Real Estate Web Site Management Part I
By: Ryan Birdsell
Founder, AgentsBuddy
The Net-- Nov 20, 2008 Last week, I received an email from a Real Estate Agent asking for help with her web site. I began to screen her like I do with all my clients. As I listened to some of the answers, it began to sound like one of those annoying pop songs that continuously plays every 5 minutes on the radio. Nevertheless, we all have the choice to either tune the song out or listen again. I choose to listen- over and over and over again.
Dialogue-
Me: How long has your site been up?
Her: About 5 years.
Me: What’s your PR, average daily traffic, and Alexa Ranking?
Her: A couple hundred people come to my site. My Page ranking is 3. Alexa, what’s that?
Me: Where does the majority of your traffic come from?
Her: Mainly from people I meet, I tell them to go to my website. I want to be #1 on Google.
Me: Ever check your logs?
Her: Nope, I have a web team for that.
Me: Do they do your advertising and marketing?
Her: No, I do all my own.
Me: Are you running any campaigns?
Her: Nope, that’s why I decided to get in touch with you.
The first thing that came to mind was the site has been up 5 years and that’s a lot of missed opportunities. Secondly what struck me was when I asked her about her logs and where the traffic was coming from. As I researched a little more in depth, I knew right away what some of her problems were.
We are all trying to sell something, are we not? So if you were doing something that was creating awesome results, wouldn’t you continue to utilize that method? As a Real Estate Agent, we set goals that are measureable. When methods do not work, we either fine tune them or dump them. The internet is no different. But when you don’t know, how can you measure anything? And when something works a little, do you just settle for that?
In regards to your website, it’s no different than your wallet or your purse. You need to know about everything in it, how much is in it, and constantly make sure you are in control of it. Let’s dissect some things in our little prescreening of our client.
1. 5 years and your Alexa ranking is 11 Million +. 
Alexa is a very well known Web Information Company that is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. A lot of people in the web business like to use Alexa to view web site popularity rankings for traffic levels. Some agree of the importance and reliability of Alexa while some don’t. I’m not concerned with that. What I am concerned with is: Alexa is just another free tool that anyone can use to measure success or shortcomings. The closest to the number 1 the better! Is 11 million that bad out of all the websites on the internet? The answer is YES.
2. The majority of the traffic I get I told them about my site. I want to be #1 on Google.
Although the client’s Page Rank is a 3 which isn’t great but better than a 0, what happened to applying some Search Engine Optimization? Back in the day, you could easily achieve a higher PR by slanging your link all over the internet by submitting them into directories. This is simply not the case anymore. Don’t get the wrong impression, you need to rank nicely and show up on some search engine result pages (SERP).
However, your career and business need to mature along the side of your traffic. While word of mouth is a very reliable method of generating leads, any traffic coming from search engines is ok too. We are by no means telling you to aim for number one on Google. Can your business handle that? You do not realize the massive amount of traffic you would get. Do you want to waste that opportunity while working under another broker and not yourself? Be careful what you wish for. Stick with content building and give it some time.
3. Ever check your logs?
If you do not know how to login into your Control Panel (CP) and check your own stats you are missing out on some valuable information. Again, Web analytics are important because it’s something you can MEASURE. How many unique visitors do you get? How much traffic comes from what websites? Is it search engine traffic? How much time is spent on your site? Where do you lose your surfers? All of this is important information and after five years you should know exactly what goes on in your web site. How many back links do you have to your site? How many of them are bringing you traffic? If some links are doing extremely well and they are located on say a blog, chances are the link being clicked could be on an inner page. Figure out if there are anymore blog posts dealing with a particular subject (Real Estate) and then either post another comment or ask the Blogger for advertising. But you would never know any of this if you didn’t check your stats.
Please join us again next week when we discuss a little more about Real Estate Web Management in this two part article. We will break down all the different stats and meanings behind them. More importantly, we will discuss Real Estate SEO, advanced advertising and marketing techniques for Real Estate Agents on the Web. You can always
join our Real Estate Discussion Forum and ask questions there.
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