Real Estate Agents Online is Expanding to Lockbox

To provide an update on the agents online site, it is now number nine on the search for that particular term. It was number two however, the site was hacked and subsequently needed to be reloaded onto google. The new experiment however is in the field of lockbox technology. Specifically GE supra ekey lockbox and keysafe systems.

The experiment that I am running is to get the lockbox term and the associated site onto the first page of the search by implementing what I have learned with the past experiments. Real estate country was somewhat successful, but required a bit of work, and I think that the lockbox and supra ekey systems will be successful as well. My only hesitation is for planet realtor which is a fun name, but controversial in whether or not it will find the placement that is needed in the real estate market.

REALTOR Dedicated Listing URL's

I spent some time over the weekend looking at the myriad of tools that you can use to drive your real estate business. Obviously, the RedX is my favorite for listing leads, but there are a few others that look intriguing; especially in their use of multiple technology platforms to generate interest. For quite a while, REALTORS have been using dedicated listing sites to showcase their listings. Although these are fantastic marketing tools and a great closer for listing presentations, the previous versions of the technology have looked pretty bad.

I think I found a tool this weekend that both looks professional, but also leverages some useful technologies, including SMS text, to showcase a property under its dedicated URL (usually the address of the home, i.e. 1388-my-street.com.) The service is Single Property Sites and what they offer is dedicated website for every listing that you want to feature, along with a few widgets and tools to get traffic to those listings.

Now the benefit of this service is not that you just get a dedicated URL. Let’s face it, you could register the URL and create a dedicated listing site on your own. The actual benefit is in the promotion tools and widgets that are included with the service. In addition to a professional-looking, properly branded web site that features your listing, you also get a number of social tools including a google maps widget, a listing graphic widget for your blog and site and a few others. The system also has a SMS interface so that prospects can property details on their phones, and finally, it includes an interface with Craigslist so that you can post your listing details, in different online ad sites. Here is their URL, www.singlepropertysites.com

Real Estate Country and Bing

I haven’t quite formed my opinion about Microsoft’s new release of their Bing search engine. In reading the reviews, I am not alone. I have spent a little time this afternoon trying to get a feel for what where my real estate listing lead site and associated links lay in the ranking. What I found is that this “because it’s not google” search alternative has a completely different algorithm which will likely require a completely different SEO strategy for your real estate website.

I am not sure if this new search engine will give google a run for its money in search engine terms. As Seth Godin put it, “Bing is trying to be the new Google. Unfortunately Google is the new Google.” However, it does have some interesting features.

Now for those of us who are trying to get our real estate website to the top of the ranking, optimizing for bing may require a different strategy. In fact, in looking up the search terms that index my site well on google, I there is little success on bing. The Expired Listing Lead term did return back my link to the RedX as the top link, but the multitude of other sites that typically show up in reference to me did not. For my Agent Online experiment, the site was not even indexed, and similar to google, real estate country did not return a link to my page, even when I typed in the exact URL. Even my wife’s’ “prenatal vitamins” page did not get indexed.

From what I can determine with the very limited experience that I have had with the site, it uses an algorithm similar to google’s but puts a high weight on sites that have been around a while along with those that are well linked. Unfortunately from an SEO standpoint there is not much that you can do to age your real estate URL.

Agents Online Moving Up

Just to provide an update on this experiment, real estate agents online is moving up in the ranking. The real estate and listing lead site to assist REALTORS in attracting new business is now ranked 18 on the target search engine.

A Useful Extension of Twitter

As I mentioned below, Twitter is a new animal to me, but so far it has been useful in promotiong Agents Online.    I found this afternoon a new tool that promises to make my postings on the site much more effective.  The tool is Ping.fm which is an aggregator site that allows you to make one post to their site and that post will show up on all of your online social network accounts.  Thanks to the new site I shouldn't have to worry about updating my Twitter, Facebook and MySpace accounts individually.  

It should all be automatic.    For a busy real estate professional, this is fantastic.  

How To Use Twitter As a Marketing Tool

In order to begin using Twitter as a marketing tool, create an auto-responder on your twitter account so that when someone chooses to follow you, they will automatically receive a thank you with a call to action.  I useTweetLater.com for my autoresponders.  The message should thank the user for following, and include a call to action.  Your may choose to make your call to action an offer for a free report, data, or some other offer that allows you to capture more information about your target lead.  For example, my call to action is “Thanks for the Follow!  Want more real estate listing leads?  Visit me here for more info.”  

You also want to add a follow me on twitter badge to any of your online web pages, blogs, forum sites, or anywhere else that a prospective lead may be. 

Once you have set up your account and posted your badge, you need to start tweeting.  Try to post multiple times per day.  There is also a shortcut to help you when you can’t post directly. If you have a blog that you update often, you can post the feed directly to your twitter account using TwitterFeed. 

Now that you are up and running, you just need to add followers.  Do a search for a specific keyword and start adding. 

On a completely separate topic, I am still trying to get the words, AgentsOnline indexed on google.  It has only been two days so more time and effort is needed.

Welcome to Real Estate Agents Online

Welcome to our real estate agents online blog. This blog is part of a real estate SEO experiment to demonstrate how real estate agents can use free online resources to get their websites to the top of the search engines for a given real estate term. I have posted more information on this real estate SEO system for online agents at our Active Rain account as well as my personal real estate marketing blog.

I will be posting updates to this blog periodically as they pertain to our agents online website as well as the expired listing lead system from the RedX that the agents online and associated real estate country sites promote.

Stay tuned.