One of the best improvements that you can make to your website is adding the ability to track where your visitors come from and where they go. Knowing where your visitors are spending the time on your website can allow you to make the improvements to your site that will convert these browsers to clients.

Many site owners engage in email marketing, either direct email or newsletter email marketing. Being able to track the visitors that come from your email campaigns will tell you what types of emails to continue and which ones you need to adjust.

Adding analytics to your website will also allow you to see how much time visitors spend on your website as well. A visitor that clicks in and leaves, is looking for something that they evidently did not find on your site. Maybe it needs to be rearranged? Or possibly you need to rewrite your text.

The information provided by analytics is almost priceless to the site owner. A very simple website improvement, but one that cannot be missed!

When you have a real estate website, chances are good that you have domain hosting that allows you to create subdomains. Should you use those subdomains to create a unique website for the properties that you represent?

The answer is absolutely yes.

When you create a unique web page for your listings, you’ll find that you are able to:

1. Create a single place for prospective buyers to learn more about a property.
2. Give the property more attention than you would with a simple blog post.
3. Include more information about the property than you would be able to include on a marketing flyer.
4. Use the website as a place to include slide shows of property photos or even a virtual tour video.
5. Add a form where prospective buyers can schedule an appointment to see the home or request more information.
6. Market the listing more effectively.

When you design individual real estate property websites, you’ll find that you’re able to do more to get the word out about the properties that you’re selling - and add links back to your main website and blog as well.

Having a real estate website is, well, more or less essential if you want your business to thrive in the current environment. With more and more homebuyers looking to the web first, how can you afford to not focus on creating your own presence?

However, that doesn’t mean that everyone is able to create the right content for their real estate web pages: so how do you decide who should be writing your real estate content?

If you have a knack for writing and you have the time to create the content, then by all means, go ahead an do it yourself. If you don’t know much about coding a website, you can have someone else design the site and post your content and you can focus on adding content with your blog.

You can have the person who designs your real estate website take charge of creating the content as well - something that’s great if you have, say a real estate assistant or real estate VA who knows a great deal about real estate and specializes in providing web marketing services.

Similarly, you can focus on finding a reputable ghostwriter who can research the information and write the content so that you can put your name on it. Ghostwriters aren’t all created equally, but if you’re looking for great content, you probably shouldn’t rule them out.

Remember, real estate websites need to serve multiple purposes. First, they exist to provide information. Second, real estate websites are meant to help prospects get to know you. Finally, they are a marketing tool - and a very effective one, provided they have the right content. Be sure that you’re considering this when you create your real estate websites.

When you create a real estate website, one of the goals that you’ll have involves getting visitors. Of course, you want to do more than just get people to your site, you want them to settle in for a while, have a chance to learn something new and to determine why it is that your real estate services are more right for them than the services that your competitors offer.

That means that, when you develop your real estate websites, it is essential to make sure that your site visitors are able to find the information that they are looking for.

So what exactly does that mean?

On one hand, it means that you should make the links on your site straightforward: if you have pages that are designed for buyers, make sure that that is clear; the same is true when you have pages that are designed for sellers. On another, it means making sure that, when you add fresh content, there will be ways for site visitors to get to it quickly.

It also means that if you make changes to your site, that you have a tool for redirecting visitors to the information that you’ve moved around on your site. For some, this will mean creating a 404 page with links to other parts of the site. For others, it will mean creating a 404 page that redirects visitors to your blog or another relevant page so that they are able to find the details they are looking for.

In other words, when you design your real estate website, make sure that site visitors are able to find the right information - regardless of where those details are located.

When you set out to create a real estate website, you just might find that there’s another really good reason to know your market well: if a number of members in your community are bilingual you may want to look into translating your sites into an additional language.

For example, those who live in communities where Spanish, Korean, French or another language is spoken as much as (or nearly as much as) English may find that if they do not translate their websites into the additional language they will alienate a large prospective client base.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should just run the content on your real estate website through a bit of translation software; after all, just doing that may not ensure that the content is translated properly. Instead, consider hiring a translator who can create the content that your clients are looking for - a translator who will work with you to focus on getting your message just right.

Of course, if you do not have translators within your office, that may prove to be an additional drawback to offering translation - unless you’re prepared to have someone on staff who can help you to communicate with every client that comes in. Still, if you’re looking to maximize the impact of your message and the number of people you reach out to, translations on your real estate websites just may be the right way to get that message across.

Both while you are creating real estate websites and while you are focusing on marketing them, one thing that you’ll want to pay careful attention to is the variety of services that you offer.

On one hand, that’s going to mean looking into options like home swapping or flat fee MLS as well as home valuations and showing tips. What that means is that, when you’re marketing your services you’re going to want to be able to make sure that those people who are looking for specific information are able to find it.

On the other, it’s going to mean making a commitment to knowing which services that you offer that you will be marketing online so that you can direct traffic to your website. Pay per click advertising campaigns, after all, are only as productive as they are well thought out and well-executed; the same - on a more general level - can be said for your real estate websites.

Regardless of which services you offer on your real estate websites and within your business, the only way to really get people interested is to give them the information that they need. And the only way to get them to pay attention once you put that information up on your real estate websites is to launch a great marketing campaign.

The services that you offer, after all, are the foundation of your success - both offline and on your real estate websites.

It’s one thing to hire a web design firm when you are originally designing your real estate websites, however, when it comes to maintaining those sites, you’ll find that there are a lot of different options that are available to you.

First - and probably the most obvious option - you can maintain your real estate websites on your own. But, if you don’t have the time to make regular updates or you just don’t feel like it’s something that you want to do, it’s time to start looking at the other options that are going to be available to you.

As for those other options, one is to have your real estate assistant update the pages for you, another is to bring on an additional real estate assistant, even on a part time basis that can make sure that the job’s getting done. Not only can your assistant add new listings to your site, but also you can be sure that your web assistant is keeping your blog up to date.

On the other hand, you just might find that there are college students looking for internships or even high school students in the area who are looking for an after school job who have the tech know-how to keep your website up to date at a low cost in exchange for the experience.

Real estate websites are extremely effective marketing tools - at least when they are used well. The best way to make sure that your website is working for your real estate business is to keep it up to date.

(Source) Don’t spend a penny on advertising until you have a website that properly represents your company and clearly demonstrates your products and services. If you have a bad website then it will diminish all other efforts. A good website will index better in search engines, have more visitors and create tangible ROI. We are in the process of re-doing our . . . website right now, and we will probably have to do that again in another 6-12 months. The web is our front door and we need to keep a fresh coat of paint on it at all times.

Interestingly enough, this sentiment about the importance about having websites that are fresh, solid, interesting and regularly updated as the central focus of your online marketing campaign - while it is not specific to real estate websites - used a bit of language that folks in real estate will understand. Though not specifically stated the gist is this: your real estate website has to have curb appeal before you really start marketing the real estate products and services that you want to promote.

What can you do to create a site that will work as the central element of your online marketing campaigns?

• Fix what’s broken. If you walked into a seller’s home and the light switch in the living room, when flipped, turned off the light in the hall bathroom, you’d tell them to fix it. If your site has broken links, or a page title doesn’t have much to do with the page topic, fix it.
• Give the walls a fresh coat of paint. Unless your real estate website’s colors make reading the text difficult, this step has little to do with the color of your page; instead, it’s about the content. Make sure that you’re not getting sucked into gimmicks and trends with your content; provide visitors with the foundation that they need to make the info their own.
• Make it easy for visitors to get around. If you were holding an open house, you’d want to be sure that there weren’t rolls in the carpet and you’d want to create a steady flow from one room to the next in case it got crowded. A site map and your real estate website that makes it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for is a great idea.

When you focus on your real estate website and make an effort to look at your site from the outside in (just as you tell sellers to have a look at their home from the buyers’ perspective), you’ll find that all of your internet marketing is more successful.

When you have one or more real estate websites, one of the most essential things is to keep the information that appears on that site up to date. There are two really, really good reasons for this.

1. When the information on your site is outdated, it’s going to look like you are either too busy to update your website or that you don’t use it to provide valuable information - both of which are turnoffs to your prospects.
2. When the info on your real estate websites is out of date, some site visitors may not believe that you have current information on the neighborhoods that interest them.

It’s for these reasons that others also suggest working with someone else who can keep the content on your site up to date. If you do not have the time to keep your site updated, if you have someone else managing it that lack of time won’t show, and information that visitors are looking for will be there.

In other words, when you want to be sure that visitors to your real estate website find a valuable resource, you’ll want to make sure that they are finding the details they need, that past information is archived so that if they are interested in looking at the trends they can follow them, and details about planned communities stay up to date.

When you make a commitment to attracting clients to your real estate website, don’t just settle for getting them there: make a commitment to getting them to keep coming back.

It used to be that real estate websites were able to be subtle: you could simply set them up and visitors would find them, get the information they were looking for (or not) and then move on to another site. These days, however, when most companies have a real estate website, you can’t rely on simply providing the information to be enough: you need to be able to get site visitors involved enough that they begin to interact with it.

Here are some suggestions for engaging your site traffic:

• Encourage comments and questions on your real estate blog. Your blog is more than just a marketing tool; it’s a place where you can ask for feedback and encourage those who visit the site to ask questions that they’re looking for answers to. When you encourage questions and feedback and respond to it, more visitors will keep coming back for more.




• Use photos and other visual elements to attract attract more interest to your site. On real estate websites, this is relatively simple because you have access to photos of the properties you’ve listed as well as photos from the MLS that you can use to show sellers what their photos should and should not show.




• Add videos to your real estate websites. Virtual tours of homes, visual presentations that help to show site visitors more about the things that they are looking for: short movies are extremely popular on the web - look at YouTube as an example. The visual element lets those who learn in a different way to get the information they need.




• Add podcasts to your real estate site. Podcasts can be downloaded from your site so that visitors can listen to them on their own time. They can also play them on the site to ensure that your prospects are able to access the information that they need in the for that’s right for them.

By adding interactive elements to your real estate websites, simply put, you’ll be able to draw the site visitors in - and that’s what will keep them coming back.

When you committed yourself to building a real estate website, you knew that you were looking for a few things:

1. You were looking to collect leads
2. You wanted to generate more publicity for the homes that you’ve listed
3. You wanted to be able to build your brand

Chances are good that you also had other goals for your real estate website, but for now, let’s take a closer look at each of the above - and the one thing that you need to do to make it happen.

Using your real estate website to collect leads.

Here’s a question for you: if you’re looking to gather leads with your real estate website, have you made your site interactive? In other words, whenever a prospect visits your site, is it possible for them to ask questions or leave comments? Do you have a link that they can follow to send you email? If you have a visitor-friendly site, you’ll find that even those prospects who are ready to act won’t be able to do so.

Using your real estate website to showcase homes that you’ve listed.

Showcasing the homes that you’ve listed for clients is easy enough, but by itself it isn’t enough to enhance a buyer’s website experience. Instead, consider making it possible for site visitors to search for homes that match what they are looking for, and be sure that you include ways for them to contact you about specific properties.

Building your brand with your real estate website.

Your brand identity defines you more clearly than anything else. If your goal is to have visitors establish a favorable sense of your brand, you need to make sure that your site is easy for them to navigate. Think about it this way: if a prospect can’t navigate your website, do you really think that he or she is going to expect you to be easy to work with?

Having a user-friendly real estate website is essential - especially if you’re trying to build your client base.

When you’re working in real estate and have created a real estate website, chances are good that you’re looking to do a number of different things - many of which fall into one of the following categories:

• to inform and educate
• to attract buyers
• to attract sellers

Whether you work primarily with buyers or sellers, the information that you provide is going to be key - especially in times when the market is a bit less strong than it could be.

It may be a temptation to focus only on the strength of the market or to try to paint a brighter picture than the one that you know to exist. It may seem as though you’ll be able to do more to appeal to buyers and sellers if you’re confident - but confidence doesn’t mean ignoring reality with your real estate website.

If you focus too much on the confidence and not enough on the realities of the market, however, you’re likely to discover that you’re not attracting the leads that you’d been hoping for. This is because there’s a fine line for those who are checking out your real estate website: yes, they want an agent who is confident, but honesty and integrity are equally valuable - without them, your site won’t bring the results that you’re looking for.

If you’ve got a real estate website that you’re using to market the services that you offer, there are a few key elements that you should make sure that you are not forgetting.

All real estate websites should have:

• A clearly defined “About” page. When you create your real estate website, it’s essential to let the people who will surf their way there know what your site is about, what services you offer and where you are located.
• A contact page. While every page on your real estate website should include a link that lets someone who is browsing send you an email if they have a question, providing your phone number, physical address and email address on each page will ensure that if someone is interested in using your services they will be able to find you.
• Valuable content. Whether you use articles and well-written general content on your website exclusively or you supplement your content with daily blog posts, you need to provide those who are viewing your site with the information that they need - and to give them a sense of whom you are in the process.
• A place to sign up for an electronic newsletter. This, of course, means that if you don’t already have an electronic newsletter, you’ll need to create one. But it also makes it possible for you to gain contact information for those who are interested in buying or selling a home in your area and allows you to reach out to them regularly.
• A focus on building relationships. Ultimately, the goal of any website is to build relationships between the site owner and viewers. Know what you have to offer, and know what your visitors are looking for.

By making sure that you’re addressing each of these points, you can be sure that your real estate website will perform well for you - whether your goal is to attract more sellers, more buyers or to encourage FSBO sellers to list their property on your site to draw more traffic to their home.

(source)If a man doesn’t fish, you won’t get him to buy a fishing pole. Teach him to fish and he could be your client for a lifetime.

The same can be said about real estate: if a man doesn’t understand the benefits of home ownership, you won’t get him to use you as a buyer’s agent because he won’t be interested in owning a home. If you use your real estate websites to explain what’s in it for him, you just might find that he’ll give you a call and have an interest in seeing condos or single family homes.

Similarly, when the market starts slowing down a bit for sellers, you’re going to come across an increasing number of FSBO sellers in your farm area; educate them about the MLS and the benefits of selling with an agent and you just might find yourself asked to be the listing agent (and putting the commission in your pocket when the home sells).

It’s essential, when you’re designing a real estate website, that you work to create educated buyers and sellers. But don’t just focus on teaching them about the benefits of your services, focus too on why you’re the best agent for their needs: show them why they need to be working with you.

Educated buyers and sellers are more likely to work with an agent; they are also the clients that agents should most want to work with. Your real estate website is a valuable asset: it lets you educate and win over buyers and sellers, to gather prospects and convert those leads into clients. It really is as simple as that.

Plenty of people think about press releases and consider their local media and the opportunities that getting the word out can create for special events and product launches, but rarely do they think about press release writing as a tool for marketing their real estate websites.

Think about it though: if a press release is a great way of getting the word out about the new farm area that you’re covering or a new product that you’re using to market homes for sellers, why wouldn’t it be a great way of drawing traffic to your real estate website?

If you are first launching your website, a press release is a great way to let people know. If you’re adding virtual tours or podcasts, launching a forum or blog or are simply revamping your real estate site, why not use a press release? Focus on the big picture, keep your release about the facts, but go ahead and make an announcement.

Online press releases get the word out with little effort and with few expenses - but more importantly, it tends to let you get the message to those people who are already looking for it. That should be the one thing that you’re focusing on more than any others with your real estate site: attracting the attention of people who are already looking for the products and services that you offer.