Ever heard the phrase "If you don't have something nice to say don't say anything." Well there are definitely some things that you shouldn't say to an Internet prospect. Remember they found you online and that is where the relationship starts and they do want to speak with you but we have found there are some things you want to avoid when speaking to an Internet prospect.

Top 3 Things You Shouldn't say to an Internet Prospect

1. I will mail you out a list of properties - This may sound funny but think about it. They found you online so they will want their information on line. Unless you have some large relocation packet that can't be e-mailed make sure they get it via e-mail or a website.
2. I will set you up to get listings next week - If they found you on the Internet they want things fast and by fast we mean modern day standards of fast. They want things done quickly and don't have days to wait. Make sure they get their information "as soon as you hang up the phone" or "by tomorrow morning". This is the speed they are looking for.
3. I will call you as soon as a property meets your criteria - while they certainly do want to hear from you on the phone Internet prospects prefer e-mail or texting and this is the way they want to receive updates about new properties.

Remember Internet prospects want their information quickly and will actually help you by doing much of their research online with you. You just must give them their information quickly and make sure that you use the correct real estate scripts when speaking with them.

Labels: real estate marketing, real estate scripts

OK so you can't possible think of something to put on your real estate blog. How about statistics? There isn't a home owner or home buyer out there who doesn't want to know what the real estate market is doing yet statistics is one of the hardest things to find on the Internet. I know that some MLS systems even have built in reports and if you are allowed to use graphs or charts from them even better. Even if you can't use their charts you can quickly create your own using Microsoft Excel or another spreed sheet program. So we thought we would give you:

1. Statistics are hard to find - Try seeing what sold last month in an area without using the MLS. It is so difficult it is unfair. Think how home owners and home buyers would view your knowledge if you let them know about what is going on.
2. They are valuable - Everyone needs to know what is happening. Tired of losing a listing presentation because someone said the market is doing better than it is. What if you became the source?
3. Consumers want them - Home buyers and sellers need to know what is going on and they are searching for it. They are just having a hard time locating it.
4. Others aren't doing it - It is always better to be first rather than last. Just because everyone has access to the data(Realtors(R)) doesn't mean they are letting people know about it. Let consumers know.
5. They always change so it is always something new to write - One of the hardest things to do sometimes is come up with something new to write. Thankfully someone is always buying or selling so numbers will change. Even if no one is buying or selling you can still show that as well!
6. It makes for great charts & Graphs - Having visuals is great because it makes your blog different and more interesting to your readers. You can create charts in literally minutes with Microsoft Excel.

So go forth and add stats to your blog or website and become the source for information.

Labels: real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing, real estate marketing

As you are developing content for both your BLOG and your real estate website, think about what visitors are looking for in relationship to the time frame that they may be looking. A wonderful post on the Real Estate Tomato brought up how you can take a look at the relationship of terms someone is searching for to the time frame that they are willing to purchase in. Here are some highlights derived from their post that were arrived at by Cydee Haydon:

• Blogging about a large area like a city (Tampa Bay was used as her example) - resulted in buyers who were 12-24 months out.
• Blogging about a city within Tampa, like Clearwater she was able to get buyers in the 12 months and under time frame
• Blogging about a neighborhood or condo complex like SandPearl she was able to get buyers from 1-6 months out.

If you think about how someone does research for real estate on the internet this makes alot of sense!!! This type of data has occured in our websites as well. As people search for the Long Beach real estate they can be on a longer time frame, but if they request a specific building like 1400 Ocean Blvd they have already become familiar with the city of Long Beach and now know they want downtown long beach area and preferrably a specific building.

So have fun creating content for your BLOGs and your websites that bring in clients of all time frame.

Labels: content, real estate blog, real estate marketing

Now hopefully you have a real estate blog that is either integrated with your website or is separate from your website and marketed differently. One of the things that we find is hardest for agents to do is to come up with new topics to write on and because they don't have new topics they stop writing and their blogs aren't updated on a regular basis. Here are 5 content ideas you can use for your blog and the great part is you can keep reuse them every single month!

1. Monthly Sales Statistics - This is one that you make sure to report every first of the month. Keep it consistent and you will have a regular following that checks to see what the figures were at. Let agents know you will be posting it so they can check it as well.
2. Loan Products - Banks are continually offering new products so that buyers can buy or builders can build. Get your favorite lending partner to post every month on what is new out there.
3. Loan Rates - A great resource to reference is www.bankrate.com. They always post the latest available rates from different lenders. If you had a few lenders send you what the latest rates where one a week or once a month you would have a regular topic that people are always interested in.
4. New Construction - Most areas have some form of new development occurring on an ongoing basis. Blogging on it and reporting it are key to more great content.
5. Fun Events - It doesn't always have to be about real estate. You can mention a carnival or fair that is going on and mention what area of town it is in. Since it has to take place somewhere it is related to real estate and people always like to have a source for information.

Have fun with this 5 Blog Topics for your Real Estate Blog. It is more important to keep posting than to not post at all so good luck with your blog!

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate agent website, real estate blog, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing

For two days we will be at Mega Tech Camp in Austin with 3,000+ Agents sharing with the real estate community more about how to deal with marketing online for your real estate business. We will be on two panels covering the following topics:

• Lead Conversion - Joe will be on this panel where they will be discussing how to handle the volume of leads that can be derived from real estate marketing online. They may not have a chance to deal with scripts, but that can make some of the largest impact on your business when getting all of those great leads.
• Lead Generation - Jamey will be on this panel where they will be discussing taking your website from just a presence to an online lead generating machine! Most of the topic points will be focused on low cost ways to get traffic to your website so you can grow your monthly lead count to any number that you desire!

If you are going to be there, please stop by after the panels and say hi as we are always happy to share.

Labels: lead generation, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online, scripts

As real estate agents and other professionals working on real estate internet marketing have been coming online, a major focus has been on keywords and concentrating on those most popular keywords that people are typing. What about the keywords and phrases that don't show up in many of the word research tools?

The theory of "Long Tail" search is the following. It states that "the sum of the searches on all the low volume terms = the sum of the traffic on all the high volume terms.". What does this mean?

• The lead keywords of the search curve are the most competitive (i.e. real estate, or real estate marketing"
• Keywords at the tail of the search curve are less competitive

If the keywords at the end of the tail are less competitive then it gives you an opportunity to take advantage of those keywords! In fact, in a post by Eric Enge at Search Engine Watch on May 21st, they stated: "At Google's Universal Search announcement, Udi Manber put up a slide that stated that 20% to 25% of the search queries Google sees every day are search queries it has never seen before." WOW. That means you don't have to compete on the largest terms if you don't want to, because you can take advantage of the less competitive unique queries!

If you want to do more research on the Long Tail, SEOmoz has some wonderful posts to read more. One of the posts,, written by Hamlet Batista, Uncovering the Invisble Tail, is really helpful to learning more. Look for more of our posts here at OnlineRealEstateSuccess on ways to take advantage of that invisble tail!

Labels: google search, long tail, real estate internet marketing, real estate marketing, search engine watch

Real estate Directories are a wonderful way to get inbound links pointing to your website to help you increase your visibility in organic searches. In order to maximize your real estate internet marketing you will want as many websites pointing to you as possible.

Now, you want to be careful that you don't accidentally join a link farm, which will actually hurt your results in the search engines. Quality real estate directories will have information that is of value to customers and may even be difficult to get accepted into! Some of the most powerful quality directories are as follows:

1. Yahoo! - Yahoo actually has one of the most powerful and influential directories online. It comes at a price of $299 a year.
2. DMOZ - This is the largest human edited directory. It can take many many weeks to get accepted into this directory, but it will be well worth the wait. Make sure you submit your site to the appropriate category and the best part it is totally FREE.
3. RealEstateABC - This dedicated real estate directory has a Google PageRank of 6. It provides excellent information to customers and is easily browsed. We get visitors from this site every month.
4. Real Estate Library - This educational site with tips, reports and articles has a Google PageRank of 5 and has wonderful directory to place your website in. There are two packages of annual listings from $59 /yr to $119 a year.
5. Strongest Links - This site is not a direcotry but has a wonderful section on directories that are high quality. They list many directories and their respective costs.

There are plenty of directories out there, so take time when choosing which ones to join. Optimally you will want directories that are human edited so you can ensure that your link is viewed by the search engines.

Labels: real estate directories, real estate internet marketing, real estate marketing, SEO

When we want to improve the results of our real estate seo efforts we have to have something to check their effectiveness. Now there are plenty of tools available that one can pay for. What is more rare is to find a website that offers free tools. In fact we found a site that allows you to check for FREE your real estate seo efforts.

Please remember that Search Engine Optimization(SEO) will not producer instant results. When you focus on seo for your real estate website you will have long term results that will pay off. So this website is a great place to check out your real estate seo process and plan that you are working on.

A great FREE website that we came across is http://www.linkvendor.com/. Now this website is completely free and gives you some great things to monitor your website with. You can check the following with their tools:

1. Value of a link - Wonder if you should pay a directory for a link from their site? This free tool calculates the value of a link from a website. While I would recommend using it as your only guide it is a nice guideline to keep in mind.
   
2. Page Rank Check - This tool allows you to see if what Google is reporting by them is truly the value of your website. Not bad to get a second opinion and sometimes when the Google Page Rank system has issues you will have a nice place to go.
   
3. Outbound Links - Tells you how many outbound links that you have. There are other tools for this but this one does a decent job.
   
4. Keyword Density - Tells you what percentage a word appears throughout your site and allows you to check the search engines as well. This is nice if you are working on integrating new words into your SEO work.

There are other tools on this site. It is FREE and the guy does a tremendous amount of work on it. Check it out and we hope that it helps you improve the performance on your website. Once again the address is http://www.linkvendor.com/.

Labels: real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online, real estate search engine optimization, real estate seo

It always amazes me that people don't have anything new to add to their websites. They wonder what they should do what marketing they should do for their real estate career. Often the easiest thing is right before their eyes or it is already in the mind. Real Estate Marketing online should focus on the content.

Now this may sound obvious but it isn't always the case. We speak literally hundreds of times a year before different groups of Realtors and most can tell us everything that is going on in their particular market but yet none of this is available on their websites. So we just wanted to cover a few tips on real estate marketing that works online that might not work easily in other mediums such as magazine ads, flyer's, or radio.

1. Neighborhood Information - This is one of the easiest things to put on your website because you already probably know a whole bunch of things about the neighborhood you farm in. Post this information to a neighborhood blog. You can get one for FREE at www.blogger.com. We recommend getting your own personal domain from a company like www.TopAgentDomains.com.
2. Statistics - Some MLS systems generate this in easy reports others you have to run reports manually. Customers want to know the average days on market, list to sales ratios, how many homes are available. You mine as well be the source!
3. Event notices or news - This is easiest to do with a blog. Post that there is going to be a work party cleaning up a park, that a street is being worked on, that a church is doing a fundraiser. You can literally become the source for information in your neighborhood.

The three tips above will help keep your website fresh and more importantly keeps your real estate marketing at the front edge of the Internet. If you can even do a post or two a week you will be ahead of 98% of all other real estate professionals who think they are doing real estate marketing better than you are! Good luck and we hope that this helps you succeed online.

Labels: internet marketing solutions for real estate agents, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online

Real Estate Internet marketing is much like other forms of marketing in the fact, that the entire goal is to generate leads and generate business! Having a successful online presence requires that you have some key aspects to your website. These 5 tips will help you to maximize your real estate marketing online.

1. Make it east for customers to search your MLS


2. Make it easy to contact you! - Sounds crazy, but your phone and e-mail should be easy to find


3. Powerful calls to action - give people a reason to sign up


4. Unique Content - stand out from the crowd by writing your own information


5. Provide a Home Value tool - you want to get the sellers who are searching online!

Following these 5 tips will help you to get contacts out of your website visitors. Your real estate internet marketing efforts will not get wasted if you practice these tips.

Labels: marketing real estate web site, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing solution, real estate marketing, real estate marketing online