Any suggestions would be helpful

I have taken up the burden of marketing for my most successful real estate selling wife. We have invested a considerabel sum of money into our lead generation website that has been developed by a third party. I am looking for ways to drive traffic to this site. any suggestions would be helpful. I am not too sure if I have the privlige of disclosure in reguards to the URL in htis forum yet, so any general suggestions would be appriciated.

Is your site being indexed by the search engines? Depends really on whether you are talking free or paid traffic. I guess the first thing I would concentrate on if you have not already is your listing in the search engines and focus on getting your site to come up on the first search results page for the keywords you have chosen. Sorry, but I didn't get a good feel for where you are with your site.

kindest regards, mikesz

Hi Coopdaddi, welcome to the funhouse, l hope you do well with your real estate marketing, the last thing you need is general advice, so with that in mind l presume that you have some kind of marketing plan?
We need more from you like the url of your website then we offer more targeted advice, regards nicho

coopdaddi said:

any general suggestions would be appriciated.

Click to expand...

Do not use black hat methods or you will kill your site.
Being real estate I assume your business is local.
I suggest your wife makes a blog with her picture on it which links to the site.

On this blog she can show herself to be a friendly expert by giving lots of tips on buying and selling houses, local conditions and so on.

Thanks so much for the insite. We have not really put together any real "marketing plan' per say as we have really just launched this on line program. In the past we had been paying for leads that were generated by others, and for the money spent I strongly feel that we can generate more and better leads in house. I have used to a limited extent pay-per-click, but would much prefer organic traffic. I also have been very effective at using craigs list and our listings to bring in traffic. Our site is FindMyNewHomeInTexas dot com

I'm a real estate agent myself. Personally I don't really like the design. I'm more into simple and clean designs for my white hat sites. The whole Karen make you feel good...Karen=Trust (the scrolling part at the top), makes be think she's a scammer. It's like a subliminal message to use her as an agent.

There are 17,000,000 outgoing links on your site. It seems like a spam page or FFA link page. You would think Number1Expert would make better templates and make it more SEO friendly. I like the sitemap it's very clean (except for the bottom part).

I've found most of the services number1expert, craig proctor, etc... that sell template sites have horrible sites. They are confusing. Instead of making a 5 page site or however many pages this site has they could have made it let's say 30 pages and made everything cleaner. The index page is very confusing with all the text and outgoing links.

I've never finished my real estate site because I like to work on other things and real estate is just extra side cash for me, but to give you an idea of my site, I have pictures of my listings on the index, an MLS search, and a few other pages. Looking at my site now, it kind of sucks (although I like it better than the number1expert sites). The thing is you don't want to overload people on your index page. To me I had instant brain freeze when I looked at the index page with all those links.

It's a legit site start posting on forums (you and your wife) especially real estate related and put the link in your sig. Let it be known you pay referrals. ActiveRain is a good social networking site for real estate agents. AgentsOnline, RealEstateWebmasters, BrokerOutpost (mostly mortgage, but real estate agents are on there also), RealEstateInsider and tons of other sites are good places to get more information and also to network with other real estate agents. Just type them into google the first result or two should lead you to the right place/extension.

I found my best way of getting search engine traffic was having a niche and I get a lot of deals real estate and mortgage related because of the niches I've been targeting. I don't spend any money on leads, I generate all of my own leads. Although don't get me wrong sometimes buying leads is a good way to go, but I generate more leads than I like to deal with. With a niche and the right keywords you will get plenty of search engine traffic.

I'll give you a not-secret niche...foreclosures. Texas is very big on foreclosures right now (just like the rest of the country), try focusing the site on foreclosures in your area. Here's another secret that most people don't know, you can list foreclosures that aren't your own personal listings on your sites, make them look like you're the listing agent although never say you are the listing agent (although check with your state real estate commission to see if this is true in your state) because these are bank-owned properties most of the banks want these sites listed everywhere to get the most exposure. Even if for whatever reason you can't list the foreclosures on her site, if you're unlicensed put them on your site, they can't suspend her license for sites she doesn't own. Then use foreclosure sites as lead generating sites. Remember though focus on the area she can service to get better search engine rankings.

Just like with black hat create multiple sites, have them link to each other and offer something a little different on each one (different main keywords) and make sure you have something to capture leads (usually contact forms). Try to use different hosts for each site if possible (if that's not feasible for you, just get a reseller account and disregard this part) for maximum linking power.

Don't stop at only real estate sites create local sites with information about local events or whatever and add her as the best agent in the area or whatever. Really the skies the limit for this kind of advertising. It's just a lot of work. You don't want to get caught being the black hat/not so honest real estate agent. So keep spamming to a minimum. Real estate agents have a bad rap already, you don't want your wife to have any controversy created by any of your SEO/webmaster techniques.

Also use this http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-tools/3301-get-commentkahuna-free.html (it's free) or Comment Hut and start making informative posts on other peoples blogs. The good thing about this is you share a little bit and you earn yourself a free backlink.

Basically use a little bit of every technique but don't get too black hat because you could hurt her site and/or reputation.

Very nice post, except for one detail.

There are many ways to use BH techniques without your rep getting hurt.
So I have to disagree with "don't get too black hat because you could hurt her site and/or reputation".

Michel

You're absolutely right. To be honest with you most black hat techniques won't affect someones rep (especially since most people don't know what black hat techniques are), but there are also completely unscrupulous techniques. I guess I worded it wrong it was more to avoid search engine bannings and penalties than anything else. Most black hat stuff is harmless and the general public has no idea and/or doesn't care.

Hi Coopdaddi, I have read your post with great interest and done a little research as the real estate business although similar in the UK is different in other ways that could benefit your marketing.

Your website design......
I have to agree with you on most of your points, l did a similar project last year for someone and like you we started with the basics then built it up using the keywords then starte to use and find the regional keywords that we could and should use on ppc which bought engough quality leads in.

Your conversion rate...

I realise its difficult in a post to show and reveal all of your methods but l could suggest several things you could look at that may help you and l would start by testing one bit at a time.

Your page for me is too busy and l prefer to get down to business and getting peple to take actions whatever they may be.

I would construct a squeeze page for every hyperlink you have on your website because when l clicked on for example richardson it took me to that page without asking to part with my name and address, l could if l want just click out without you seeing the benefit of my visit.

Without doing any hard sell l think you are giving your content away for free when you make the content get you the visitors name and address to update them with your special offers etc in your regional newsletter to them.

I did not stay on your website for long but l did see one house for sale at over 500.000 dollars and for that price you should be setting your stall out and providing a full page on its own that has a video tour of the property and grounds which would attract more money to you as the real estate broker and a better upmarket service.

The way you have your pages set up are a puzzle as well, when l clicked on the picture of the house not a lot happened also when l clicked on further information it redirected me to a small autoresponder form to fill in, you should get that info a soon as they arrive on your site, the more information could be a free download in a pdf that explains all about your services in that regional area obviously with some great pcitures and if possible a sample video.

Anyway l hope that helps you a little as l only spent a few mins on your website
regards nicho