centric website is to your success. By heeding your clients' feedback, you'll know which customizations to implement, such as virtual tours, localized property listings, or a mortgage calculator. This will allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and increase user engagement.
An active PPC campaign's four-step process.
Tools for Feedback
Thankfully, there are tools available like REW CRM that can help with facilitating feedback. Gathering qualitative data by emailing surveys and questionnaires is made easier with REW CRM, while other tracking and analytics tools can be used for collecting quantitative data. This information will uncover client preferences and even patterns that will guide your decisions. For example, a high bounce rate may mean that your page is not offering anything valuable to visitors.
It is essential to gather qualitative and quantitative data to get a 360-degree view of your client's sentiments. Don't forget to update your surveys to get relevant and timely information.
Conclusion
Ignoring user feedback is one of the worst mistakes a Realtor can make. By considering every review and critique, you prove your commitment to excellence to your clients, earning their trust and loyalty. Use feedback as a compass towards success and witness your business grow.
This is a summarized version of a blog originally published on Real Estate Webmasters' website.
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10 features of the best real estate websites (and why they're great)
Today, nearly every real estate journey begins online. As a real estate broker, it's your job to ensure your brokerage, offices, and real estate agents have great websites for showcasing your property listings, sharing your expertise, and growing your business.
Simply having a website probably won't get you the results you're looking for. The best real estate websites have features that make them findable on search engines, easy to navigate for buyers and sellers, and easy for agents to update whenever they need to.
Here's our list of the 10 essential features all the best real estate websites have and how they help make your agents and your brokerage successful.
1. A stellar user experience
User experience (UX) refers to how visitors interact with your website. The best real estate websites have a good user experience that encourages visitors to stay on your site longer, explore more of its pages, and return to it again the next time they need something. A few of the areas that make for good UX are:
Simple and easy navigation
Homebuyers and sellers are coming to your website for one reason: to learn more about real estate. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to find what they are looking for. This means a logical structure, clearly labeled buttons, and interactions that users either already know, or can learn instinctively with little to no effort.
Clear, easy-to-understand words
Your current and potential clients are smart, informed people. But real estate is a jargon-heavy industry full of terms that are unfamiliar to the average person. Most adults read at around an eighth grade reading level, which means you should use short, simple sentences, avoid unnecessarily technical words, and provide unambiguous calls to action. There are lots of tools online to help you check your website's reading level and adjust it for greater accessibility and usability.
Responsive design
Responsive design refers to digital design that accounts for all the different mediums we use to consume content, so your website always looks great. Your visitors might be visiting on a computer, a phone, or a tablet; and each one has a display that's a different size and resolution, with different picture quality, contrast, and more. Responsive design means your site will look just as good on an old desktop computer as it does on the latest smartphone, and on everything else in between.
Contrasting colors and fonts
We spend a large part of our days looking at screens, which can put a lot of strain on our eyes. We also all have different visual abilities, which means that for some people, certain colors are difficult to read. Thankfully, there are Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that help you check whether the colors on your website are easy for a maximum of people to read, based on a specific, scientifically tested contrast ratio. If not, you can make adjustments to improve the usability of your site.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of elements that contribute to a great user experience, but a few of the basics that the best real estate websites always have covered.
2. Built-in search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making your site appear higher on the search engine results page (SERP). Having your brokerage or agent sites appear in the first position on your clients' favorite search engine is an excellent way to drive more leads to your website without having to buy them.
But SEO is easy to overlook because it isn't something you can see. The first step is ensuring your website is built in a way that is easy for search engines to crawl and index. It needs to be fast, findable, and contain the proper codes and tags. The next is making sure your site has content that answers searchers' questions. It can be a lot to take on, but it will pay off in the long run.
3. High-quality IDX
Internet Data Exchange (IDX) refers to how real estate brokers and agents share each other's listings on their websites. There are a variety of different IDX providers out there whose job it is to ensure you can share not just your seller listings but all the listings in your area, so your team can drum up buyer leads, too.
Some IDX providers overpromise and underdeliver when it comes to their offering. Since visitors are primarily visiting your site to view listings, make sure your site has fully integrated and reliable IDX feeds.
4. Versatile property search
Sure, visitors are on your site to look at listings, but once they're there, how do you help them find what they're looking for?
The answer is a versatile property search feature that allows them to filter down available listings by location, property characteristics, and budget. If your property search is clunky or incomplete, if listing photos aren't displaying beautifully or loading quickly, or if users can't save their searches for later, there might not be a later.
5. Lead capture
Once you've got visitors on your site, you'll want to provide plenty of ways to stay in touch. This first means making your Contact form easy to find and use. Next, it means providing resources on your site that visitors will want in exchange for their contact information. These could be useful homebuying or selling guides for your local market, free home valuation tools, savable property searches, recommended properties, chatbots, and more.
Your website is just one of your lead touchpoints, but it's an increasingly important one because of how many people start their property search online. For help getting all your lead touchpoints working together, check out our ebook.
6. CRM integration
Once you've captured a valuable lead, don't let it go cold. Studies have shown that leads generally go with whoever responds first, but real estate leads are special in that it can sometimes take months or even years for a lead to convert.
This is where a CRM can be especially helpful for nurturing those leads until they're ready to take action. It's easier to keep a lead warm than it is to revive a cold one, and a CRM can take the effort and guesswork out of lead follow-ups with helpful automations and pre-built nurture campaigns that are sure to get you results.
7. Tiered website structure
As a broker, you want to get maximum exposure for your brand, which means maximizing traffic to your website. Web traffic can have a snowball effect: the more engagement your site gets, the more traffic search engines will send your way.
In addition to SEO, one way to boost brokerage website traffic is to use a tiered website structure. With these tiers, you have your brokerage site, then your office sites, then your agent sites. When properly set up, the traffic to your agent and office sites can have a positive effect on your brokerage site, too, boosting organic traffic and SERP rankings.
8. Blog posts or articles
Blog posts serve a variety of functions on real estate websites. They help you showcase your expertise about the homebuying and selling process, feature information about neighborhoods in your community, and share news about your brokerage, all while helping to answer searchers' questions and ultimately drive more traffic to your website.
You can read more about the benefits of blogging for real estate professionals in a previous post and learn more about automated blog posting to help keep website content fresh.
9. No-code agent website builder
Agent adoption is always a challenge when it comes to brokerage technology. And very few agents have web development expertise. This is why no-code, drag-and-drop website editors are a useful way to boost adoption, make website updates easy, and allow agents to personalize their sites without straying too far from your brokerage's brand identity.
10. Reliable, high-quality hosting
Now we're down to the nuts and bolts. Much of what we've talked about above is meaningless if your website is always going down because of a bad host. Good hosts provide better security, back up your site in case something accidentally gets deleted, monitor your site for anomalies, support better loading times, and ultimately help your brokerage grow your business through a robust online presence. Hosting is a necessary expense and one the best websites don't scrounge on.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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How to compete with the big portals in your market: Parcel-centric SEO
How can the average brokerage or real estate agent compete with big names like Zillow, Trulia, or Realtor.com when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) for home listings? Compass, which was founded in 2012, has just surpassed both Realtor.com and Trulia in certain markets by pursuing a strategy that's available to anyone who has a real estate-related website. It's all about paying close attention to long-tail keyword search opportunity and developing SEO around parcel data before the home gets listed on the market instead of waiting until you have the listing to create a property-specific page. Victor Lund at WAV Group explains in more detail.
WAV Group believes that search engine optimization (SEO) around long-tail address search is a best practice. It is not necessarily the thing that is going to drive massive lead generation and sales, but it is the right thing to do.
Your site must be parcel-centric
For many years, real estate brokerages have ignored a key principle of SEO. Namely, brokers need to build websites on a public record parcel foundation by creating a web page for all properties. You layer MLS records on top of those pages by adding the MLS information when it becomes available.
Portals SEO listings before they are listed
Because brokerages have ignored this strategy, sites like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, Trulia and Movoto have carved out an advantage. SEO provides free consumer traffic to your website. Compass has joined this fleet of companies who are developing SEO on off-market properties. The biggest benefit is that when the listing comes on the market, you have already invested in SEO for that property.
A big part of SEO success is being "above the fold." Meaning that your company's webpage for that property address can be clicked without scrolling. I did a handful of searches on properties in different areas around the country and found that "Compass.com" pages were as high as No. three on the list – above the fold! Their results seem to be better in markets where they operate, i.e., better in Silicon Valley than Niagara Falls.
What's not on the page?
Compass decided not to provide an AVM on the value of the property, but they do display the accessor data. WAV Group believes that this is a mistake. We would advise that they should show three AVMs and show the AVM range, rather than a specific number, and use this as an opportunity to generate a listing lead by creating a call-to-action to meet with an agent to understand the home value. Even Zillow shows a range on the Zestimate.
What's on the page?
Having an image is very important. Compass uses Google Street View. They highlight the bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, year built, lot size. They do a nice job of mentioning the county and linking to a county landing page where you can see the county boundary. They also add home facts and school information.
Want help?
WAV Group is working on multiple projects today to move brokers to a parcel-centric platform – meaning that their website and other consumer facing tools (including agent tools) adopt this foundation of records for every property. The reason why products like MLS-Touch from CoreLogic have reached over one million users in just a year is because agents and their clients want to see all of the property information. I would love to see MLSs get behind this and become a conduit for the data. These records should be on the same server as the MLS records. If they were combined, that would be even better.
Compass has made great strides in pursuit of this strategy in a short period of time. There is plenty more that they can do on these pages. They can market their mortgage services, allow homeowners to register to monitor their home value and nearby homes for sale, cross market their mobile apps, and more. All of these features are on Redfin – our favorite site for off-market listings. We will keep an eye on future releases at Compass.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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Rob Thomson Waterfront Properties Invests in Global MLS and AI
As the market shifts and AI becomes more of a focus, a few true leaders of our space are leading the charge and investing well ahead of the curve in AI and in initiatives like Real Estate Webmasters' new global MLS platform, ListingsByLocation.com.
Rob Thomson of Waterfront Properties in Jupiter Florida is one such leader. "We've been working with Real Estate Webmasters since 2005 and they have always come to us with new, innovative ideas that help us stay ahead of the curve. When we heard about the global MLS and new AI initiatives for our CRM, the answer was easy: We want in!"
This past July, Morgan Carey, Real Estate Webmasters' CEO, flew into Jupiter in order to spend several days with the entire waterfront properties team. The goal was to ensure the new platform (which will include the new REWPert AI bot) is perfectly tuned to the needs of the brokerage, and includes new reporting and follow-up features that will help the Waterfront agents succeed in a challenging and ultra-competitive luxury market.
In a recent article from The Real Deal, Rob Thomson said, "AI is the future of marketing. We recognize this and are proud to be the very first brokerage to leverage the new REWPert technologies combined with a highly customized CRM that is specifically tuned for selling luxury listings in the Florida market. There is no other system like it and our agents have a significant advantage over our competitors because of our proprietary systems."
Morgan Carey, CEO of Real Estate Webmasters, said, "The market is getting tougher. The global MLS will allow companies like Waterfront Properties to increase the exposure of their listings to reach a much wider audience, and having a new CRM with AI will allow their agents to do an even better job following up on all the inquiries we're generating."
It's a rare thing (especially in this market) that a brokerage is willing to make these kinds of investments in new technologies. This story is ongoing and we will be tracking the progress here at RE Technology. Look for updates as the project progresses.
For more information on Real Estate Webmasters, visit www.realestatewebmasters.com. To contact Rob Thomson, visit www.waterfront-properties.com or robthomson.com.
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How Brokers Can Increase Visibility and Traffic for Their Real Estate Website
In today's digital era, it's a known fact that having a strong online presence is essential for any business, including real estate brokers.
With the majority of homebuyers and sellers starting their property search online, optimizing your real estate website for search engines can give you a competitive edge.
In this post, we'll explore some fun and effective ways to boost your website's visibility and drive more traffic to your listings.
Keywords: The Secret to Search Engine Success
The cornerstones of search engine optimization (SEO) are keywords. Make a list of potential keywords that clients might use to find properties in your area to start. Think outside the box and take into account nearby facilities, well-known neighborhood names, and nearby landmarks. Include these words naturally in the page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags on your website. But keep in mind that search engines dislike it when you stuff your content with keywords.
Engaging and Informative Content
Make sure your website is more than just a list of properties for sale. Add some flavor to it with interesting and educational content that displays your expertise and fosters visitor trust. Write blog posts about the neighborhood's real estate market, offering advice to buyers and sellers as well as insights into prevailing trends in the area. Visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer when you offer useful content, which lowers your bounce rate and improves your search engine ranking.
Be Social Media Savvy
You cannot afford to ignore social media in the age of viral videos and cat memes. Make a business profile on well-known websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Share eye-catching pictures of properties, virtual tours, and educational posts to draw followers and spark interest. Respond to comments and messages from your audience as soon as possible to engage them. Social media platforms are not only excellent for increasing brand recognition, but they can also increase website traffic through shared links.
Get Local: Claim Your Google My Business Listing
Google My Business is your best friend when it comes to small businesses in your area. For your business to appear in local search results and on Google Maps, claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. Give complete details such as your address, phone number, working hours, and an enticing summary of your services. To increase your visibility and credibility, encourage pleased customers to leave reviews. Keep in mind that online reviews are nearly as trusted as personal recommendations!
Embrace the Power of Visuals
Since a picture speaks a thousand words, visuals are crucial in real estate. Use professional, high-quality photography you've invested in to highlight your listings. Give prospective buyers a preview of what to expect by including virtual tours, 360-degree videos, or even drone footage. Make your images more search engine friendly by giving them descriptive filenames and alt tags. Who doesn't enjoy scrolling through breathtaking pictures of ideal homes, after all?
Mobile Optimization: Don't Forget the Thumb Generation
Mobile optimization is essential in a time when smartphones are essentially an extension of our hands. To seamlessly adapt to various screen sizes, your real estate website should be responsive. For mobile users, a clumsy, non-responsive website can be a major turnoff, making them leave and visit a rival's website in its place. Aim for an intuitive user experience that enables visitors to browse listings, get in touch with you, and arrange viewings on their mobile devices.
To conclude, by following these fun and effective tips for optimizing your real estate website for search engines, you can increase your visibility and attract more potential buyers and sellers. Remember to keep your content engaging, utilize the power of social media, claim your Google My Business listing, showcase stunning visuals, and prioritize mobile optimization. Embrace the digital landscape, and let your website shine like a diamond in the vast realm of real estate. Happy optimizing!
To view the original article, visit the Transactly blog.
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How Your Hosting Provider Affects Your Website Speed
Having the right hosting platform for your real estate website can drastically improve its performance and attract more website traffic. That is why we will discuss how your hosting provider can affect your website speed.
Why Is Hosting Important for Your Real Estate Website?
Having the right hosting is crucial for a real estate website. Why? Because it affects your site's overall performance and your page's load speed. With a professional hosting platform and a well-designed website, you can make a good first impression on your potential clients. By making a good first impression, you can ensure that your website receives more visitors, attracts more prospective clients, and keeps the old ones coming back.
How Your Hosting Provider Might Be Affecting Your Site Speed and Performance
There are various ways that your hosting provider might be affecting your site speed and performance. One thing to look for is your site's bandwidth. Your bandwidth affects how much data your website hosting can transfer from page to page. While researching hostings, make sure to check to see how much bandwidth is available. If you lack bandwidth, restrictions on how much data can be accessed or transferred from your site will be applied.
How to Tell If Your Hosting Needs to Be Upgraded
We recommend choosing a high-quality hosting platform for your real estate website to avoid having site performance issues. Below, we have outlined ways in which you can tell if you need to upgrade your hosting provider:
Your Website Is Lagging and Has Performance Issues
Your page speed is the best way to tell if your hosting is not the right fit for you. Does your website take too long to load? Does it crash easily? If any of the above applies to you, you might need to start thinking of upgrading your hosting server.
Clients Are Complaining About Your Website
If you often receive emails from clients complaining about your website crashing or not working properly, there is your cue. A professional website should be easy for your clients to access at all times. If you are getting complaints about your website, you might have to rethink your hosting choice.
You No Longer Get as Much Traffic
Have you noticed a significant decrease in your website traffic? The could be your website hosting server. Speed affects your website's SEO. If your website takes too long to load, people are more likely to look for listings elsewhere.
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
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6 Most Common Problems with Brokerage Websites and How to Fix Them
Sometimes even the most experienced brokers and national franchises can fall into these website traps. In this post, we'll cover the most common problems we've observed with these sites and share tips for how to fix them and set your brokerage up for online success.
Today, all buyers and sellers make their first move in the same place: online. Your website is your digital storefront, helping you put your business (and your listings) front and center. It helps you showcase your brand and, most importantly, funnel organic leads to your team. But common problems can keep your website from performing at its best, and these problems are holding you back!
There are lots of do-it-yourself and bargain website platforms out there, and lots of brokerages use them to create their websites. But even brokerage websites created by experienced web designers fall short when it comes to real estate. Let's take a look at what we mean.
Problem #1: Creating a website, then trying to make it fit your brokerage—not the other way around
Brokers know that at a bare minimum, their websites need to be able to do certain things:
Attract buyer and seller leads
Display listings
Provide a clear path for getting in touch
Showcase the brokerage's brand and team
The problem is that out-of-the-box website solutions don't usually come standard with everything brokerages need. That means brokerages need to get their designers to use a variety of complicated tricks and unreliable third-party plug-ins to make their sites. This is especially true for listing data and property search, and CRM functionality. After all, the leads your website generate are useless if your team can't action them.
Solution: Using a purpose-built real estate website platform from the beginning will help brokers avoid the bulk of these performance problems.
Problem #2: Not leveraging office or agent sites correctly (or effectively)
Brokers know their sales team is their greatest asset. So why don't they also leverage the power of agent websites?
Many brokerages don't provide agent websites for a variety of reasons, from complexity to cost to the tech savviness of their teams. But the benefits of properly built (and linked) agent sites can have a major impact on brokers' business.
When every agent has a website that is properly linked to your brokerage site, traffic to their websites and listings has a direct benefit on your website, helping to boost traffic, share your brand more widely, and get more eyes on your listings.
Solution: The best brokerage sites are built with office and agent websites in mind and provide easy (often low-code or no-code) functionality that allows agents to customize their sites while aligning with the brokerages' brand.
Problem #3: Neglecting (or ignoring) real estate SEO best practices
You've probably read or heard about how important search engine optimization, or SEO, is for your business, but either never learned more or have no idea where to start.
Solution: There are things you can do today to improve your SEO, but true SEO success comes from building a website with SEO in mind from the bottom up. Ranking high in search engines means paying attention to hundreds of tiny details that add up over time. It can be hard to dominate in the search engine arena if you've been neglecting it for too long without an overhaul, which is why not paying enough attention to SEO is one of the biggest problems we see when it comes to brokerage websites.
Problem #4: Infrequent or poor-quality website updates
Consumers (and search engines) crave the latest and greatest. This applies to so many things, but for websites, we're referring to listings, market and pricing information, and even the welcome message on your home page. The dilemma is that brokers and their teams are busy, and it takes precious time to make good website updates.
Solution: Maintain a high-quality blog about real estate, your regional market, or your niche (e.g., luxury real estate). Better yet, there are ways to insert dynamic content in your website with a content management system that updates regularly and automatically, allowing you to keep your website fresh without lifting a finger. When you work with the right website provider, features like these are already built in.
Problem #5: Poor listing presentation and low-quality IDX/VOW
Most DIY or budget website options do not provide listing data themselves, putting you and your website at the mercy of a third-party plugin. The issue is that these plugins frequently don't work well, putting your business at risk. If a consumer lands on your site and can't find what they're looking for (homes for sale in your area), they'll quickly go elsewhere. Is it really worth the risk?
Solution: It pays to work with a website provider with the best data feeds, and not only that, one that is recognized for the quality and comprehensiveness of its data, with best-in-class refresh times, so you always have the latest listings.
Problem #6: Bad plugins galore
Depending on where and how you built your website, you might need third-party plugins for everything we've already mentioned above, plus CRM and more. The result is a Frankenstein website, with odds and ends that were never made to work together. The outcome? A poor user experience, a low SEO ranking, and a site that doesn't deliver the ROI your team needs and deserves.
Solution: Find a website provider that has as many of the features and functionality you need built right into the website or with native, high-quality integrations with the programs you know and love. You can even find ways to integrate your site with your existing ERP, TMS, CRM, and more.
Learn more about how a Constellation1 website could power your brokerage.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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Redfin Becomes First Real Estate Site to Add Energy Cost Estimates for U.S. Homes
Redfin has added energy cost estimates for more than 85 million homes across the U.S. Through a partnership with energy software company WattBuy, consumers can now use Redfin to better understand the costs of living in a home, including utility bills that can be tricky to predict but meaningfully contribute to a homeowner's total monthly costs.
Each eligible Redfin home detail page now displays an estimate for the home's monthly electricity usage, bill, and seasonal changes in electricity usage and cost. It also estimates how much homeowners could save on long-term energy costs by installing solar panels. The feature is located directly below Redfin's existing payment calculator, allowing buyers to better understand and compare financial costs between homes and helping homeowners discover whether investing in solar energy systems could result in long-term savings.
"It's important for house hunters to understand how much it's going to cost to live in a given home," said Redfin Chief Growth Officer Christian Taubman. "Our research shows that many movers assume their utility costs will be similar in their new home, but that's sometimes way off-base. By showing this information from WattBuy for every home, we're giving homebuyers the information they need to make better decisions. We're also letting millions of homeowners know how much they can bring down their utility costs by installing solar panels."
Redfin now displays energy cost information on both for-sale and off-market homes and the experience is tuned to each different type of user. The feature highlights estimated electricity costs for buyers visiting for-sale homes and solar savings for owners visiting off-market detail pages, helping consumers understand the information that is most relevant to them. The feature is currently available for more than 85 million U.S. homes on Redfin.com.
"As forward-thinking businesses like Redfin realize how important energy cost reductions, rooftop solar, and sustainability solutions are to their customers, WattBuy is meeting this new need," said Naman Trivedi, WattBuy CEO. "Our APIs make it simple for consumer-facing companies to help their customers understand current energy usage and take the steps needed to lower their energy costs and their carbon footprint. As the technology-powered real estate company, Redfin was the obvious partner to debut this new feature."
Redfin added utility data as part of its continued commitment to providing the most complete and relevant real estate information, as well as its ongoing effort to educate consumers about housing sustainability and the impacts of climate change. In the past year, Redfin has, among other initiatives:
Added zoning, down payment assistance, transit and internet service provider data to home detail pages
Launched new filters that allow buyers to identify homes that better meet their needs
Introduced property-level data for fire, heat, drought and storm risk
Continued economic research about how climate change impacts the housing market
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Common Friction Points When Generating Website Leads
Companies spend a ton of money on search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) digital advertising to get people (a.k.a. potential leads!) to visit their website—only to see them leave without providing their contact information. Why?
Challenge: converting the leads you already have
Many consumers have valid security or privacy concerns and aren't willing to give up their data. Some may not want to create an account if they're just casually poking around on your site (and when it comes to converting leads, you don't want it to be too easy!). And others may be worried about even more marketing emails bombarding their inboxes.
In other words, a lot of the visitors you've worked hard to bring to your site will bounce and never come back, and this is a huge friction point in the online lead generation process.
Streamlining online lead generation for real estate professionals
At Constellation1, we know this is a common pain point, which is why we've built a streamlined process that helps capture leads effectively on real estate websites and move them all the way through to close using our suite of real estate technology solutions.
To learn more, watch this short 10-minute conversation between Mehul Patel, Vice President of Product and Technology at Constellation1, and Jeff Kennedy, Vice President of Sales and Partnerships at Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. You'll hear about the common friction points in every lead generation process and how you can work past them with a trusted partner.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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Redfin Launches Down Payment Assistance Feature in Partnership with Down Payment Resource
Redfin has added down payment assistance information to home listings on its website. Potential homebuyers can now use Redfin to discover down payment assistance programs they may qualify for in order to help make homeownership more affordable. The feature is powered by a partnership with Down Payment Resource, a company helping the housing industry connect homebuyers with more than 2,200 homebuyer assistance programs nationwide.
Each eligible for-sale listing page on Redfin in the U.S. now displays the number of down payment assistance programs available in that area. Interested homebuyers can input basic information and immediately receive a tailored list of programs they may qualify for, the amount of assistance potentially available to them, and links to the program pages for more information.
"Nearly half of Americans who have never owned a home say that saving money for a down payment is a barrier to homeownership, and many young people in particular feel like they'll never be able to own a home," said Christian Taubman, Redfin's chief growth officer. "Down payment assistance programs can make homeownership more attainable, but information about them is often fragmented and hard to understand. We saw a big opportunity in partnering with Down Payment Resource to raise awareness about these programs to help more people become homeowners."
This information is especially valuable as the national median home price has soared roughly 40% since the pandemic, making saving for a down payment more challenging. Recent Redfin research found that the typical U.S. homebuyer who took out a mortgage in July made a $62,500 down payment, nearly double the median down payment in July 2019, before the pandemic started.
"Our research shows that one in three declined mortgage applications are denied for reasons that could be addressed with homebuyer assistance, which underscores the critical need to increase awareness about these life-changing programs," said Rob Chrane, CEO and founder of Down Payment Resource. "Partnering with Redfin is a great way to get information about financial support into more consumers' hands. With thousands of assistance programs available across the country, many Americans may be able to afford homeownership sooner than they realized."
This launch is part of Redfin's broader mission to remove barriers to homeownership and make finding a home clear and achievable. Other efforts include:
Ongoing donations to nonprofit community partners through Redfin Rise, the company's philanthropic initiative. This year, Redfin Rise donations have provided housing counseling sessions for 660 families through Clarifi, supported the development of 12 permanently affordable homes through Homestead Community Land Trust, provided $135,000 in closing grants to 45 homebuyers through NHS Chicago, and helped build 226 homes in El Salvador and Mexico with New Story.
Maintaining free homebuyer resources, including first-time homebuyer guides in both English and Spanish and homebuying classes taught by expert Redfin agents.
Publishing extensive housing market research about affordability and equality issues.
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Real Estate Webmasters and LuxuryRealEstate.com Partner to Bring an Exclusive Platform to LRE Teams and Brokerages
Real Estate Webmasters (REW) and LuxuryRealEstate.com (Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate) have just announced a massive partnership aimed at bringing the best real estate websites, agency design, CRM, and lead generation exclusively to LRE members.
This new program, which includes a limited edition custom version of REW's award-winning Renaissance platform and specialized lead generation specific to luxury, will be officially unveiled and made available to LRE® members at their 25th Annual Fall Conference held in Seattle Sept. 19-22. However, Meghan Barry has hinted that a few select members may be given special access early.
"We are so excited to be bringing this limited edition custom platform exclusively to LuxuryRealEstate.com members," says Morgan Carey, CEO at Real Estate Webmasters, Inc. "Not only will members benefit from our hyper-targeted lead generation programs specific to luxury, but there is no agency or company anywhere in the prop-tech space with as much experience or as long of a track record working with luxury teams and brokers as Real Estate Webmasters."
REW's track record and past client roster are well known and include A-listers like Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran, Million Dollar Listing New York's Fredrik Eklund, and Beverly Hills Powerhouse brokerage The Agency founded by Mauricio Umansky.
"Real Estate Webmasters is the best-in-class choice for custom real estate websites, leading the industry for decades. Their sites are beautiful and functional, delivering the lead generation a top brokerage requires and the customer experience a luxury consumer demands. With a sizable overlap in our customer bases, our partnership is a logical move for both companies. We are excited to expand the benefits offered to the members of Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate," says Meghan Barry, President of Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate.
A truly unique luxury program
What makes this program unique is that everything from the design of this new platform, to the creation of what REW calls "white glove onboarding," is custom-tailored to the luxury market.
Real Estate Webmasters knows exactly what it takes to succeed in the luxury space and they have a roster of 1,000+ brokers to brainstorm, test, network, and gain feedback from. It's this network, combined with LuxuryRealEstate.com's dominant presence in global luxury, that enables this partnership to reach its full potential.
For more information on this unique program (exclusive to LuxuryRealEstate.com members). visit realestatewebmasters.com/lux.
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3 SEO Real Estate Website Strategies
If you're a real estate agent, broker, or technology company, you know that having a website is essential for your business. It gives you a place to showcase your listings and services and allows potential clients to learn more about you and get in touch with you quickly.
However, simply having a website isn't enough – you need to ensure that your site is optimized for search engines to attract more visitors. Yes, search engine optimization is still alive and continues to grow as it evolves in providing answers to people's questions.
In this blog post, we will discuss three SEO strategies to help improve your website's positioning in search engines and generate more readers and leads!
The first is that the search engine's artificial intelligence will play a prominent role in SEO rankings, especially Google's. Most SEO experts focus on Google because of their search and Chrome web browser market shares. In the United States, Google maintains a 92% market share in search and averages around 63% market share of people using Chrome as a web browser. The other major search engines are Bing and Yahoo, which hold a combined market share of around 10%.
A search engine's AI focuses on capturing consumer behavior metrics for ranking factors. This means that click-through rate, time people spend on a page, and other overall website metrics influence how the AI prioritizes content.
Therefore, when reevaluating SEO strategy, crafting well-organized and quality, engaging content is critical to success. What is essential to the readers of your content is also crucial to the search engine's AI for ranking. This is where custom content on the property search result pages for neighborhoods and listing detail pages can improve SEO.
Guidelines for content creation are included in the E-A-T principle. Google defines E-A-T for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. An approach that is excellent to use in evaluating the quality of content. A few guidelines to use when developing content with E-A-T in mind are:
Does the content contain authentic information, reporting, research, or analysis?
Is the content written by an expert demonstrating their knowledge about the subject?
Is the content written very well, or is it sloppy?
Are the facts in the content easily verifiable?
Content writers who follow these simple guidelines achieve the desired results to improve search engine rankings.
Additionally, as AI continues to drive rankings, it impacts search results. As a result, it is possible that when submitting a search, a page may be #2, and when performing a subsequent search, the same page may be #5. Therefore, AI will adjust its page ranking based on the events at the time of a search.
The second SEO strategy is to focus on optimizing your website with structured data. Most people are familiar with the concept of structured data, even if they don't realize it. Structured data is simply information that is organized in a predefined way. This can include things like open houses, homes for sale, and site structure.
By adding structured data to your site, you are essentially providing a map for search engines to follow. This makes it easier for them to index your content and display it in search results. In addition, structured data can also help you improve your click-through rate by making your listings more relevant and user-friendly.
However, there is a catch. Don't overuse structured data or resort to black-hat methods. Google just takes advantage of specific structured data, which must be implemented correctly for the content's trustworthiness to be confirmed.
As you can see, structured data is an integral part of SEO. If you want your site to be successful, make sure you take advantage of this powerful tool.
Lastly, one of the benefits of SEO is that it can help improve the accessibility of a site. Optimizing the website for Google search can also help make it more accessible for people with disabilities who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.
According to WCAG 2.1, one of the success criteria for accessibility is that "webpages can be parsed unambiguously by software." This means that screen readers and other assistive technologies should be able to interpret the content on a webpage without any ambiguity. However, many websites are not well-optimized for SEO, so it can be difficult or impossible for these technologies to parse. Therefore, improving the SEO of a website can also help to enhance its accessibility.
If you implement these three SEO strategies, you will be well on your way to improving your website's ranking in search engines and generating more leads! The last thing you want to do is to ignore or think SEO is not a practical part of a marketing strategy.
What other SEO strategies have you used to improve your website's ranking? Please share your tips with us in the comments below! And if you're looking for more help, contact the WAV Group. WAV Group explicitly focuses its SEO strategies on the real estate industry.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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Redfin Launches Rental Search
Redfin launched nationwide rental search, letting consumers search for both rental and for-sale home listings on Redfin for the first time. Built on the same map-based search technology used by tens of millions to find homes for sale, the addition of rentals makes Redfin a destination for everyone in the U.S. looking for a place to live. Redfin's rental search is powered by rental listings from RentPath, a leading marketing technology and services platform for the rental industry that operates Rent.com and other popular rental sites, which Redfin acquired in April 2021. This significantly expands the reach of the RentPath network, letting RentPath's property-management customers market their rental listings to Redfin.com's 47 million monthly visitors.
"Adding rental listings to Redfin.com will increase our authority as a real estate destination, not only drawing more visitors to rental listings, but also to our existing for-sale listings," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. "With about one in five Redfin.com visitors interested in rentals, we have an opportunity to generate as many rental inquiries from Redfin.com as from all other RentPath sites. As a result, we expect to attract more property managers to promote their listings on Redfin.com, and for Redfin.com traffic growth to accelerate."
Powerful, immersive search to discover the perfect place to rent
Prospective renters can see updated listings every day, search with tailored filters, including budget, location and pet policy, and connect with property managers. Photos, floor plans and 3D tours let users experience a new rental home before ever setting foot inside. Renters can use the contact feature to connect with property managers to schedule a tour, ask a question or request an application.
Because Redfin is a leading site to find homes for sale, people deciding between buying and renting can use Redfin for their entire home search. With one click, users can switch between homes for sale and homes for rent on the map. With another click, users can mark their favorite homes and see all of them in one place, whether they're for sale or for rent.
"Most people who are considering renting a new home in the next six months say they are also considering buying," said Christian Taubman, Redfin's Chief Growth Officer. "Redfin gives everyone the tools to win the place that's best for them, whether that's a place to lease or buy."
Broad exposure for property managers
"The launch of rental search on Redfin is an immediate benefit for the existing property owners and managers who rely on the RentPath network to connect with serious tenants, fill occupancies, and manage properties," said Jon Ziglar, CEO of RentPath. "Whether you are managing multiple apartment communities or are an individual landlord, RentPath has the consumer reach and marketing tools to make the process of finding and signing new tenants simple and efficient. Adding the reach of Redfin's popular consumer website and app to the RentPath network, in addition to RentPath's deep knowledge of the rentals business, we can offer the best solutions in the industry to simplify the rental search experience for renters while driving occupancies and operational efficiency for property managers and owners."
Property owners and managers who list their properties via RentPath will now reach the tens of millions of consumers who visit Redfin every month, in addition to the other sites in RentPath's network: Rent.com, Rentals.com, and Apartment Guide.
Requests from renters flow directly to property managers with details on whether the customer wants to tour, submit an application or ask a question about the property. With a single platform for property managers, RentPath makes it easy to see and manage contacts coming from across all sites in the RentPath network without having to learn new tools or work across multiple systems. In addition to reaching serious renters online, RentPath also provides a full suite of online tools to help property managers communicate with residents and market their properties through targeted digital advertising, social media and online reputation management.
To search rental homes on Redfin, visit www.redfin.com/rentals or update to the latest version of the Redfin iOS app. Rental search will launch on Redfin's Android app in the coming days. To learn about how to market your rental to tens of millions of potential renters through the RentPath network, visit www.rent.com/list.
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Technology: The Cutting-Edge
It was about 35 years ago when Jeff Pust was a young man, newly married and starting a career in real estate, working on mortgages and appraisals. He transitioned into sales, and 15 years ago, along with his wife, took over Van Dorm Realty from his in-laws.
Today, the Olympia, Washington-based firm has over 120 agents and has remained an independent brokerage.
"We're a large independent, which is rather unique," says broker/owner Pust. "The way we provide tools for our brokers is also unique for an independent, as we invest a great deal in technology. We are recruited heavily by franchises, but we have all the tools they have."
That's where Constellation1 comes into play. Van Dorm Realty utilizes the software tech company for its CRM, websites, marketing services and back-office management.
"We became a Constellation client when they acquired a tech firm we worked with a number of years ago. Since then, they have morphed into Constellation1. We have stayed with them the whole time and found success working with them," Pust says. "They have grown from providing our website to CRM and all types of other contact management systems they have, and now we're working in their accounting module."
In 2021, the firm became a Constellation1 Commissions customer, which helped integrate all of Van Dorm Realty's back office tools and have them work together. The firm even used it with a different provider's transaction management platform, and it worked perfectly. It's just another way Constellation1 partners with its customers to provide what's best for the brokerage.
"The reason we went with Constellation1 Commissions is to simplify our bookkeeping," Pust says. "We have this transaction management system, and we needed a way to link that information to our accounting system, making us more efficient and providing more tools to our brokers in a way they can track their income, and perhaps set goals for themselves."
Still in its infancy launch stage, Pust notes that so far, it's doing exactly what he hoped, and he foresees it saving the firm a tremendous amount of time.
The firm has about 25 brokers who use Paradym by Constellation1, a digital marketing tool, to help them with their social media platforms. The tool assists those who aren't as adept at the process of managing a social presence, which has been a big plus for those taking advantage of it.
Another reason Van Dorm Realty has stayed with Constellation1 for so long is because of its commitment to providing the best service possible.
"We've always been able to call them and talk about what we're seeing with our competition and ask if they can make it happen for us. And they've always been able to find a way to accommodate our requests," Pust says. "We have a lot of tech firms up here in the Northwest, especially in real estate, and Constellation1 has been able to keep up with the cutting-edge changes, keeping us cutting-edge as well."
With more than three decades in the business, Pust has seen real estate transition from brokers coming into the office to working from anywhere, a change made more impactful by the pandemic. For that reason, innovative technology has been a big part of the firm's strategy.
"Our mission along the way has been, 'How do we provide systems where brokers can get that same level of service and attention and not have to come into the office but stay just as efficient?' Constellation1 has been a great partner in helping that transition be a success. They help me be competitive in the tech part of the business," says Pust.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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SEO Can Help Your Site Traffic, Even With Lower Inventory
You've read the headlines: "Inventory Shortage Sends Home Prices Soaring at Record Rate," "Housing Inventory Shortage Leads to Most Bidding Wars Ever," "Explaining Today's U.S. Real Estate Inventory Insanity," and "It's crazy. There is no inventory," -- and are all too aware of how low inventory in your market is impacting your business. But did you know that low inventory is also causing your brokerage website traffic to plummet?
Every website featuring property listings is experiencing lower overall web traffic because of record-low inventory. Even brokerages with top-notch SEO programs — like the SEO Delta Media Group provides — are experiencing big drops in overall web traffic as their IDX listings fall. For brokerages in some markets where listings have dropped as much as 60% over the last few years, web traffic has also dropped upwards of 60%.
This is not a coincidence: this is pure cause and effect. So, let's dig into this deeper and see what you, as a broker-owner, and your agents need to know about declining web traffic volume, how SEO is needed now more than ever, and what you need to do next.
Real Estate Web Traffic Is Down Everywhere
Research from both Zillow and realtor.com shows that their property listing inventory is down about 50% nationally.
According to Zillow, 1.788 million homes were listed for sale as of August 31, 2019. Fast forward to April 30, 2021, the most recent number available, and the total U.S. homes listed for sale according to Zillow was 949,788 — a decline of nearly 50%. Realtor.com's weekly inventory tracking reports say that total active listings as of early May were down 52% year-over-year.
When leading brokerages look at their total web traffic numbers, they are likely to see a decline in overall traffic that closely matches the decline in local listing inventory. Delta Media has seen this happen for clients across the board, nearly without exception.
But here's the silver lining. Despite the decline in web traffic, search ranking for Delta brokerage clients has not changed. In some cases, rankings have improved. This is because Delta's Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and content services continue to drive traffic to broker websites, making sure brokerages continue to get their share of real estate-related web traffic.
Understanding the Cause
By digging deeper into the cause of traffic decline, analytics show that traffic landing on property listing detail pages — which are crucial to successful SEO — has dropped in tandem with the drop in the number of local listings.
Let's look at the math. A single-listing detail page for a property can generate a handful to hundreds of visits. If the average listing generates five visits and you have 1,000 active listings in your market, you are getting 5,000 visits from listings. If your average listing generates 20 visits, you are netting 20,000 visits from the listings in your market. If you average 100 visits to an active listing, that's 100,000 visitors to your brokerage website.
If your active listing inventory in your local market declines by 50%, it's likely you are going to see a comparable drop in traffic.
But don't throw in the towel and give up on SEO because your web traffic is down.
That's happening across the board. Staying with your SEO efforts is key to long-term success because SEO does a lot more than generate website traffic.
Impact of SEO
One of the misconceptions in the real estate world is that websites can't rank for IDX listings. That's simply not true. With the right SEO, traffic is generated from all the listings on a brokerage's website.
The best response by a brokerage to website traffic decline should be to stay the course with SEO. That's because, despite the declines in overall traffic, SEO still drives 50-80 percent of all organic traffic to a Delta broker's website. Additionally, more than 50% of their leads are coming from SEO.
Keep in mind that organic leads — created by ongoing and effective SEO efforts — generate both the lowest cost leads and the most ready-to-list and ready-to-buy leads. The cost per organic lead is just $5.41 for Delta Media's clients overall. For large brokerage clients, it averages $4.56 for a ready-to-act lead and $4.98 for our mid-sized brokerage clients.
Don't Panic!
SEO ebbs and flows. The key is to remain steadfast with your SEO efforts.
Why? SEO is like a company's reputation: it takes years to build and, with one misstep, minutes to lose.
The blunder that many brokerages make with their SEO happens when they switch brokerage website providers. If the proper steps are not taken by your new tech firm, you could lose all the SEO equity that your website took years, sometimes decades, to build.
We have witnessed past clients — who see greener grass — switch tech firms to handle their websites. Their web traffic falls off a cliff almost universally. During the migration process, they lose the brokerage's SEO mojo. More critically, organic lead generation from SEO efforts also takes a massive nosedive.
Most surprisingly, the tech firms they switched to are well-known website vendors. But none of these firms offer the SEO acumen that Delta does.
SEO is one of Delta Media's superpowers. It's why many of these brokerages return as clients. We know how to manage website migration without negatively impacting your SEO.
Changing website providers does not have to cause you to panic. With the right approach, you can keep all your SEO equity. But you need to work with a highly skilled website provider that understands all the steps that must be taken to correctly replicate your website's content.
The Power of SEO
The beauty of Delta Media provided websites is how well they rank for both the brokerage's listings and IDX listings. Therefore, it makes sense that the web traffic declines brokerages are seeing are most significant in the hottest markets where the brokerage has a dominant market share. As IDX listings have dried up, so has overall traffic.
Looking further into what is happening at the brokerage level, we make sure nothing else is happening that would hamper traffic. SEO remains key to helping brokerages maintain their overall ranking, despite overall lower web traffic numbers.
SEO also can help a brokerage compete against the portals. The more dominant a brokerage is within a local market, the more favorable Google will view them when they deploy the right SEO efforts.
Google loves fresh content, and that's one of the essential services that Delta provides brokerages. We do all the heavy lifting by creating the kind of new content that Google wants.
What Else is Influencing Web Traffic?
The pandemic has had a massive impact on internet traffic. As America locked down, web traffic shot up. The New York Times reported that Facebook traffic almost immediately spiked 27% higher, with YouTube and Netflix jumping over 15%.
Studies by The Internet & Television Association show that with a surge in people working from home (WFH), peak internet usage swung from the evenings to the daytime. As a result, online retail sales were up 39% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2021. From January 2020 to March 2021, Zoom experienced over a 2,000% increase in traffic!
However, over time and as America begins to reopen coast-to-coast, the overall surge many companies experienced in web traffic has started to decline. Even mighty Google, which is still ranked No. 1 in website traffic, sees lower website traffic today than in January 2020.
Staying Committed
The key to any successful SEO program is to remain committed, as the most effective SEO takes time. While there certainly are best practices that can help you shorten the timeline for SEO success, it cannot happen immediately. So if anyone is touting an SEO solution that promises to catapult your brokerage to the top of Google rankings instantly – walk away quickly.
Having a better understanding of why your brokerage website traffic is lower and that SEO does more than drive traffic to your website is vital to maintaining the course. The best and lowest cost organic internet leads should give you plenty to cheer about when it comes to using SEO.
If you are not satisfied with the SEO effectiveness of your brokerage website, Delta Media Group is ready to show you how we can help. RE Technology readers can try DeltaNET 6 free for 30 days.
To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.
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Is Your Brokerage Leveraging Recommended Properties Effectively?
Homebuying can be stressful, especially right now. Historically low inventory (a situation that, according to NPR, has been decades in the making) means finding the perfect home is that much harder. Additionally, once buyers do find the right home, it might be snatched away from them after a bidding war or all-cash offer. This means agents and brokers need to be strategic about effectively recommending properties to get their clients the keys to their dream home faster.
Here are six reasons why recommending the right properties to your clients is an absolute must and can help your brokerage's bottom line:
1. Homebuyers crave useful information
We're living in the information age, with almost any fact just a few taps away on our smartphones (or you could just ask Siri or Alexa!). Regardless of how accessible information is, many people don't have the time or the motivation to look for it, or they're already bombarded from all directions and have information overload. By offering customized recommendations up on a silver platter, you'll satisfy your homebuyers' appetite for listing information they can actually use.
2. Recommended properties position you as an expert in your market
You already know you're the expert, but do your clients? Having the inside scoop on the hottest new listing can score you big points, especially if you find a hidden gem. As the expert, you'll know where to search for the right properties and which ones might appeal more based on your customers' preferences. You get to demonstrate that you're really on top of your game and know your stuff. From a branding perspective, this is huge, and will help increase your referrals and repeat business.
3. Homebuyers often don't know where or how to look for the right property
These days, most homebuyers start their search online using websites and apps powered by industry giants, but these sites have several drawbacks. For one, buyers don't necessarily know how to search for properties that fit their budgets, what neighborhoods to focus on, or how to modify their searches to find what they are looking for. When you're making the recommendations, you're taking out the guesswork. If you were to leave homebuyers to their own devices, they probably wouldn't find very good results.
4. Regular touch points for keeping you top of mind
Due to low inventory, homebuyers are spending more time than ever before finding, negotiating, and buying homes. When houses are plentiful, it might only take six weeks from getting preapproved to closing. Today, it might take six months. That could lead to discouraged and weary buyers. By regularly providing recommended properties, you can keep your team top of mind (more tips on that here) and your clients engaged in their home search. Slow and steady wins the race!
5. The industry giants can't compete with your data
Most homebuyers have no idea what an MLS is or how listing data is collected, stored, or shared. So, they probably won't know you have access to a treasure trove of data that the giants don't. Your MLS data is fresher and more complete, meaning you can share a new listing with your clients much faster than they could find it themselves. This increases the chances they will fall in love with an active listing that they can view and make an offer on fast, instead of sending you a link to something that is already pending.
6. Recommending the right properties can boost your brokerage revenue
With tight brokerage margins, every broker wants to maximize double-sided deals to capture the full real estate commission. When your brokerage owns a listing that may appeal to another buyer you represent, it's in your best interest to recommend that property for a chance to represent both the seller and the buyer. By strategically recommending broker-owned listings to your buyers, you can increase the likelihood of closing these elusive double-sided deals.
Automate the property recommendation process
Constellation1 Websites have an automated recommended properties feature that sends homebuyers up to 10 relevant, helpful, and customized property recommendations via a weekly email. These recommendations are based on what homebuyers have searched for and saved on your website. These emails keep your leads informed, boost your online presence, and help you increase revenue.
Interested in learning more? Download our recommended properties feature sheet.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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Sotheby's International Realty Triumphs in the 25th Annual Webby Awards
Sotheby's International Realty announced today that sothebysrealty.com has been named the Best Real Estate Website in the People's Choice Category in the 25th Annual Webby Awards. Hailed as the "Internet's highest honor" by The New York Times, The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is the leading international awards organization honoring excellence on the internet.
"The new sothebysrealty.com has delivered record performance, with visits increasing by 37% this past quarter alone," said Bradley Nelson, chief marketing officer of Sotheby's International Realty. "As with everything we do, Sotheby's International Realty delivers a best-in-class experience and global exposure. Our website is no exception and we're proud to improve the buying and selling process while connecting clients to the best in the industry, no matter where they are in the world."
Created in collaboration with global experience design agency Huge, sothebysrealty.com delivers an editorial-style approach that complements the brand's international presence in 74 countries and territories. The website was relaunched in 2020 to feature translations in 14 languages and nearly 60 currency conversions and designed with a mobile-first approach to emphasize the method in which today's clients are buying and selling homes. The platform also mirrors consumers' desire for engaging content and reinforces the brand's continued dedication to high-quality video and photography.
"The appeal of sothebysrealty.com is its ability to remain an enduring brand and a seasoned expert in a space increasingly dominated by algorithms," said Jon Judah, group vice president, strategy of Huge. "That's what really drove our collaboration on the redesign of sothebysrealty.com. The idea of having a great real estate experience isn't limited to slick new technology, but instead revealing the magic of working with true professionals in the industry."
"Sotheby's International Realty has set the standard for innovation and creativity on the internet," added Claire Graves, executive director of The Webby Awards. "This award is a tribute to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."
IADAS, which nominates and selects The Webby Award Winners, is comprised of internet industry experts including Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker; MOMA Senior Curator Paola Antonelli; Host of NPR's Code Switch Shereen Marisol Meraji; R/GA Global Chief Creative Officer Tiffany Rolfe; Co-Inventor of the Internet Vint Cerf; DJ and Founder, Club Quarantine D-Nice; Co-host Desus & Mero on Showtime Desus Nice; SVP of Content at Twitch Michael Aragon; Twitter Senior Director, Product Design Richard Ting; and Founders of VERZUZ Swizz Beatz and Timbaland.
To view the award-winning website, visit sothebysrealty.com.
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Looking for an effective and affordable way to increase your site traffic by as much as 20%?
Helping your website to be competitive with the ever-increasing amount of huge, well-funded players entering the space is getting more and more difficult. Most brokerages or MLSs do not have millions dedicated to promoting traffic to their site.
I just saw a demo of something that is affordable but has been proven to drive up site traffic by as much as 20%. And it does not require any site redesign or major overhaul!
The solution is offered by a smart, young AI company called Restb.ai.
They are a "computer vision" company that has deep expertise in using artificial intelligence to increase traffic and engagement for your website.
Restb.ai has built a computer vision solution that "reads" all the elements in property images. Based on the contents of each photo, their AI provides a full sentence or caption featuring one of 40+ room types and a description of the key features (e.g., kitchen island, vaulted ceiling, etc.) in each photo. These descriptions are then automatically assigned to the "alt-text" of each image on your site, which has an instant impact on your traffic.
Today, the images on the listings on your site are being used by hundreds if not thousands of IDX sites in your market and on national portals. Without differentiating your images with a description, Google thinks the images on your site are the same as the hundreds of others and does not give you any credit for providing valuable and unique content. By adding unique descriptions to each image's alt-text, Google and other search engines will favor your site over others and move you up in each search engine's rankings.
While nobody will ever SEE the descriptions when they view your site, the alt-text allows Google to treat each of your photos as "new content" which makes your site more popular.
From what we have seen, no major real estate website in the U.S. has gone all the way to adding full image descriptions like the type that the Restb.ai solution can provide. Many of the websites we looked at do not have any description at all for each image's alt-text. Then, even when descriptions are present, sites are often just adding the MLS ID or street address. By adding a full description with relevant keywords, each image has more context and much stronger indexing on Google.
Makes Your Site More ADA-Compliant
More importantly, adding a full description of each image also makes your site more ADA-compliant and more helpful for those with visual impairments. Users of screen readers will hear the descriptions read aloud as they browse your site, and they will get a more thorough and informative description of the properties they are viewing.
Here is an example of the type of photo descriptions that the computer reads and automatically adds to each image:
Adding rich and descriptive captions in your alt-text may be a quiet, but powerful way to get a leg up on your competition and the large third-party sites by generating more traffic with the added benefit of helping you be ADA-compliant.
Talk to your website vendor about this and see if they can help you gain a competitive advantage with Restb.ai's computer vision.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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Brokers Need to Revisit VOW Websites
From 2009 to 2013, WAV Group spent a significant portion of our brokerage consulting on explaining what a Virtual Office Website (VOW) is and how it is different from an Internet Data Exchange (IDX) website. Now VOW websites are being discussed again in brokerage meetings and for good reason. Digital paper only brokers have been able to build spectacularly successful businesses that leverage IDX to develop referrals that take a 30% bite out of agent commissions. Brokers who care about the income of their agents should review this carefully.
Our recent analysis of brokerage P&L reports from 2020 demonstrates a remarkable increase in the referral commissions paid out to digital paper only brokers – some growing by more than 2000%. WAV Group is forecasting that agent commissions will dip over 10% in 2021 as a result of payouts on referrals by digital paper only brokers. If brokers do not react to this sea change, we believe that agents could see a 17% dip in commissions by 2023.
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Google and Real Estate, Part 2: Search Engine Optimization
In the second part of Google and Real Estate (read part one here), learn about SEO and how we can optimize our efforts online to improve organic lead generation.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it has been the buzzword in online marketing since the beginning of search engines. It is a broad term with various interpretations, but the best way to describe it is a set of strategies and action plans to improve rankings of a business in search engines, especially Google.
It is not only limited to Google. On YouTube, Facebook and other social media where visibility and ranking defines the fate of business, SEO is applicable. The strategies might include:
Optimizing the content of a website or page
Optimize key terms and phrases which are the subject of searches
Optimize technical aspects of web development like tags and organic data
And there is a lot more. In simple terms, every action that Google or other search engines consider valuable for the user is SEO. This is why most experts believe that the best approach to SEO is meeting the demands of your target audience.
Google uses a mindset that is often referred to as Turing Machine Theory. It is based on the idea that a successful algorithm is the one that makes a machine as close to human beings as possible.
Imagine there is a computer and a person behind a wall. Now, a user approaches this wall and tries to interact with the computer and the human behind the wall. Turing theory succeeds when this person cannot understand whether she is interacting with a person or a machine. The aim of Google is to achieve this with its search engines.
SEO for Real Estate Business?
IDX websites can also benefit from higher ranking on Google. Organic MLS integration is one of the key features of a successful SEO campaign for real estate websites. This list of activities can help you improve your status on search results:
Use Organic Feed
An organic MLS feed can help Google index your pages and display them for respective keywords. Using iFrames will deprive you of this chance since Google won't recognize them as valid pages.
Optimize Tags
Using the right set of tags can help you rank better on Google. Make sure you use the organic and valuable tags and not generic ones. Overuse of tags, especially those that are not related to the content may get penalized by Google. Learn more about tags by visiting our blog Tags in Real Estate Online Marketing.
Create Content
This is, as we all know, the most important element in Google recognition of your business. If you provide regular and on-demand content for users, you are most likely to enjoy a truly deserved ranking. Content can be blogs, pictures, images, infographics, etc.
Keywords and Phrases
The whole content of your website should be relevant to your niche, so it can get ranked more accurately. Research keywords and phrases that are closer to you and your area, and avoid generic and difficult keywords. Learn more about real estate top keywords by visiting our article Best Real Estate SEO Keywords.
Internal /External Linking
Proper linking inside and outside your website will help search engine crawlers understand your content and website better. This will also lead to more accurate results and eventually more qualified leads. Maintain a balance of internal links to different pages, and make sure you have some external links to reputable websites in the niche.
Optimize Your Loading Speed
Nobody likes a slow website. Google gives a lot of credit to this. Use Google's page speed tools to analyze this.
Optimize for Mobile
Clients spend more time on their phones than their PCs, so you need to make sure your IDX website is optimized for mobile responsiveness.
Referrals and Traffic
Use social media and other outlets at your disposal to attract more people (traffic) to your website. However, be aware that it can sabotage your ranking as much it can improve it. In other words, if you draw traffic from spammy activities and generic sources, Google will penalize you and your ranking will suffer.
Use Quality Hosting Services
Hosting services are of utmost value to real estate websites. An IDX website holds a lot of listings data that might be hosted locally or on the fly. This can not only affect your loading speed but also the organic nature of your content.
SEO Checklist (printable)
Here is a printable SEO checklist for your real estate website. Feel free to print it and share it with your colleagues: SEO Checklist
What's Next?
Having a SEO friendly platform and making further optimizations of SEO through organic techniques will definitely help maintain a solid performance by your website.
Nonetheless, the market is highly competitive and you need to try more than that to stand out from the crowd. Needless to say, advertising is your next viable option, and that is why we are going to discuss Google Ads and its implications for real estate websites in the next part of our Google series: Google and Real Estate, Part 3: Google Ads.
To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.
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Don't Turn Away Clients with Bad User Experience
User experience (UX) is at the heart of how clients and prospects interact with your real estate brand. It includes analog, old-fashioned interactions, but the primary focus is on the digital realm. A seamless, high-quality user experience is a crucial factor in lead generation and keeps clients satisfied after choosing your business. Of course, that also means that a bad user experience will have the opposite effect. So let's take a closer look at what the UX is exactly, how to avoid turning clients away with a bad UX, and some tips for overcoming common UX challenges for your real estate brand.
What Is the User Experience, and Why Is It so Important?
The UX Encompasses Nearly Every Aspect of How Clients Interact with Your Brand
Talking about the user experience can feel a bit overwhelming at first because it's such a broad topic that covers... well, pretty much everything when it comes client interactions. The good news is that it's also fairly simple to boil the UX down to a few key concepts, and we're going to focus primarily on the digital side.
Want to Better Understand UX? Start with a Few Important Questions
When a client engages through your website, how easy is it for them to find the information they need? Are there barriers in place that prevent them from taking next steps? Does your content go beyond the basics to speak to the needs of each client? Can they easily access your content and services on the device of their choice? A high-quality UX makes life easier for clients, which ultimately makes it easier for you to earn their business.
The User Experience Is More Important than Ever in the COVID-19 Era
COVID-19 has changed how people buy and sell homes and the way they interact with real estate brands. Clients rely much more on digital tools to conduct real estate business, while in-person interactions have taken a backseat. Now more than ever, real estate firms need a digital UX that clients will love.
Common UX Problems and How to Avoid Them
Forced Registration and Asking for Too Much Up Front
One of the easiest ways to discourage clients with your UX is to ask for too much right away. If you force clients to register for your website before they can do anything or request extensive permissions, they may simply move on to the next option. There's a time and place to ask for more information or permissions — and it comes after you've demonstrated the value of your brand to clients.
The Fewer Hoops to Jump Through, the Better
Building on our first problem to avoid, it's crucial to avoid burying important features behind items that are less important to clients. Most clients will be engaging with your UX to shop for homes in specific neighborhoods, or to find out how much their current home would be worth on the market. When you place the features that clients want most front and center, they'll be more likely to stick around long enough to explore the rest of what you have to offer.
Failing to Understand That Clients Are Making More Than Just a Financial Transaction
Buying or selling a home is a personal, often emotional process. If you don't integrate content that shows an understanding of the why, then it's hard to build a connection with the client. The content on your website should go beyond the financial basics while speaking to your target audience's needs. It should highlight the communities where you do business while showing clients how specific homes and neighborhoods can answer their needs.
Mobile-Friendly Is a Must for a Quality User Experience
Clients want to connect with your business in the way that works best for their needs, so a website that's not mobile-friendly or a buggy, hard-to-use mobile app will be a major red flag. It's critical to make sure that your UX's quality remains reliable no matter which device the client is using to access it.
The Right Team Makes All the Difference in Building a Great User Experience
Building an outstanding, streamlined user experience starts with understanding what users want and how to provide that to them. Delta Media Group works to build your real estate business a stable, high performance UX that makes it easy for clients to find homes, fall in love with neighborhoods, learn about local real estate markets, and conveniently connect with your business on any device. Experience it for yourself—try DeltaNET 6 FREE for 30 days.
To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.
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Tying It All Together: Constellation1's Partnership with Flavin Realty
Flavin Realty is a reputable, family-owned brokerage that has been a mainstay in southwest Louisiana for over 40 years. Like many companies, Flavin Realty was doing business using old-school tools, meaning manual processes and systems that didn't integrate with one another.
In 2018, under new leadership, Flavin Realty embarked on modernizing its tools. In 2019 however, following a failed relationship with a vendor that got acquired, resulting in poor customer service and the project never coming to fruition, Flavin Realty was on the hunt for a new solution vendor. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a sense of urgency and an opportunity for the company to re-evaluate its priorities.
"Back in 2018, we needed our agents to switch mindsets and get used to the idea of writing a purchase agreement in a parking lot from their phone. Now, we need tools to be even more mobile," said Melissa Hamilton, Sales Manager and Associate Broker at Flavin Realty.
By leveraging Constellation1 Back Office, CRM with Mobile App, and Website solutions, Flavin Realty achieved its goal to improve search, lead routing and connected apps across their tech stack. With Constellation1 as their solution partner, Flavin Realty agents are more mobile than ever—with the right tools at their fingertips. With a vision to expand its business in the future, Constellation1 solutions make it easy for Flavin Realty to succeed.
Read the full customer story here, and learn more about how Constellation1 is helping Flavin Realty succeed.
To view the original article, visit the Constellation1 blog.
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Steps to Successfully Audit Your Real Estate Website
At the time of writing this article, there is a major hot-button issue happening in Florida.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of real estate brokerages were served letters threatening legal action because their real estate websites were not FHA/ADA compliant. This was all triggered due to the Robles v. Domino's Pizza, LLC case in November 2019, where it was ruled that financial restitution was owed to Guillermo Robles because he could not order a pizza through Domino Pizza's website. The website was not built to be accessible for the vision-impaired.
A multitude of reasons exists why you want your website to be FHA/ADA Compliant. First of all, it's just the right thing to do. It would be best if you wanted your site to be accessible for all people, including those with disabilities. Many visually impaired people can use "screen readers" to navigate websites online, and your website must be built in such a way that supports that type of software.
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Inspired by Sherry Chris: Being More Inviting and CRM of the Future
I have always admired the Better Homes and Gardens brand developed at Realogy under the leadership of Sherry Chris. She is a delightful person who always brightens your day when you spend time with her. In many ways, BHGRE feels welcoming and sincere despite the long brand name.
On Facebook recently, Sherry posted a recipe on pairing quesadillas and wine published by Food & Wine Magazine, another Meredith Corporation publication. Being Friday afternoon, there was half a chance that I'd find a glass of wine in front of me at some time later that day or the next. I clicked right over. The article is crafted with clever prose and a passionate reverence for the subject matter—a satisfying read. Skillful writers always draw you in and inspire you to read their content a little more carefully.
Then I hit the pop-up:
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Does Your Website Have a Newsroom? It Should
One of any organization's core public relations strategies is the creation and dissemination of your story. Every company has a story. What makes you different? Better? Stand out? Memorable?
And once you nail your story, you need to tell your story. You must share your story and publicize it to maximize its reach.
For your story to grow until everyone who needs to know your story knows it, you have to make your story highly accessible. From a public relations perspective, that means making sure that journalists have access to the information they need to learn about your organization and the people who run it.
One of the most important pieces to accomplish this also is one that is often neglected: the creation and curation of a newsroom on your organization's website.
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The Importance of Search Functionality
In this article for Delta Media Group's real estate industry publication, Real Estate Marketing and Technology Magazine, Franklin Stoffer discusses how search functionality builds a powerful online brand and generates leads for your real estate business.
Search Functionality Helps Achieve Your Online Goals
When it comes to real estate websites, I have only heard of two primary goals that real estate firms and sales associates want to accomplish.
Clients want their website to generate business or leads.
Clients want their website to showcase their unique brand and be a place for their company to have a powerful identity online.
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Answering Your Questions About SEO and Your Real Estate Website
I have spent over 20 years helping a wide variety of companies grow their businesses on the Internet. Here are two of the most frequently asked questions I receive and their answers:
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Why does SEO need to be approached differently within the real estate industry?
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
First, let me define what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is from my perspective. SEO techniques are used on and off websites to make a site more appealing to search engines. The more search engines like a website, the more they visit to index its pages.
The result of SEO work done correctly--search engines push your website higher in search results for specific key phrases associated with your products and/services.
Traffic generated from SEO is called "organic traffic."
SEO in the Early Days
Over the years, SEO has evolved, but I'd argue the core fundamentals have not changed that much. Early on in the infancy stage of SEO, it was the Wild West (late 1990s).
Many people resorted to keyword stuffing or paying link farms to create thousands of links back to a site. While this process resulted in short term gains for these companies, any advancement made was quickly replaced with penalties once search engines caught on to their spammy techniques.
Even during these Wild West days, savvy developers and online marketers understood it was all about designing sites for the end user. Eventually, search engines started publishing best practices, many of which still apply today.
SEO Best Practices
You need to build a site that is easy to use and navigate.
The website needs to be technically sound.
It needs to perform well speed-wise.
The website needs designing with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.
It needs to have unique and engaging content.
You need to research high authority 'complementary' sites and obtain links back to your site.
It needs to be trustworthy
Add on-page optimization and internal linking throughout your website to help search engines better understand what the site is about and to navigate it easier. This last point is evolving a bit as the search engines are becoming smarter and don't need as much assistance.
There are different approaches to SEO if you are a B2B or B2C company, but at the end of the day, the goals for any SEO campaign should be to increase traffic and leads/sales.
Why Is SEO for the Real Estate Industry Approached Differently?
Within most other industries, whether you are B2B or B2C, you are dealing with information that does not change often. For example, if you are a carpet cleaning company, your services will not change much over time. Or if you have an online store, products are added or discontinued over time, but generally speaking, your offerings stay pretty consistent. The consistency in these two examples allows the marketer to focus more intently on specific products and/or services, building out valuable content and links over time around the core services or products.
The most significant difference with a real estate website is the lack of consistency with the products: homes, buildings, land, etc. Each property has a unique SKU number, so to speak, so it makes things even more challenging; the properties are only online until they sell. In major markets, we are talking thousands of property listings turning over quickly.
Instead of trying to optimize each listing individually, many marketers in the real estate industry will focus on areas--states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, school districts, subdivisions, etc.
For example, if you are a real estate firm in Sarasota, Fla., you may create a landing page with listings for Sarasota. And from that page, you'll drill down and create additional pages for neighborhoods within Sarasota. Consequently, you would use SEO tactics on all of those pages.
This process is a fairly common practice within the real estate industry. The downside to this approach is that you will be missing out on visitors searching for a specific home for sale.
Surprisingly, we have found that single address property searches equate to a significant amount of monthly traffic. Some of our clients see nearly 50 percent of their traffic originating from single address property search--i.e., 123 Main Street, Sarasota. Moreover, when it comes to recruiting and retaining, a firm with real estate listings displayed on the first page of Google has a distinct advantage over local competitors who cannot. To stay ahead of the curve, you should review your current website from two different aspects.
1. Technical Aspect of SEO
The technical aspects of SEO (the how and why behind search engines crawling and indexing a site) are even more important with real estate sites than other industries because of the sheer amount of data processed daily.
Clear paths for search engines need to be created to crawl from page-to-page, gathering pertinent information throughout your site. I have found that many real estate websites struggle in this area.
To determine if your site has technical issues, look at how many pages you have indexed in Google (example: type site: www.hpw.com into Google search). Based on the number of listings and other content throughout your site, if the number of indexed pages seems low, there may be underlying issues.
2. Content Aspect of SEO
Within the real estate industry, content is essential given the industry's competitive nature and some of the previously mentioned challenges.
Blogging is a popular way to grow your site's visibility in search engines. As a rule of thumb, blogs should support the site's overall SEO strategy. However, in many cases, blogs are the only area where SEO is leveraged. For example, if your website is not ranking for the markets you serve, a blog may be your only avenue to publish optimized content for better visibility.
Unless you are willing to invest significantly in time and money to make an impact, this option may not be ideal for you. Some companies do it and are successful, but having a better understanding of the website's shortfalls and correcting them will save you time and money in the long run.
Taking a Look at the Competition
I also wanted to touch on the industry's competitive nature and attempt to set proper expectations if you are a local firm engaging in SEO.
The real estate industry is competitive, REALLY competitive. You have portals led by Zillow, corporate franchises, and then all of the local firms all competing for the number one position within the search results. The more competitive the market is in general (e.g., Dallas or San Francisco), the bigger the hill is to climb because there are even more online competitors. Realistically speaking, most local firms are not going to outrank the portals or even corporate franchises for phrases like "Dallas real estate," for example. These sites have an enormous amount of content because they have a national presence and all of the listings and associated content to go along with it.
That is a big deal and one that is tough to beat. It's not impossible to outrank bigger players because many of our clients do. The clients that do tend to be very large and have spent years investing in SEO and content strategies.
A realistic approach is to focus on less competitive phrases and ensure that your listing shows up on the first page of results. Less competitive phrases revolve around neighborhoods, subdivisions, and school districts. If you are successful and climb to the top for these phrases, it generally produces better quality traffic and leads. Also, visitors using these types of search phrases have narrowed their focus and are a bit more qualified.
With SEO, Patience Is a Virtue... Really!
A word to the wise: SEO is a long-term play, meaning don't expect immediate results. My rule of thumb is that if you don't at least stick it out for a year, look to invest your marketing dollars elsewhere.
We are fortunate that we can move the needle fairly quickly for most of our clients. However, we run into some cases where it takes a bit longer, and that requires patience. Many factors determine SEO success. Every market and every company is different even though we are all in the real estate industry. So be patient and look at it as a long term investment.
If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Probably Is
Be cautious of companies making wild guarantees like: "We will get your site to the first position in Google for 'real estate.'" This sounds great to someone that is not too familiar with SEO, but realistically, most have no shot. When communicating with a potential partner, you need to feel like you can trust them, know what they are doing, and have your best interest at heart. If it doesn't seem logical or feel realistic, you should probably be concerned.
Finally, just because a company claims "to do" SEO, be highly skeptical, especially in the real estate space. It's vital to understand precisely how these companies "do" SEO, and what success looks like based on data they have collected over time. Remember, SEO is about increasing traffic and leads. If they cannot provide you data on how they have helped other firms–run! It's also essential to understand the retention rate for the clients they currently serve. If they cannot retain clients, they are not providing value.
So do your homework.
Aaron Geh is a featured content contributor for Delta Media Group's industry magazine, Real Estate Marketing & Technology.
Sign up today to receive your free subscription to Real Estate Marketing & Technology.
To view the original article, visit the Delta Media Group blog.
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Real Estate Website Tips: Why Page Load Time Matters
Today, time is one of the most precious things. The world is moving forward, the technological revolution has made life easier and faster. Every website user expects to receive information as fast as possible. Google Research shows that 33% of smartphone users in each market have a negative view of a brand if mobile experience is slow.
In this fast-paced world, you have to think to stay notable and discoverable. Having a good real estate website is a must in order to have a successful business. When talking about the website and its functionality, we take into consideration different things like what kind of design it has, if it's responsive or not, which tools it contains, add-ons that differentiate it from other websites and, of course, page load time. The time it takes for a page to load has a big influence on the bounce rate of your site.
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Google Search Console and Your Real Estate Site: Part 2
Google Search Console is where the answers to many of your SEO questions can be found! The Search Console suite of tools helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot how your site performs in Google Search results.
Before you dive into Part 2, if you haven't yet, check out the first half of our series so you're set up for success and Google can start indexing your site.
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How to Deal with Coronavirus in My Business: An Analytical Approach to Business Leading Indicators, Part 3
I recently talked about trending data as we are seeing it now. You can find that article by clicking here, and you may want to read it before reading this article.
Additionally, I did a follow-up article to the first one where I discussed Rate of Change analysis methodology that I use from ITR Economics. That article can be found here and I also recommend reviewing that article first before you read this one.
For this article, I want to discuss analyzing the lead flow into your business from your website. I will caution that you need to consider multiple factors when tracking and analyzing your lead flow. I'll mention some of these below.
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Delta Media Group Invests $30 Million to Create AI-powered, Broker Marketing Platform
I just arrived at the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World (LeadingRE) conference in Las Vegas. Other than seeing a whole bunch of people donning masks and splashing on hand sanitizer regularly, this smart group of nearly 1,600 of the leading brokers in America are here strategizing about the best ways to take their businesses to the next level.
One big piece of news got my attention! Delta Media Group, one of the oldest and most well established broker marketing platform companies in real estate, today revealed their all new DeltaNET 6 platform. Remarkably, this privately-owned company invested at the levels of venture-backed companies, spending 40,000 development hours and $30 million to completely overhaul their platform to provide brokers with brand new technology to fight the good fight for listing exposure, lead generation, and customer relationship cultivation and nurturing.
LeadingRE brokers are known for taking a proactive stance to do what it takes to make their agents successful at serving the needs of their clients better than anyone else. It's no wonder that Delta Media Group chose the LeadingRE Conference to reveal their platform.
According to the news release, Delta Media is deploying the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence, to increase customer engagement. "Delta Media is taking in the delivery of AI-powered features across the new DeltaNET platform. AI-based customer engagement via web site offers suggestions and automated marketing engagements. On the consumer facing search site, the solution will monitor consumer behavior and anticipate their next steps. In agent and team facing solutions, artificial intelligence is used to help review an agent's sales funnel and make suggestions to the agent on which customers need to be contacted."
Interestingly, I'm hearing from brokers here that they are excited to take a look at what DeltaNET has to offer because they are looking for a privately-owned company like themselves that is not owned by a competitive brokerage. We will stay in touch with Delta Media and let you know how their rollout goes.
Here's the full news release for your review:
Delta Media Launches Newest All-in-One Broker Platform at Leading RE Conference
Canton, Ohio – March 10, 2020 - Delta Media Group, Inc., one of America's most established and largest broker technology solutions providers, heads to the Leading Real Estate Companies of The World Annual Conference this week to announce the launch of DeltaNET 6, their newest generation of cutting-edge broker websites, broker back-office productivity suite, and agent and team solutions.
"DeltaNET 6 is the ultimate all-in-one website and digital marketing platform designed by real estate experts for real estate professionals," says Michael Minard, CEO and owner of Delta Media. "This major advancement represents over 40,000 development hours and an investment of more than $30 million. DeltaNET 6 delivers advanced technology to our brokerage clients as our new center of excellence drives success through artificial intelligence and machine learning," he added.
Minard explained the approach that Delta Media is taking in the delivery of AI-powered features across the new DeltaNET platform. AI-based customer engagement via web site offers suggestions and automated marketing engagements. On the consumer facing search site, the solution will monitor consumer behavior and anticipate their next steps. In agent and team facing solutions, artificial intelligence is used to help review an agent's sales funnel and make suggestions to the agent on which customers need to be contacted.
Expected to be one the most popular features is the ability to customize the DeltaNET 6 dashboard. Its allows an office, broker-owner, team, or agent to create custom layouts of modules that they use the most in their daily workflow, supports single sign on (SSO), and many other features that empowers brokers to present the most important tools to the right agent or team at the right time.
As major real estate brands acquire broker technology platforms exclusively for their franchisees, Delta Media has been successfully offering orphaned brokerages a seamless conversion away from those platforms. With Delta Media's conversion tools, entire websites, CRMs, Customer Records, and often saved searches and other material content are transferred over to their new platform, provided by Delta Media.
"Nothing challenges independent brokerages more than the idea of using a franchise technology solution that undermines differentiation between brands that compete in a market," Minard said.
Delta Media will be hosting a reception at Leading RE immediately after networking night. Please visit Delta Media at Leading RE Booth 201 for reception details and to see the updated DeltaNET 6, which is being described as the most elegantly designed solution in real estate today.
About Delta Media Group
Delta Media Group, creator of the DeltaNET 6sm, PropertyPursuit®, AdWizard™, and Properties in Motion®, is a leading and trusted technology partner for many of real estate's top brands. Real estate's only provider of an all-in-one website, back office and digital marketing platform that is family-owned and operated, Delta Media Group is well-known for its patent-pending SEO software and custom hyperlocal content creation. Delta Media Group is an early real estate technology innovator, established in 1994. Discover more at deltamediagroup.com.
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Compass Launches New Consumer Experience, AI Capabilities
Compass on Wednesday announced several new product enhancements, bringing it closer to realizing its vision of a streamlined home buying and selling experience powered by the industry's first end-to-end software platform.
As part of its efforts to empower consumers engaged in real estate transactions, Compass launched updates to its web and mobile search experiences, including:
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Failure of ADA Compliance by Restaurant Website, Says California Court of Appeals
Compliance to the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act received a significant boost this month when the California Court of Appeals affirmed a higher court's ruling against a restaurant (Thurston vs. Midvale Corporation).
The California Supreme Court ruled that Midvale Corporation violated the Unruh Act. The ruling found Midvale's restaurant website was not usable by a blind person with a screen reader. When the plaintiff visited the restaurant's website, their screen reader software was unable to make a reservation or read the menu.
The Court of Appeal also affirmed the higher court's injunction to force Midvale to update their website to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).
ADA compliance is still on our radar and continues to be a hotly debated topic in the courts. Last September, the DoJ punted back to the House of Representatives with a letter asking for clarification of ADA's applicability to websites. Until the House determines proper guidelines on this topic, we can expect the courts to make judgments based on their interpretations.
Here are a few highlights from the latest Appellate Court opinions and their relationship to real estate.
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Real Estate Webmasters Planning European Launch with Strong Partner Support
Real Estate Webmasters (REW) is definitely a leader in providing platform technology to real estate brokers in North America. The Canadian based company supports significant brokers, teams, and top producers in both Canada and America with a user count of around 60,000. The pride of the company that differentiates them from most brokerage platforms is customization. If you want it, they will build it. They are particularly strong at helping brokers write content to build traffic though SEO. Europe is about to get a dose of REW.
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Magic Happens When Broker Culture Fits with Technology Offerings
As consultants, we are constantly asked about the "best technology," and my answer is commonly "the one that you use." It is a short conversation that's loaded with reality. No two brokerages are the same, nor are technology solutions. On countless occasions, we have watched multiple brokerage firms purchase the same technology and have very different results.
There is so much that goes into success. Obviously, choosing the right solution for your company is very important. But the truth is that most of the leading technology vendors serving brokers in America are pretty good. RE Technology has a list of 117 technology vendors for the category of Broker Website. That is a crowded field.
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Everyone's a Winner: Lone Wolf and Real Estate Webmasters Push Integration with Announcement of New Strategic Partnership
Technology developers today share a major theme: integration. Sometimes developers create smart links and single sign-on applications that make it easier for agents to jump from one software application to another. At other times, they leverage the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable software solutions to "talk" to each other. The flexibility of integrations with SSO and API enables brokers to develop a full suite of cloud-based applications that are unique to their firm.
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HowardHanna.com Debuts 'Find It First' Search Feature
Howard Hanna announced a new online real estate search differentiator, Find It First.
The Find It First program allows Howard Hanna agents to market a seller's home for sale exclusively on HowardHanna.com before it hits the open market. The company's website has close to two million visitors every month. Ohio is the first area where the company is offering the Find it First experience to consumers.
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Just SEO Will Starve Your Real Estate Website
You're working hard at SEO, Search Engine Optimization, for your real estate website, so why can't you get on that first page of Google results for any of your major keyword phrases?
You can't quit on the SEO, but you can add some SEO related activities to boost your positioning and traffic to your site. There is also one strategy you can use to boost your search engine positioning, so let's talk about it first.
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Engel & Volkers Launches New Website for the Americas
Engel & Volkers launched a new website for the Americas at evrealestate.com. The website brings together the company's U.S., Canada, Mexico and Caribbean network onto the integrated platform consisting of new brokerage and advisor level sites, all intuitively designed for today's consumer journey when buying or selling a home.
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First-time Home Buyers Need More Tutorials
Last week's post was a more general discussion of process content for all types of buyers. This week, we'll focus on the first-time home buyer and their specific needs. If you're just placing content of interest or value to first-time buyers throughout your other buyer relevant content, you could be losing business.
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Real Estate Buyers Want More Process Content
Real estate buyers come from various financial situations and with widely different ideas of what makes a great home for their needs. They also arrive with very different levels of knowledge of the process, from a first purchase to a seasoned investor. So, what's a common characteristic of real estate buyers that can work for us in marketing to them?
No matter how many properties they've purchased, every real estate buyer is always open to learning more about the transaction process or particular niche information that applies to their deal. You may be covering most of the major phases of a common transaction, but more information is always a plus for site visitors, and even for the search engines.
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Is Your Real Estate Seller Content Hitting the Mark?
The real estate seller is a prime prospect, as listings are known to be the best business building tool for real estate professionals. They also can feel like they're the targets of tons of marketing, emails, and repetitive advice. When you're pursued by a throng of real estate agents, it feels like a pack, and your attention is mostly in getting away; nobody stands out.
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Upping Your Game with Real Estate Investor Content
What is so different about real estate investor website content? It's not as much about different topics as it is about a higher level of content treatment.
Don't get offended, but some real estate investors are spending more hours in educating themselves each year than your Continuing Education requirements. They're using their money for courses and taking on risk, and the successful investors are constantly bulking up their knowledge base to reduce risk and increase profits.
Do you really want to work with real estate investors? Perhaps you're busy enough that you don't have to. However, if you would like to build a client base of buyers and sellers who need very little hand-holding and bring you repeat business, then investors are desirable. Here are real estate website content hints to help you build an investor client niche.
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This Website Is Not Secure!
Over the last few weeks, we have been researching web traffic for 177 of the most productive brokerages in sales volume and sides. While we are still diving deep into the study, there was one stat that gave me grave concern--the number of broker websites that are not secure for a customer to login or to complete a form.
Securing information between a person who completes a registration or property inquiry form and then sends it to a website's server is achieved when you see the HTTPS before the web address.
Example:
https://www.WAVGroup.com – Communication between person browsing and the website server is secure
http://www.WAVGroup.com – Communication between person browsing and the website server is NOT secure.
Today, we do not even consider launching a website—with or without forms—without applying HTTPS website security.
For years, Google has been pushing webmasters to apply HTTPS to secure websites. While this method has been a longtime practice, most companies were not adhering to it if their site did not have an e-commerce payment feature. That is, until Google started to highlight non-secure websites as "Not Secure" in Chrome back in July of 2018. Nowadays, the majority of web browsers display non-secure websites to people.
During our research, we exposed that almost 25 percent of the 177 websites in the study were non-secured websites. These are websites from brokerages who are productivity leaders in sales volume, or sides, or both. Websites that included features like subscribing to a newsletter, submitting a property inquiry with a showing request, or a site registration and login form. Scary!
Non-secure websites are open
A simple scenario of creating a new username and password on a non-secure website makes it easy for others to see it. When the submit button is pushed, the browser sends the information to the website's hosting server in a form that is as readable as this article.
There are plenty of tools to capture the communication into a file and query it to find the information. Unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots like in airports, restaurants, and public places make it easier for the bad guys to capture non-secured communication with these tools.
Open hot spots make it imperative to secure websites to protect the consumer's privacy and security, leverage search engine optimization, and preserve the company's brand image.
Consumers Privacy and Security
The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), and the discussions in the U.S. Congress on new federal regulation policy state that any compromise of a person's personal or private information must be disclosed. It will be difficult to remediate any violations of these laws when a company maintains non-secured websites.
An item to note: While CCPA's accountability to the law is limited to only big companies, the U.S. House and Senate hearing was inclusive for every company and preemptive to state law. The federal government is reviewing how to align data security with a privacy policy.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines have been saying since 2014 that one signal they use for ranking websites is if they are using HTTPS. Google previously stated usage of HTTPS as a ranking signal is part of their algorithm.
For these reasons, over the past few months, we've been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.
Should we be concerned about this since Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia are winning this war? I absolutely think it makes a difference for longtail searches. These sometimes include typing in a property address or performing a search for "home for sale in X neighborhood for $250k."
Company's brand image
This one upsets me. Brand is extremely important to a company, and having a web browser say "Not Secure" is making a negative brand impression on the consumer. Let's take a look.
Chrome:
Here is an example when accessing a non-secure website in Chrome. When the consumer clicks on the information circle next to Not Secure, the following message is delivered.
Brand message: We want your business, but we don't care enough to protect you from the bad guys!
The next example shows how a secured website is treated by Chrome. The consumer is presented with a lock icon next to the URL address.
All is okay with this company!
Firefox:
When accessing a non-secure website, Firefox only displays the information circle. But, look at what is displayed when the consumer clicks on the site.
I like how Firefox displays a secured website. They present a bold green lock next to the web address.
This aligns and signals the dedication of a brand that is concerned about my security and privacy.
Safari:
Apple's treatment of a secured website only displays a little lock next to the web address. It is okay, but nothing really bold.
Apple's lack of treat treatment on non-secure websites is a little disheartening. As a consumer, you only know when the website is secured. I guess Apple thinks people are more aware of their browsing habits.
Brave Browser:
If you like a browser to test for SEO and easily select ad and tracking blockers, try Brave Browser. It has become a go-to for surfing the web.
Brave treats non-secured websites similar to Firefox. A big red "Not Secure." Click on the Not Secure and the message is loud and clear:
Summary
All your website assets need to be set up with HTTPS. The cost to implement is minimal compared with not having the proper security in place to protect people, losing out on longtail SEO, and jeopardizing the company's brand with consumers. It all matters in today's business world.
There really isn't any excuse for having a non-secure website. If your team is too busy, call us. We'll handle this for you and make the necessary phones calls to get the job done. One more item to check off your "to-do" list.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.
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Crye-Leike Website Continues to Garner Top of the Line Industry Awards
Crye-Leike Real Estate Services' website has received the 2019 Website Quality Certification and Best Internet Lead Management and Response Time award from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, a selective global community of more than 565 independent real estate firms.
The award can be added to an abundant list of the website's achievements, including recently receiving the Top 20 Websites and Top 10 Listing Services in the Country awards from Real Trends, a Trusted Source of news, analysis, and information on the residential brokerage industry since 1987.
The Crye-Leike website was noted for having the best practices related to customer service and client respect and internet lead management. Under the leadership of Gurtej Sodhi, Chief Information and Operations Officer and Angie Vandenbergh, Director of Software Development, the Crye-Leike website has won awards for design and performance year-after-year for the past decade.
"Winning the award this year for the best customer service and internet lead management crowns the previous award for the most effective SEO strategy that makes it easy for consumers to find the website, with competitive positioning on popular search engines, unique content focusing on key markets, effective incorporation of social media and other tactics. It underscores our commitment to ensuring that we are providing our customers with the quality of service they expect and deserve," said Sodhi.
The Crye-Leike Information Technology team spent countless hours during 2018 working to make the website the best it can be. Even after the website was honored in the Top 10 and 20 lists from Real Trends, the Crye-Leike team continued to make improvements to the website, leading to a nomination for the Website Quality Certification. The hard work put forth by Sodhi's team resulted in Crye-Leike's website to be set at a higher standard than the 120 other companies that were nominated.
CEO and Co-Founder Harold Crye takes pride in the advancement of the website and its offerings, stating that, "With over 500,000 listings of homes that are updated every 12 minutes to ensure that the most comprehensive, current, and accurate information is provided to the millions of visitors to the Crye-Leike website, our online presence is an extremely important channel for us to deliver exceptional and unmatched value to our customers."
For more information about Crye-Leike Real Estate Services, please visit the award-winning website at www.crye-leike.com.
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Google Flags Websites that Are Not HTTPS as Not Secure
It's for your clients. It's for your security. It's for Google.
Our team heard "rumblings" as early as two years ago from Google strongly "advocating" website owners move to HTTPS encryption to make the Internet secure and protect the privacy of your users.
If you have not yet acquired an SSL certificate, you may have already noticed Google has flagged your website as "Not Secure" in Chrome.
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Real Estate News Curation for Your Website
Which two different audiences have a common interest that can make real estate news very important for your website? Your prospects and Google is the answer, and here's why. Google can index your website, and every now and then their bots will drop by to see if there's anything new. If Google begins to see regular new content, their bots will increase the frequency of their visits and you'll pick up some SEO clout.
As for your prospective buyers and sellers, a great many of them will appreciate one place to get relevant real estate news, especially when it's localized as well as national. Active buyers, sellers, and investors want to know what's happening that can influence their next sale, purchase, or investment. The good news is that there is an easy and free way to have fresh content news delivered to your website regularly.
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