Real Estate Web Design and Marketing Blog

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One of the most important aspects of a successful real estate website is solid hyperlocal content. You would be amazed at how many people search for homes in specific neighborhoods or condo buildings

The neighborhood entrance

I know it’s cliché but it’s an important shot. This will help home buyers more easily find the location of the neighborhood should they later want to venture out and take a drive through that neighborhood.

Homes

It’s important to photograph a few homes but don’t go overboard. Let’s face it, showing the fronts of a dozen homes that all look the same doesn’t sell the neighborhood. Mix things up by showing the various architecture types and styles of homes. Keep things interesting by photographing the different homes from various angles.

Common Area

Walking trails, bike paths, play grounds, etc. Remember to sell the “lifestyle” that comes with living in that particular neighborhood.

Amenities / Clubhouse

Many people choose neighborhoods based off of its amenities. With this in mind, make sure you feature all of the various “extras” that are available to people living in the neighborhood.

Neighborhood Site Plan

Site Plans help provide potential home buyers with an overview of the neighborhood. Typically a quick phone call to the builder is all it takes as they will be happy to receive the “free advertising” in exchange for the Site Plan. While your at it, ask if they have any additional photographs that you could use on your web site.

Capture Photographs, Not Snapshots

Now that you have a good idea as to what to photograph, here are a few tips to help move your photos from “snapshots” to professional looking photography.

Get There Early or Arrive Late

The time of day plays a big part in how your photos turn out. Evenings produce long shadows and warm colors helping to add character to the photograph. Early morning also has great diffused lighting and helps capture those still moments just after the sun rises.

Frame and Perspective

It’s often difficult to truly capture the perspective in a flat photo. With this in mind, place something in the foreground to add depth to the shot. A simple low hanging tree branch may be all you need to do the trick.

Photoshop Is Your Friend

Even those less than stellar photos can come to life with a little help from a photo editing software such as Photoshop. Just remember, you want to accurately depict the neighborhood so don’t go overboard. Adding a little extra green to the grass is fine, but removing unsightly telephone poles and powerlines is another!

Peak Season

Spring and summer are a great time for photographing the great outdoors. Flowers are blooming, the grass is green and the neighbors just finished their spring cleaning! With this in mind, there is no time like the present to get out and photograph a few neighborhoods!

Bonus Tip

Like so many blog posts that I write, this topic came from a my inbox. Kari Mullins of Peoria Home Office asked me for a few tips on photographing neighborhoods. Instead of simply emailing her back, I decided to write this blog post. So the next time you’re faced with writer’s block, just take a look in your inbox. It’s likely overflowing with blog post ideas!

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Here in the Triangle area of North Carolina, one desirable town is growing like gangbusters. It’s called Cary. Many old time Raleigh residents poke fun at Cary. Not long ago it was a sleepy little town just southeast of the Research Triangle Park. If you are a local, you’ve heard it on more than one occasion that Cary stands for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. Many locals are more than a little envious of Cary’s rise to fame. Serving as the proverbial poster child for national publications singing the praises of this hot bed of Triangle suburbia, Cary is also more than a little anal about the appearance of its signs, architecture and growth. But ask anyone who has relocated to Cary and they will tell you they love living there. The quality of life is fantastic. So your probably asking yourself what in the world does this have to do with real estate web design, blogs or real estate marketing?

The True Litmus Test

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This post is actually the result of an email response I wrote today to Dakno Blogging Bootcamp student, Dena Calivas, Eco-friendly Realtor in Jacksonville, Florida. Occasionally it happens that way. I’ll be writing an email (yes-they are this long. Have pity on the recipient!) and when I have finished writing my (War & Peace) email, I’ll look back and think, now that is blogging material! If you are “hitting the wall” with writer’s block for your blog, go back and read some of your past emails to your clients or associates. Who knows what “blog fodder’ is just sitting in your sent folder.

Please Don’t FSBO Your Brand!

In my email to Dena, I was sharing with her the importance of conveying a consistent professional message with each component in her arsenal of online and offline media. Too often I see a “mashup” of different branding elements all thrown together. Many agents will produce something for their print media, then something totally different for their website. The outcome is a hodgepodge of dreadfully unprofessional branding gone awry. What a missed opportunity to make a positive impression. Much of it is the result of what I call “FSBO” design work performed by “DIY” real estate agents armed with a Publisher application. Most are looking to save a buck. Need I remind you that you get what you pay for.

Building Trust with Your Prospects!

Remember, it really is important you communicate trust and professionalism with your online and offline presence. This is accomplished by offering to your online and offline prospects and your clients a consistent look and feel for every piece of media you offer. It starts the moment you hand a prospect your business card or the instant a visitor arrives at your real estate blog or your website. That’s what I call an “impression” moment! The look and feel of each interaction opportunity should be duplicated.

Repeated Impressions Build Trust

Remember - repeated impressions builds trust. That’s Marketing 101. To do otherwise diminishes the trust factor you work so hard to develop. That’s why every interaction must be exact. I challenge you to take inventory of the following opportunities and make sure every one of these offer your prospect (or client) a consistent look and feel based on the anchor of your brand - your website:

•    Your website (the anchor of your branding!) From it every other piece should mimic it.
•    Your blog (the design should mirror your website)
•    Business cards
•    Thank you note cards
•    Letterhead
•    Email stationery
•    Car wrap/van wrap/moving truck wrap
•    Property take one flyers
•    Just Listed/Just Sold postcards
•    Direct mail postcards
•    Listing Presentations
•    Buyer/Seller Guides
•    Relo Guides
•    CMA’s
•    Yard Signs
•    Billboards
•    Water bottle labels
•    Koozies (form insulation for cans and bottles)
•    Print ads (Homes & Land, The Real Estate Book, newspaper and magazine ads…etc.)

There are probably others I have omitted, the point being, every one of these pieces is a golden opportunity to make a positive impression and solicit a strong call to action to your audience. Call today, email today!

Last But Not Least - Measure for ROI

If you offer any of these media by all means measure each for its effectiveness. If it’s not helping propel your business, evaluate it, retool it and if necessary, eliminate it. Just be careful with your brand. Making a major overhaul of your logo and your corporate identity should be approached cautiously. Take a look at the most recognized brands. They seldom make sweeping changes unless it is the result of a merger or buyout.

Devise a Focus Group

Now might be the most opportune time to gather all of your marketing collateral and place it in front of a small focus group. Maybe your focus group is made up of a past client, a new client and other unbiased friends and associates. Provide your group with examples of each piece of your marketing material and ask for their honest opinion. It’s a great place to start. From there you can begin to reign in your brand and hone it to your target market.

Any Feedback?

Everyone has an opinion - what’s yours?

Until my next post,

Bobby Carroll - Your Real Estate Marketing Guide

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Helping Dakno Real Estate Clients Stay Ahead of Your Competitors

To help you stay one step ahead of your competition, it’s important your Dakno real estate website provide your site visitors more information-rich resources and advanced neighborhood and condo property tools. In fact, today’s web-savvy real estate consumer expects more from their online experience.

Delivering More Value to Your Real Estate Site Visitors

With more consumers “hard-wired” to hit the web to fact-find and search for homes, it is critical you provide your site visitors more value so you are truly seen as the ultimate real estate resource in your area. Based on your feedback and our innovative thinking, Dakno is excited to announce numerous new features and enhancements for your Dakno website and Agent Backdoor site editor. Below is a complete list for your review.

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How about sports movies? One of my personal favorites among many is “Field of Dreams.” The cast is most impressive. Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, even Amy Madigan does a stellar job playing Ray Kinsella’s wife - Annie. Now that is a show stopping cast for sure!

Are You Hearing Voices?

Ray Kinsella did! Out of the Iowa corn field came this famous quote - “Build it and he will come!” - he being Shoeless Joe Jackson played by Liotta. Joining Jackson from the corn fields would be a few of the team members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. Farm owner Ray has such a strong “vision” for the field, he even gets to play catch with a younger version of his dad - John Kinsella, played by Dwier Brown at the end of the movie. Now that scene will grab you for sure!

If You Build It Will They Come?

Based on one of my all-time favorite sports flicks, I wrote a post on my Crystal Coast Blog called If You build It Will They Come? Take a look>

Helping you build your Field of Dreams website!

Bobby

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As some of you may know, Real Estate Webmasters is hosting a Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest. It’s a contest to see what agent can dominate the search engines for that keyword. I was aware of the contest but hadn’t really been following it that much until about a week ago. I received a Google Alert that said Kevin Tomlinson and Brad Carroll were the greatest real estate agents in the world. What? It turns out that Blogging Queen ARDELL wrote a post on Rain City Guide declaring us as winners (thanks again!) The point of her post was twofold. One - to test to see how fresh content differs in search engine placement from older authority content; and two, to see show that a team approach is the best way to achieve good SEO.

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Update: I have been contacted by Active Rain asking me to remove my customized AR blog. They discovered a potential flaw where some ActiveRain pages (that show posts from multiple users) could be altered. I have already contacted them with a fix for this. I will be speaking with them today and will keep you updated.

You have probably heard the buzz about the ability to totally customize your Active Rain blog. Visit my recent Active Rain post if you haven’t yet seen an example. It turns out; Active Rain gives you amazing flexibility in the look and feel of your blog. You don’t have to have to be a part of any special beta program. You can do this with any Active Rain blog.

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This much we know, e-commerce spending is growing at an incredible rate and is expected to top $7 trillion this year… yes - I said trillion with a “T”. Recent studies indicate there are numerous reasons why e-commerce sites are so successful. Shoppers list these reasons for using the Internet to shop:

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I have to admit, I am often temped to include signup forms on our client’s MLS and map search pages. After all, my job is to create real estate websites that fills my client’s inbox with lots of leads. But I always advise against doing so. Why? Well that’s exactly what this blog post is all about.

It’s not an equal playing field

Most real estate agents who require visitors to sign up to search the MLS think there is a balance of power. The agent has something the visitor wants (MLS access to thousands of homes), and the website visitor has something the real estate agent wants (their contact information). But here is the reality. It’s not equal. The site visitor is holding all the cards. The visitor doesn’t need you or your website. After all, if they do make it to your website and see that you require them to sign up to search for homes, they could give bogus information or easily hit that looming back button and move on to any of the other million or so results that Google has retrieved. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that they could search Realtor.com, Google Real Estate, Trulia, and so on.

Go After The Savvy Ones

The California Association of Realtors recently conducted a study comparing Traditional Buyers vs. Internet Savvy Buyers. The results were quite amazing. It turns out that Internet Savvy made much better clients than Traditional Buyers. They require you to show them less houses, they buy quicker, and they require less work on your part. So how does this relate to the forced registration vs. free search debate? Internet Savvy Buyers will typically find another resource if they see a website where they have to sign up to search for homes. But traditional buyers with less experience on the internet will simply follow the instructions. This means that you are actually pushing away the “easy” clients and catering to the clients that are going to make your life more difficult.

Extra Hoops for a Real Lead

Strangely enough, forcing visitors to sign up on your real estate website actually makes it less likely to receive quality leads. Why? When it comes to home searches, one of the best leads is a request for a showing. But by forcing visitors to first sign up, you are putting one more road block between them and that precious “Request a Showing” form.

Be a Leader and Not a Follower

There are a few real estate agents that require their visitors to register before searching the MLS. They seem to operate in clusters. While it may be easy to follow the crowd, the reality is that you have an excellent opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competition. While everyone else is making people mouse in handcuffs, you can shout it from the rooftops that you allow people to freely search without requiring people to register.

Search Engine Optimization

Oh yeah. Requiring visitors to sign up effects your search engine optimization also. This is because Google can’t “sign up” to search the MLS. This means that all those pages that Google would otherwise know about goes into a black hole. Ouch!

The List Goes On

There are more reasons such as having to deal with all the mickeymouse@noway.com leads clogging your inbox and database, pushing away repeat visitors and the appearance as a gatekeeper but you get the idea.

But I need More Leads!

So what’s the answer if you are not getting enough leads? The first step is to not make things worse by putting more stipulations on your site visitor. The savvy ones are too smart for that. Instead, take the opposite approach with your real estate web design. Give even more information away! Make it easier and faster for a visitor to get the information they need. Become the true resource for information in your area. It’s only then that all those savvy visitors will start flooding your inbox with their information.

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Many real estate agents know that one way to increase their rankings for their real estate website is to gain additional links that point back to their website. With this in mind, many SEO and Real Estate Web Design Companies are quick to add link building to their list of design and development services. But the reality is that simply building links isn’t the answer. The real value comes by building Online Endorsements. So what’s the difference? Link Building is simply trying to “game the system.” It focuses on the SEO value instead of the “People Value.” Let me give you a few examples…

The Wrong Way To Do It

You want to gain another link to your real estate website so you decide to develop a Squidoo Page. Most people will be tempted to just do a “hurry up” job by copying and pasting some information about themselves from their website and then linking back to their home page. Or maybe they even go as far as customizing the content by swapping out a few words here and there.

Let’s look at this from both a “People Value” perspective and a “Search Engine Value” perspective. First, from a Search Engine Value: Our good friend GoogleBot looks find the Squidoo page. Even though the content has been changed he uses his complex algorithms to analyze the content right down to sentence structure (yes, they filed a patent about this years ago) and immediately recognizes that the content is just a rehash of your about us page from your website. On top of that, Googlebot sees that the content doesn’t provide any valuable information such as new real estate facts, a how to, or anything else worthy of appearing at the top of the search engines. Googlebot just sees this as another advertisement page with duplicate content and moves on. Ouch! So what about the “People Value” perspective? When a web visitor arrives at the page, they too see just a bland self-promotion page. No real information that aids in their real estate experience. Frustrated, they just move on. It’s a good thing it didn’t take you long to develop this Squidoo page. Because the page you created gave no value to search engines or visitors. Now let’s look at an example of true resource for both Website Visitors and Search Engines.

The Right Way To Do It

I am very familiar with this example as it’s an example that I personally implemented. As a real estate web designer, I always try to keep up with the latest news about the Real Estate Industry as well as the Web Design and Development Industry. So my eyes lit up when I read Jay Izso’s ePowerNews article about how Internet Savvy Buyers use Real Estate Websites in their home buying decision. I knew this was a great topic that I could expand on. So I jumped on Squidoo and created a page about Real Estate Website Statistics. I pulled all the data, designed a few custom graphs to make it visually appealing to visitors, and made sure my titles were SEO friendly. At the end of the page, I tied in the information to my company and linked to the Dakno Marketing home page. I was sure to include the anchor text Real Estate Web Design, as that was the keyword I was optimizing for. When my old friend GoogleBot arrived at the new Squidoo page, he saw lots of original content about a subject matter that he knew little about. He soaked up every word, happy that there was a true resource for the information. Before I knew it, Googlebot had me ranked at the top of Google and started sending visitors to the Squidoo page. The visitors were glad to see useful content (not just a self promotion) complete with custom designed graphs. They knew that if I gave them all this great information about Real Estate Statistics on this page, that I would probably have even more useful information about Real Estate Marketing on my website. So the majority of the visitors followed my link over to my website. A few even called wanting web design services. It was a win, win, win situation for me, Search Engines and visitors.

So remember, it’s not about building links. Link building adds no value to Search Engines or Visitors. The real value comes out of building Resource Rich, Online Endorsements. Don’t settle for second best. Visitors and Search Engines won’t!

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