Real estate web design and search engine optimization services to drive targeted buyer clients to your web site.

Great Expectations: Understanding Online Real Estate Marketing

Before you decide to purchase a real estate web site, you need familiarize yourself with real estate marketing online as well as define your real estate internet marketing strategy. Once you understand these concepts and the investment that it takes to develop a quality, lead producing real estate web site, you will need to develop reasonable expectations, goals, and timeframes for executing your marketing plan.

The PT Barnum School of Real Estate Internet Marketing

"There's a sucker born every minute." - PT Barnum

The internet has been so over-hyped during the past five years that it has left a trail of thousands of disillusioned real estate agents. Countless web site design firms and web marketing "experts" have intentionally and unintentionally misled agents into believing that once they loaded their website on the internet that the money train would soon be rolling along.

The truth is that finding success with your virtual storefront is not much different than setting up a physical storefront. If you were opening a new real estate office, would you choose some out of the way cul-de-sac and wait for potential homebuyers to find you? More than likely you would find a location with decent roadside traffic and visibility, issue press releases, and at a minimum employ some form of print media advertising. These combined efforts will get your business moving in the right direction. Over time, word of mouth advertising would complement your efforts and help your business grow even more.

But when most real estate agents invest in a web site, they stick their web site at the end of some deserted cul-de-sac and then complain that the entire effort was a waste of time and money because it did not produce any leads or sales.

The real problem was that without an investment in a fundamentally sound real estate internet marketing program the web site was destined to fail.

Web Site Location: Avoiding the Cul-De-Sac

Like a physical storefront, you first need to choose the right location for your website. Not all web host providers are alike. For example, providers that also host gambling sites, adult sites or spammers may have their IP range banned from a particular search engine or hosting service. In some cases this means that some search engines will not index your site, and that some web host providers will block your emails from getting to your prospective customers. Ask potential web host sources if they allow these types of sites, and always search the internet for information and user ratings on potential web hosts.

There are even a few web host providers that prevent search engine robots from spidering the sites that they host. By preventing these robots they hope to ease the load on their web servers. Unfortunately, this also prevents your website from being indexed and ranked in the search engines. No search engines = no web site traffic = no leads or sales.

Next Article: Web Site Visibility: Getting Drive By Traffic, Window Shoppers, and Customers