Real Estate Web Design and Marketing Blog

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There is a common misconception among real estate professionals that a newly or even a recently launched website with a new domain name should rank well fresh off the shelf. To exacerbate the problem, some agents also have unrealistic expectations that if they launch a website and upload a smidgen of content to the site, it will rank well and receive a flood of site visitors (traffic). Warning, my “snarkiness” is about to begin! No Dorothy, you can’t “click your heels three times” and have your site rank well for Topeka, Kansas, real estate; you’re not “the Lone Ranger” and there is no “silver bullet” you can fire to have your site gun down your competition and appear at the top of the search engines for Cheyenne, Wyoming real estate; nor is this “The Matrix” and there is no “blue pill” you can take to magically achieve quick search results for a new site (and your new domain name) in Gotham City! The good news is there are tools you can use and best practices you can adopt to gain the much sought after traffic you want.

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Back on January 26th I wrote a post “The Dakno Studio Comes to Life“. Little did Brad and I know what started as an idea to build a studio and share streaming webinars would explode so quickly. Our initial intention was to live stream webcast of FREE real estate marketing seminars and our Blogging BootCamp sessions. Later we decided to create videos to support our Dakno clients who wanted help with their SwfitBlog powered by WordPress. Knowing all of these client support videos needed a “home” of their own, we decided to build a portal to house a “mashup” of support videos, and FREE marketing videos and make them available to everyone!
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A Word About Missing Keywords

Often our clients will create new pages, and write a bit of copy with their easy to use Agent Backdoor site editor. Maybe the article is about “New Construction”. When you write the tile “New Construction” always place a geographic reference in the tile for search engines and site visitors. The same is true when you write copy that includes references to “Realtor” or real estate agent. I suggest you add Raleigh Realtor, then link that phrase to your “About You” page.

Make the Call – The Call to Take Action!

I love it when real estate agents include a strong call to action at the end of their articles and I always suggest you conclude each page with a strong call to action:

Contact me to get a free copy of my new construction guide and to take that first step in building your next dream home.

Take a good look at that sentence. How would you improve it from an SEO perspective? That’s right, add the area keyword and a sense of urgency; “Contact me today to get a free copy of my new construction guide and to take that first step in building your next dream home in Raleigh.“

One Voice!

When adding new content to your real estate website via your Agent Backdoor, be careful to ensure you write consistently in one voice. I like reading web copy in the first person and not third person. It’s more personal when information is written in the first person. If you add new web pages to your website be consistent and avoid leading your site visitor to believe you are schizophrenic. It’s really strange to see some pages written in the first person and some written in the third person!

Fonts – Keep Them Clean and Simple

Also be consistent with font styles, sizes and colors. One sure fire way to make a website look less professional is to add web content that looks different with yellow highlighted text, or text in loud bolded underlined colors. It makes your website look like it was built in the 80’s.

Time to Take a Closer Look at Your Real Estate Website!

Now would be a great time to take a closer look at your website. Does it have a variety of wacky font styles, colors, weird bolded words that are underlined for no apparent reason. If your website suffers from these issues, make the corrections now.

Stay tuned for even more tips on website design and SEO.

Bobby

P.S. My thanks to Raleigh real estate agent Jenn Nowalk and her husband Rich for being kind enough to be placed in the Dakno website review “hot seat”.

Occasionally, I like to take a glance at our Dakno client’s new real estate websites just to see how they are coming along. It’s exciting to see our clients creating unlimited web pages with their Agent Backdoor site editor, uploading neighborhood pages and adding high-value content to their sites. I have decided to offer a few tips based on some observations I commonly see once a client begins to “grow” their Dakno website.

Don’t Forget the Tags!

Often, a client will create a new web page and forget to add keywords to the title tag, meta tag and meta keywords for the page. Here is an example of such a page. When creating new pages don’t forget to always add a geographic keyword reference to your content and to your headlines for superior organic search engine optimization too. In this example I recommended the agent add a smidgen of copy at the top of this page to help with SEO.

Maybe add something like this,

“Are you ready to hit the links in the Triangle? If so, you will find Raleigh golf courses offer a wide range of championship caliber tracts. Many have been rated 4 stars or higher by numerous national golfing magazines. And the weather in Raleigh is conducive for year-round play. For more information on the Raleigh golf courses listed below, just click on the links provided for green fees, tee times and more information.“

I also encouraged this client to add a wee bit more information for each golf course, like is it private or public, number of holes, length of the tract, etc. Now you’re offering real value to your site visitor. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

A Comment About Linking Resource Pages

Let’s face it, the easiest way to add content to a website is to create a link resource page. I’m not a big fan of this strategy for a couple of reasons. You paid hard earned money to build a real estate website to have people visit it and maybe even encourage them to connect with you. So why in the world are we so eager to send our traffic away providing links to everywhere? Why not write a bit of copy about every one of those golf courses and keep your site visitors to your self. So my question to you is this, are you creating a leaky website by offering a resource center for links?

More Website Tips After Your Website Goes Live

In a future post I’ll recommend even more tips to help your real estate website offer greater value so it is seen as the rich resource worthy of many return visitors.

Bobby