The following is a reprint of the notes from Agenthelper's twice annual Internet Marketing Seminar. The first hour is for beginners, but the second hour is for advanced discusssion and techniques. In these notes we'll review how the Internet works, how to make it work for you, and how to do much of that for free. These notes are not perfect, and are really just me following along with the video and slideshow of each session to repeat what was covered. I wanted to get them out onto the website as soon as possible. I expect there will be grammos and some items that might not make sense in this first pass. I do not claim it to be perfect. However, I know that this is light years better than any handouts, since I have had the opportunity to include what I learned from you and I can address some specific confusion in greater detail. It will also get better over time since I can organize these notes into specific topics, and we can create a framework for the discussion you should always have when you get started with a website. It is always important to remember that the World Wide Web is hyper-competitive. For every one paid service that you find, or that advertises to you, there are 10 that are free. There is a famous quote from Gertrude Stein that described Los Angeles and it is just as appropriate for the Internet. "There is no there there." There is no highway that you have to build you business next to in order to get traffic. There are no back roads that you must avoid. Your website is just as close to being famous and productive as Google, Yahoo and MySpace. The thing that connects any website with success are the links and URL's that bind the Web together. Internet Marketing Secrets for Real Estate There are 3 Topics Websites Search Engines Directories Everyone knows what a website is, and people are comfortable with search engines, but directories have changes. First we discuss websites and web pages. First thing you need to understand is that when you talk about a website you are talking about a group of webpage bound by a common domain name or theme. The Internet does not differentiate between a website and a webpage. This is a human distinction the Internet has no concept for a Web-Site. All that the search engines and directories see are web pages, each one distinct and separate with a life of its own. In the process of organizing these web pages we assign importance to them, often by accident. We have our home pages, the one that every other page links back to, and we have our dead ends. When you travel to a domain name such as Amazon.com, you are actually visiting http://www.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html When you visit Agenthelper.net, you are actually being
directed to http://www.agenthelper.net/index.html Amazon.com uses an elaborate system to keep track of you, adding letters and numbers to the home page to manage this. Agenthelper.net is simpler and is only a plain html file. One is called homepage.html and the other is index.html. These pages are like the Table of Contents for a book, or the index card in the library. They are the default pages that the web server sends when no other web page is specified. If there were no index.html file available you'd usually get a list of what was in the directory, much like on your Windows computer. Otherwise, it might say Forbidden, meaning that directory has been protected from showing its contents unless an index.html file is present. (It's always good to remind yourself that the web page you are viewing are being sent from computers that aren't that different from the one you are sitting in front of. They have folders and files, just the same.) While it's true that the index.html is most commonly referred to or used as the 'Home Page' for most websites, it is not true that it must be the home page. In fact, any page can be the home page. We choose the index.html because it allows us to do less typing or leave off that extra bit when advertising. However, with hyperlinks on the Internet, no one ever sees the actual URL or link, they only see the text that describes it. Therefore, when you promote your website on the Internet, or trade links with another website, send them the URL that you want to promote. Every webpage has the possibility of being popular and every webpage can be famous. You will find out pretty quickly that while your home page is the one that you promote the most, it is not always the one that receives the most attention. Remember that websites are just groups of web pages, and you should be ready to figure out which ones are being visited and why. Secret Number One 90% of REALTORS(R) are Invisible on the Internet. We are ten years in the information communications revolution. The Internet is now effecting everyone's everyday life. Every time you use your new Broadband Phone, send a Text Message, use an Instant Messenger, or send an email you are using the Internet. The World Wide Web is only one aspect of the Internet, however it is the most visible one. Why don't more REALTORS(R) show up on the Internet? Well, you already know the answer. It has its own stock ticker, it is now a word in the dictionary. Google is your best friend. Google is you worst enemy. You cannot do business on the Internet and ignore Google. You do not need to understand how Google works, you do not need to care. Without even interacting with Google or even having a website, Google is affecting your business. If you do not show up in Google, you do not exist. When you search for yourself in Google, do you come up? Search for yourself by name and profession? Do you come up first? Do you come up at all? If you come up at all you're on the right path. You are doing something right, most likely by accident. Most REALTORS(R) don't show up at all. Secret Number Two Most website companies were started before Google changed the way we find everything. The year 1998 was a very good year for the Internet, and most real estate website companies were started before or during 1998. This was 3 years before Google came out. Every knows that once you build your office building you are not going to tear it down because you want a different view, or you're now staring at a brick wall. The same is true for many of those website companies. They built their systems in the early days of the Web before there was a unifying way of finding things, and they continue to sell the same product. Occasionally they tack on a new feature or trumpet a new wrinkle, but the core is the same. These companies are now staffed by sales people and marketing. A few engineers and code writers are all in the basement on retainer for maintenance. Most real estate websites are not designed to be found. During both sessions I showed the groups what I meant by found. I used Google to find several clients by name and profession. Of course, I use clients that I work with and the products that I sell. They come up first. Often they have a listing or resource under them, meaning they have the first and second place for their name and profession. This is important. There are only 2 reasons why you couldn't come up first for your name and profession. 1 – You have the same name as someone famous. (This is the 'Rock Star Problem') 2 – You have the same name as someone in your profession. (This is the 'Patty Duke' problem.) Otherwise, you should come up first. If you don't, you're doing it wrong. Don't hide from your prospects. They are looking for you. By name. You talk to a lot of people. People lose business cards, but they will remember your name. Website Do's to be Found - Get a website address with your name in it. o SherryJHarmon.com o MarthaHunley.com o ChadCampbellRealtor.com Having your name in the website name (also called the domain name) does help Google find you, it's also easier to remember at parties. If you have a hard to pronounce name or an uncommon spelling you might consider a nickname or business slogan. However, still get your name also, people are better at names than you think. - Cross link your webpages. o Try to link all pages together, within reason. When you are building your website be sure to make it possible to reach as many web pages from each other as possible. It is important to remember that you have no control over how a visitor find you, or where they will wander from. Make sure they can find the rest of your resources and continue the conversation that they started with you. A conversation is an excellent metaphor and way to think about how people will interact with your website. When they find you, whether from your business card, or through Google, they are starting a dialogue with your surrogate on the Internet. This is a conversation you can work to control. Make sure they can move from topic to topic easily, and always give them a compelling call to action to start the conversation with you personally. - Keep your web pages simple. o Simple html and small file sizes. It can be tempting to use the latest fanciest tricks to make you website seem cool or fashionable. Avoid the razzle dazzle, or if you must , have another website that sticks to the basics. Pop up menus and fancy navigation schemes are usually more trouble than they are worth. Most of them use a scripting language called 'javascript'. This tells the web browser how to do fancy things like show pop up menus and make text change color. Most often these pop up menus are invisible to Google, so you don't get credit for any link contained in them. They are written in such a way that they are separate from the html code and Google doesn't see them. This means that if the majority of your links to your other web pages are in pop up menus, Google won't find your other web pages. That is bad. You should also avoid dynamically generated web pages. These web pages are created on-the-fly when you click on the link. Google's search results, Ebay.com, Realtor.com and many websites with lots of stuff to search rely heavily on dynamic web pages. Google is not good at seeing or indexing dynamic links. You want as many web pages that end in .html as possible. Avoid .asp .php .cgi There are other dynamic web page file types, but this will do for now. Remember, Google will see some of the dynamic stuff, but not all. Don't make it harder for your web pages to be indexed. This goes triple for web sites that rely heavily on frames. There is only one good reason to use frames on your website. You want to reference a resource on another website, and you want your contact information to follow them. This is best used with your brokers MLS search or Realtor.com. If your web pages are all frames you should be concerned. Several website companies have a bad habit of selling those pages to third party companies. This means that you are paying to send your visitors to another company that you have no referral agreement with. Your website is not subsidized by this method, and you don't pay less because of the third party relathionships. - Update frequently, monthly at least. o Google likes fresh content. It is hungry Google pays attention to how often your web pages are updated and will visit more often if you update more often. I have web pages that get updated everyday and get visited by Google every 3 days. This means that I can change the title of the web page, and three days later it will change in Google. This lets me play with different welcome messages right inside the search results for the key words I care about! - Get friends, colleagues and business partners to link to you. - Link back to them! o This does help. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about what a link is and how you go about linking to other people and how they link to you. This is a link. The word 'link' has been surrounded by HTML Anchor tags that tell your web browser that is a hyperlink or gateway to another web page. You do not see the HTML, it is hidden by your web browser the same way your word processor hides the bits that make words bold or italics. The web browser then makes the word 'link' blue and puts an underline under it. It also pays attention to when your cursor gets close to this text, and changes it from the little arrow into the little hand. Go ahead and try it. Pay attention to when the arrow changes into the little hand. Clicking the link will jump you to the page on HTML basics and tell you more about how hyperlinks work. (Learn more about the Basics of HTML.) (Do not feel silly for examining the most basic aspect of how the Internet works. You have decided that you need to know how this works, and you have decided that not knowing is bad for you. We take so many things for granted about our modern lives, how our cars run, how our cell phones work, and that is fine. However, when your car breaks down or your cell phone won't get a signal there are always easy ways to get it fixed and experience professional to choose from to fix them for you. This isn't so true with marketing. This is your business. It is your decision how to work your business. If you leave critical business decisions to someone else, they will not always make those decisions to benefit you.)
You can put up to 50 links on a web page before Google starts to devalue that page as possible spam, though fewer links will give better link credit. Remember, Google expects that you are being serious when you reference another web page. They use these links to bring useful information to people, its their job to filter out the junk. Once they start to think you're trying to trick them, they will start to depreciate the value of the links and web pages you give them. A link is whatever text you put between the Anchor tags. You can make a link out of individual letters in a word. <a href="http://www.agenthelper.net/basicshtml.html#r">w</a>ord. Your web brower (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera) understands that the alligator greater-than / less-than symbols surround special code that it uses to create the formatting you want. - Submit your website to all search engines and directories. - (There are lots of them, but only 3 count. - You already know which 3.) While Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Search command 90 percent of the search engine usage, there are many niche search engines and directories that you should submit yourself to. Here is a handy list of as many as I could find. You will find more at SelfPromotion.com, a fantastic resource for submitting and promoting your website. Secret Number Three The best possible way of insuring you will be found and indexed by Google is to be linked to by someone who is already in Google! This is the biggest secret of all. You are invisible if no one links to you and doubly invisible if no one who is index by Google links to you. This means that the link must point to you, contain keywords that you care about and point to an active webpage that gets updated frequently. - Use your name in the link back to your home page. Repetition is important on the Internet. Repetition is how the search engines discover what is important and how web pages relate to each other. Don't waste your home link with generic 'home' or 'back to top' word, use you name or keywords that you care about. Jim's Home Back to Columbus Real Estate Home When Google reads you web pages it is always paying attention to how they reference each other. You are the one who tells Google which pages are important and for what keywords. Don't let a good opportunity pass you up. - Add more resources over time.
Google also pays attention to how much your website is updated over time. If a visitor returns to your website and doesn't notice things are different, they most likely won't come back, ever. There are plenty of web pages that change every few minutes, and are chock full of information. Google is the same, however, it will return every few months to check. We know how busy you are. We also know how damn important this web site can be to your business. Plan out your resources several months in advance. Avoid using time sensitive information. Keep a binder filled with ideas for resources and articles. Clip newspaper articles that you find. You don't need to rewrite anything on the Internet, just find a newspaper article or resource that you like, write a small explanation or review of it and link directly to that! There are many million dollar web businesses that do nothing except link to other peoples resources and news. Remember, no one expects you to be an expert on everything. The Internet was built on purpose to let people reference helpful information and documents. Take advantage of this. It is expected that you will not always have all the answers. Website Do's to Attract Visitors Showing up in Google is important, but there are really 2 aspects to this whole business. There is the robot part, for Google, and the people part, for your visitors. If you work to hard to make the robots happy you will drive away visitors, so a balance is needed. It is so very easy to drive away visitors. They have many, many, many, many other options. Imagine the Internet is a cookie jar with an infinite number of different cookies inside. Much like Felix the Cat's bag or the Doctor's TARDIS from science fiction, the Internet is much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. If a person pulls out a cookie that they don't like, they can pitch it away and get another cookie till they find one that is yummy. They know this and will act accordingly. Another web page that might answer their question or make them feel warm and fuzzy is only a click away. - Focus on one topic per web page. o Google likes this. Despite being written by some of the cleverest people in the world, the Googlebot can get confused. It can also get frustrated. I know this sounds strange, but Googlebot prefers to have one important topic per webpage. This is also good for you since it will increase the number of web pages you have available. Length is important, so try to get resource web pages over 2 paragraphs. Google has become savvy about spam web pages, and wil show preference to longer webpages on the same topic. If you don't have a great deal to discuss on one topic, it is better to combine 2 or 3 than have a very short web page. - Have as many web pages as you have keyword sets. You can have an unlimited number of web pages. You can focus on an unlimited number of keywords. As long as you avoid key word cramming or the useless repetition of keywords, you should be fine. Remember, you should add these resources over time. Suddenly appearing out of thin air with lots of resources is actually bad, and will flag you as possible spam. It is better and expected that your web site will grow over time and evolve. Never delete web pages. You can always change the content or topic for a web page, but the file name itself should still exist. Once Google indexes a web page it can stay in their system up to 6 months after it has been deleted from your web server. This creates Google Ghosts, or bad links in search results for the topic that that page came up under. This is always a missed opportunity. If a web page has timely information on it, just update it to show that he event passed, or even talk about how successful it was. If the web page had incorrect or problematic information, just update that information or change the topic. If you do have a problem with information on a web page it is good form to post a note that the information was removed or changed. Internet folks hate it when stuff just disappears or changes without notice. It looks sneaky, and you don't need that. - Focus on one compelling call to action per webpage. o Give your visitors an obvious next thing to do. Don't make them guess what to do next. Guide the conversation. You always need to remember that the visitor started a conversation with you when they clicked on that link or came to your website. You need to guide that conversation just as you would if they were speaking to you in person. If there are reading about you, put a nice 'Contact us' link at the bottom. If they are reading about Bridge Loans, tell them they can sign up for a buyers seminar, or fill out a Buyer's Qualification form/ - Feature home listings prominently. o Buyers are looking for homes! o Sellers like to see that you have experience! o These are more web pages on your favorite topic. As strange as it seems many REALTOR(R) website don't focus on home for sale! If you went to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com and they didn't books they had for sale you would find that odd. Show potential buyers home you are listing or homes you are helping to promote. If you work only with buyers partner with other agents to promote their listings and say so on your website. "Here are a few homes for sale from Agents I work with, however, I can help you find any home in the area! Give me a call and we can look together." You know better than me the best way to present yourself. - Feature Sold Properties and Testimonials! o Avoid generic sounding testimonials and 'sound bites'. Try to get permission to tell about an experience that you helped create. Everyday you make a positive impact on someone's life. Tell your stories, people want to read them. Leave out the last names, leave out the exact address, but use a photo of the house and get permission to discuss details that make the story real. Internet visitors are getting conditioned to recognize BS the same way we see it on TV or read it in a magazine. Be a real person with real life stories. They don't need to be novels, two or three paragraphs will do. The longer testimonials should get web pages or their own, the shorter ones you can group together. Try to avoid putting more than 10 things on a single web page, topics, testimonials, listing, etc. Don't wait until the closing to start telling this story, or at least write down the details. There are so many great opportunities lost because people move or lose contact. Write in your Internet marketing bind when things happen, or at least in your day planner. Keep notes on how you met with your Buyer or Seller, and the obstacles you had to over come. Get feed back from your people as the events are happening. Don't expect them to gush or fill out a boring testimonial form at the closing table, people are usually in a bad mood or unreliable at those highly emotional moments. Your business depends on good word of mouth and testimonials. Insure that you gt them by planning ahead and writing the story as it happens. If you are just starting out and haven't even sold a home yet, ask your friends and colleagues for references. We all know you have to start somewhere, but you never really start from scratch. Use this as an opportunity to trade links with people! - Make your page titles readable and compelling. o Simply repeating your keywords is boring. Actual people will be looking through the results. Use keywords, but not gibberish. During both sessions we saw the same boring results, web page titles crammed with keywords that result in gibberish. We also saw the long term result from this pattern. People are becoming more savvy about searching for useful documents and ignoring the keyword cramming web pages. Many people had to leave before I was able to show the startling results from Google's External Keyword Tool. This tool shows us generally how popular keywords and phrases actually are, and even the long term trends. Thos that stayed were shocked to discover that the keywords and search terms that had been beaten into their heads had very little actual search traffic, and terms they had never thought of were doing very well. If someone tells you that "Columbus real estate" or "Columbus ohio real estate" are the search terms you should care about and obsess over, you can show them that they are wrong. In fact, the phrase "real estate Columbus ohio" does much better that its brethren. Several people asked why this was and the answer is simple. The harder you try to game the system the better the players will get. People are figuring out how useless some search tactics are and the gibberish they bring up. They are using different approaches to find better results and Google is helping them do it. The system is self correcting. Whenever a new 'trick' comes out, sooner or later people will start to ignore or work around it. There are other tools like Overture's Keyword Selector Tool that will give you exact numbers for search terms and phrases used by Yahoo visitors. You can also check out the search engine tools at SEOChat.com. These guys are chock full of great ideas and tools to help you try them out. Find out how popular those keywords really are, analyze your meta-tags, optimize your keywords and other fun tricks. They also feature useful articles that aren't to hard on the noggin. Always remember, design your web pages for people; design the background for the robots. Here are other websites that you will find useful. http://agentsite.agenthelper.net This is the demonstration AgentSite from Agenthelper. You can see how I put together web pages and follow my own rules. You can also log in and see how the tools work and get a feeling for how I believe websites should run themselves. You can buy domains name for $9 a year, and they even come with free email! The tools from GoDaddy make it easy to manage as many domain names as you want, and they also offer inexpensive web hosting.
http://geocities.yahoo.com/join/ If you don't have the money to invest, or your current website is hosted by a controlling company you can join GeoCities for FREE and try out al the rules I told you about. As long as you follow the number one rule about Google, getting linked by someone who is already in Google,. any web page can be number one for your name and profession.
http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/ Anglefire is another free web space provider. http://www.tripod.lycos.com/ I didn't realize both Angelfire and Tripod were now owned by Lycos! However, there isn't any reason why you can't have a free web space at both. I want to mention SelfPromotion.com again, because it really is a great site for beginnings and experts alike. I have found great explanations and tools there. The same goes for SEOChat.com, these guys are up to date on the latest search engine information and discussion, as well as many great tools for figuring out key works and link popularity. Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) 2001 – Google introduces PageRank o Suddenly it was easier for people to find useful information o Many more people started searching for the first time. o Webpages that were buried under spam before could be useful again. o New websites popped up to be useful. PageRank It cannot be overstated how important PageRank is in the history of the Internet. (so far) Secret Number Four It is a secret how Google assigns PageRank. Kentucky Fried Chicken isn't going to come to your house to show you how to make their pressure cooked chicken with 11 herbs and spices. Coca-Cola isn't going to show you how to mix up a world famous cola. However, we do know that PageRank is assigned by a computer program called Googlebot. This program was written by people smarter than NASA. The PageRank number is done automatically by an algorithm that takes many different aspects and information, runs math on them and spits out a number. This is really complicated math. The PageRank algorithm takes into account the following
things (but not limited to) - What
webpages are linking to your webpage. - What
exact text is used for those links. - What
pages your page links to. - How
old the webpage is. - How
long the page has been on the current topic. - How
many times keywords are repeated on the page. - What
context keywords are in, do they make sense. - Where
on the page keywords are found: top, middle, bottom. - Lots
of other smart things. During the sessions I asked for volunteers to come forward and help me demonstrate how Googlebot worked and how PageRank works in its simplest form. This replaced the need for my to create elaborate diagrams. Since I'd like to get these notes up on the website sooner rather than later, the elaborate diagrams can wait. Directories Real Estate Directories - Google Base http://base.google.com - Trulia.com http://www.trulia.com - Craigslist.com http://columbus.craigslist.org - LiveDeal.com http://www.livedeal.com - Oodle.com http://www.oodle.com These are web directories that focus on free classifieds or real estate. Google Base and Trulia are the ones to pay the most attention to first. You can submit your property listing straight into Google's database and when that 'Refine Search' box pops up, your listing gets a chance to shine. Google Base is about a year ond now, but it isn't that full. If CBR MLS routinely has over 18,000 listings, Google Base only shows about 3,000 and that includes Columbus, Georgia! I also forgot to talk abot CraigsList.com, which is a seminar all by itself. CraigsList.com is the fastest growing free classifieds website on the Internet. It has a dedicated community and they have their own ideas about businesses should use the free site to promote themselves. Be respectful and CraigsList.com can be a fantastic source of good leads. Did I mention that CraigsList.com is larger and has more visitors that Google Base and Trulia put together? Google Base will grow with time, as will Trulia, but Craigslist is big now, so take advantage of it while its free. Real Estate Website Directories I was researching cross linking for real estate websites and I discovered an entire sub-culture that has sprung up around the fact that most REALTORS(R) are to busy to learn how the Internet really works. This is one of the main reasons I produced my seminars, why I had 2 sessions to be most available, and why I am posting these notes on the web for everyone. There is a website called Reals.com http://www.reals.com It claims to be a real estate agent directory, and will put you in their highly respected directory for only $99 a year. They will also submit your real estate website to several other real estate agent directories for you. Bad news, it's a scam. http://www.reals.com/submitsite.htm Almost
all of the 'directories' listed are owned by the same guy. Administrative
Contact: Wong,
Michael portaldirectory -at- yahoo.com Directory P.O.
Box 1393 Monterey
Park, California 91754 United
States 6262889970 This also means that they live on the same server and are generated automatically out of the same database. The web sites that aren't owned by this guy accept your submissions for free, just like Google Base and Trulia. This may have been useful at some point in the past, but that point is long gone. According to WhoIs, the Internet tool that tells us who owns what and for how long, the website has been around since 03-Jul-97. Apparently this person has built quite the little empire around ignorance and indifference. Just collecting web links for 9 years and cross linking so many web domains. Honestly, I salute his initial hard work, but the jig is up. These 'real estate agent directories' are also called 'link farms' and Google hates them. This adds insult to injury since you're paying 99 clams to have your website ignored, and possibly flagged as spam. Lastly, I showed those who stayed or hung around two very
important tools that can change how you do business on the Internet. Know
your keywords -Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ This is Google's very own web site statistics tool. It will
tell you what city your visitors came from. It will tell you what pages they
visited, how long the stayed and what page they left from. Yes, it will. -Google External
Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal You can use this tool to check out the true volume for the keywords you want to focus on. Don't waste time fighting for a few fish. This is the tool Google encourage people to use for running paid pay-per-click ads, so they have every reason to play nice. Check out the keyword popularity for the terms that you have been told are essential. Then check out the long term trends for those keywords. Be sure to use this tool when you planning the content for your resource pages. Focus on the keywords with high search volume and low advertiser competition. Remember, Google is literal! Columbus ohio real estate Is different from Real estate Columbus ohio I know this seems strange, but the sooner you get a grasp on how literal the search engines are the sooner you'll benefit from it. This wraps up the notes for Wednesday and Thursday's Seminar sessions. I will try to add more as I think of things and post a change log at the bottom here. I will be taking my own advice and using the Ask.Agenthelper.net moniker as a web blog to update and report on new changes that effect the real estate market. Again, thanks to everyone that came! I had great fun. If you found what I had to say interesting, be sure to read about Agenthelper Member Services. I provide technology and marketing consultation at $25 an hour and also produce other seminars. The Mechanics of Sales – The Simple Steps of Sale for Beginners and Refresher for Pros - Dress for Success – Using cloths to enhance your sales message and say the right thing. |
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