By evolvor on May 24, 2007 | Reply

Oh God, Matt. The real estate market needs a hugs re-vamp in how it operates online - what a mess! Seriously, ever try looking for a house online?

By Surveyor on May 25, 2007 | Reply

Matt, I asked my designer for some help in optimising our estate agency site a couple of years ago. His response was to sign us up to a service that automatically submitted the site to the search engines once a month and to charge us a monthly fee for “updating the keywords”. You’ll not be surprised to hear that we didn’t shoot to the top of the SERPs. I discovered later that our entire home page was in fact an image file. That experience led me to take a personal interest in SEO and I would recommend all small business owners to do the same. It is the perfect topic to research online! Even though we now have a designer that has some clue about optimisation I regularly chip in with ideas that I have picked up from sites like seomoz and your good self.

By realestateSEO on May 25, 2007 | Reply

You are so right. There is a need for different mindset for the industry.
We accept the the mission.
We have been building websites since before Google was born.
We have been doing online marketing since the days of the listserv.
We have been doing search engine marketing before Yahoo was a search Engine.
We have bought houses.
We have sold houses.
We have proudly volunteered to design a nice website for a church.
We have been paid handsomely to develop web applications for Fortune 500 corporations BUT we are passionate about helping small business owners and REAL ESTATE AGENTS achieve their goals. If you believe that “those folks need help in the worst way”, then we will help.
http://realestatesearchenginemarketing.net will launch soon.
Let us give real estate agents a better way.

By Patrick Schaber on May 25, 2007 | Reply

Hey Matt,
Great post - I wonder how many other industries you could write a very similar post for. To your point, search marketing and social media could play such a huge role in the real estate market. I bet you could write a nice series on that topic and get some series attention from real estate companies??

By Miriam on May 25, 2007 | Reply

This is a good and timely post, Matt. We do some real estate related stuff, and have to be extremely upfront with out clients about the competition one faces in practically any part of the U.S. for the terms related to this field.

Sadly, Google is continuing to let the SERPs be dominated by the anytown usa type sites that don’t actually have any real listings on them.

In addition to this, most of the real sites you run into are SO poorly done, it makes you want to cry. No local search optimization…no anything.

The five figure a month thing sounds insane, very bad, bad, bad. On the other hand, we offered to put up a site for a realtor last month for $1000.00, making it very clear that after building the simple SEO-based website, more work would be involved to begin to work toward good rankings…and they told us they didn’t want to spend so much money. Their choice, of course, but I shudder to think of what will happen to them out there where they will run into scary ‘providers’ such as you are describing. It can be pretty bad out there.

At least your wife has you. I bet her site is great!
Miriam

By david28078 on May 26, 2007 | Reply

I hear this too loudly! I have worked on, literally, 60 Real Estate websites and all have been ripped off in some manner over the years.

My take deep pockets, no deep thinking.

I have seven Real Estate BICs I work with who are all doing very, very well as I ask them to get off their horse and be a customer first…

If I was a thief SEO I would be very wealthy…..

By bsburnsie on May 26, 2007 | Reply

I am a big provider of SEO of realtors. But, it is not that easy to get the realtors to actually sign up. You see, they tend to not want to spend the money. They rather spend the $49 for a premade web site which they feel will be just fine even though they are far from SEO optimiziable or the freebie provided by the Broker..again so deep in subdirectories they never get found. But the fact is, those that have proper seo done on properly made web sites achieve over 90% of their new clients through organic searches. (well my clients do)

How do you ensure that your Real Estate Web site—now an essential marketing tool—is as effective as it can be at drawing home buyers and sellers and keeping them interested in all you have to offer? It’s how well a Real Estate Web site can draw repeat visitors that determines its “stickiness” in Internet-speak, and, ultimately, its success. It also depends on how SEO ready the Real Estate Web Site is designed to so that you secure top rankings on the major search engines for your keyword phrases

All my realtor sites do very well. But it is worse then a root canel when trying to secure a realtor as a client. But what is funny, once they see how well the site is going and brag to their realtor friends, you get a few more who want to shed those dollars for prime internet real estate. But so sad, and to bad, for some, as I only take so many to cover an area…Point being, many realtors will place their marketing dollars on door hangers for networking instead of the internet, where over 80% of home buyers start their search.

Bonnie Burns - ontheavenues

By bsburnsie on May 28, 2007 | Reply

I believe a number of factors.
1. a realtor spends a lot of money on advertising, and I think they yet believe that dollars sent on a web site that achieves rankings will help them. They are offered a freebie from brokers, so why pay for it.

2. Those that pay a monthly fee for a web site they hardly have to manage do so because it is cheap, and they really have nothing to do to maintain it. They feel the template should be just fine and believe the statements made by such companies that the site will achieve rankings and gather them business.

I even read on one such company newsletters that there pre-made web sites are wonderful, need no SEO and search engine placements really will not help them be found any better. Then a month later, that search engine placement is important. I always send comments to editor about how misleading they are and never hear back.

3. Many that I have spoken to do not even know what SEO is or that a person can actually develop a site that can outplace other web sites. They are shocked to hear that this process is available

4. Realtor magazines and such do talk about the need for web sites that are ranked high, but realtors just are afraid to spend the money that it can cost and some have even tried such companies only to be ‘ripped off’

When I work with realtors, I try and place state the fee may appear high but, with just one client gathered from the web site, a sale or a buyer can pay for 10 such web sites….well something in that order. Realtors see everything as a price tag as they make no money with our a close, so I learned to turn around my presentation to bottom line financial lingo and why, such a ‘tool’ is needed. Some take it quickly, others are slow to the trend and then there are those kick themselves when the hear in staff meetings.” I just got a client from my web site and they bought a million dollar home”

I do a special for realtors. web site analysis just to get them to see the issues that keep their site from getting ranked. All have been amazed, critical of themselves for believing the ‘template’ people or other’seo’s they used” but they are so slow to turn around and have it corrected. Actually, of all the analysis done, less then 1 percent will sign up.

Basically, thank goodness for those word of mouth referrals:-)

Bonnie Burns ontheavenues