How To Respond to Your Website Leads

Responding to a lead from your website is important . . . how you respond is just as important. Are they ready for you to contact them by telephone . . . or email . . . or perhaps they feel they are "flying under the radar" and the response needs to be a very "soft" one. This can especially be the case if they are just supplying an email to receive something that you have offered on your site.

Michael Russer offers up a good article on "How to Respond to Online Leads" that is certainly worth the read.

Are You Missing Internet Leads?

Do you feel that you are not getting all from the Internet and your website that you should be? There can be many reasons. Your site may have not been optimized for search engines. Perhaps you need additional Online or Offline Marketing. Perhaps it is poor site design. Older sites especially may suffer from lack of lead generating and tracking solutions.

Regardless of the challenge or challenges, there is no denying that a substantial amount of sales begin on the internet in today's marketplace.

Read this article for employing good internet techniques to help you capture your share.

How Many Listings Can Be Place in the Recent Sales Section?

A good tool to show your visitors that you are a real estate agent who has "actually sold a house or two" is the "Sold Listings" module which displays your recent sales.

You can add this to any page on your site by going to the Website section and after creating a page, selecting the "Sold Listings" module. Then edit this section by adding the MLS numbers of your sales. Not only can you place your listings that have sold, but you can also add the MLS numbers of sales you have made since you own half of that transaction.

Currently 40 fields is the maximum you can place in the sold listing section. Keep in mind that would seem like a lot for most folks scrolling through. Additionally, these sold listings will fall out as they are removed from the MLS, so they will only remain for 2 (or is it 3 years)....I would therefore recommend replacing the oldest MLS numbers in this section with your most recent sales.

Another alternative, if you are a selling machine and have a lot of sales to post and you really want to display more, would be to create two pages of "solds" with one being residential houses and the other as condos or the like...or even divided by high price rance and lower...or by area (ie "Seattle area sales" and "other area sales").

Website Lead Generation Is More Than Just SEO

Ever wonder why even with a site that has been "optimized" for the search engines, you still may not be receiving the traffic you would like? There can be many reasons. Perhaps you are too general in your search area. Maybe you are going for too competitive a term in a really competitive market. Maybe your site is focused on the wrong town or target nitch you endeavoring to pull from.

This article is a good read for "Why Agents Fail Online - Even When They are No. 1 On the Search Engines". Check it out!

Good Website Design

To engage a visitor to your website, you need to have a compelling site that is well designed and shows credibility. It must be intuitive, have good navigation, and actually contain information and content that is relative to the visitor's mission. Give them the way to accomplish their mission and you will acquire a happy visitor that will return to your site.

Visit this article that shares some top tips for web design.

Key Performance Indicators in Your Website Business

Web analytics, such as Google Analytics which we use in our GraphicalData websites, involve measuring how your website is doing with visitor count, time on site, pages served up, etc. If you understand some of the basic concepts, you can make your online business more productive.

There is so much data and information available, that for the normal person, you need to figure out what is important to you and your online presence and focus on it.

This article does an admirable job addressing Analytics and what to focus on, which many of us are probably failing to do.

If you do not have Google Analytics installed on your website, it is easy to do. Visit a previous post for some simple guidance through this process, or call us at GraphicalData for assistance. Phone numbers are on the GraphicalData login page.

Use Your Domain Name / MLS Number to Your Best Advantage

You can place a listing's MLS number directly behind your domain name separated by a forward slash (/). For example (as long as this listing stays active and/or has the same mls #) if you click on www.ourvashon.com/28number then you will pull up this particular listing.

This is a great way to share a listing that includes your domain name as well, either in written advertising or adding the link to an email.

Also, since it includes Google mapping, school information, neighborhood information . . . and more, this is as good as creating an entire website for a particular listing . . . and a lot cheaper.

Achieve Better Rankings in Google

We are all looking for ways to improve our rankings in the search engines. This article is a good read about how to do better in Google rankings. Actually, if you applied these for Google, they will benefit all the other search engine rankings as well.

This is not a complete list of course, but the author does cover many of the major items to consider in your site ranking well on the search engines...and I agree with all of them. My top 3 picks as to most important as well.

This is definitely a must read if you are trying to rise to the top in rankings and trying to do it yourself. Again, a GraphicalData website so lends itself to this sort of thing.

Do You Have A Web Strategy?

There is more to generating leads than just having a website or websites. How you handle a visitor can influence whether you have a client down the road or not.

You need to understand what a visitor to your site is looking for...and that timing is involved. Is your visitor just starting their home search mission; or ready to buy.

To ensure success on the internet with your website(s), you need to better understand your client and have a web strategy. Visit this article to better understand marketing yourself and your website for profit.

Looking To Increase The Popularity Of Your Website?

We all would love to have the most popular real estate website for our marketplace. It is not easy to do, but if you are creative, you can find ways to help achieve a website that is well received, and that folks will like and return to visit again...and even tell their friends about.

You need to be different; take a different or more unique approach. Focus on niches, specialties, specifics, and make it unique to you.

Visit this article for some general information. And, if you have not already done so, purchase "Real Estate Rainmaker: A guide to Online Marketing". It has some great ideas that may benefit you as well.