Although 2008 has thus far been a challenging year for many real estate professionals, one of the best aspects is that everyone has been forced to look at actually doing some marketing (I know crazy to think that you can’t do 15 sales a year by showing up to an open house for an hour on a Sunday, but I digress).  For many agents that has meant entering the world of online marketing.

As real estate agents we are often drawn to the instant fix.  Just “buy this now” and you will have escrows this weekend, or my favorite “it’s only 1 transaction to pay for this great product”.  Right….

This sadly leads to those instant purchases, which sometimes can be quite expensive and don’t end up actually helping your business.  One of the most common culprits is the purchasing of a NEW real estate website.  The thought being that spending more $$$ on a website will make it work better.

Problems

Before you get our your credit card, let’s examine why the traditional template website won’t help you get any more business. 

• Duplicate content - Most agents keep the same pages that the web vendor provides to “help” you get started.  So now, your website has the same 10-15 pages that every other real estate agent has.  The big search engines like Yahoo and Google don’t like duplicate content, so they tend to punish you by putting you at the bottom of the results.
• Agent Centric - Most real estate websites center around the agent, instead of focusing on what the consumer is actually looking for (area information, listings, home values).  So the agent ends up putting information about their awards and then provides NO value to website visitors.
• Poor Technology - There are some website vendors (sorry, Advanced Access is a culprit) out there that are still based on frames.  These old websites don’t allow you to get properly indexed in the search engines leaving you to wonder if anyone will ever find you.

Not all hope is lost. I think template real estate websites can be very powerful lead generating machines.  You just need to take some steps to actually make them work for you, instead of just sitting up there and taking up valuable space on the Internet.

Make my Template real estate website work

If you have the right understanding before you purchase (yes before you purchase) a new real estate website then you can achieve great success.  Here are some items to consider that will require some action on your part.

• Anyone can provide listings - Any real estate professional can put “search the MLS” on their website, so how can you stand out?  Take the time to put together information on your area that they can’t find anywhere else.  Give your perspective on the neighborhoods you service and you will find people come to your website in droves.  This will take a little bit of time, so don’t try to do it all at once. Set a goal of putting up 1 new page a week about a different neighborhood and pretty soon you will have quite the website.
• Set a Budget- If you are looking for a “free” website then don’t bother starting because you will just be disappointed with the results.  Also realize that buying a Ferrari and parking it means it goes the same speed as a parked Toyota Camry so don’t go overboard on your spending.  Your website will be an investment so dedicate some marketing dollars to it, but keep it conservative so you can have money to advertise it later.
• Update your website - It always makes me laugh when people say “my website is done”.  Really?  So nothing new is happening in your town?  Think about it.  Real estate is constantly changing so keep your website in tune with your market.  Taking the time to create new content for your website just monthly will keep you miles ahead of your competition.

Making your real estate website generate commission dollars every month is possible, but it will take some effort.  If you have a template website and you haven’t looked at it in awhile, now is your time to go back and start making it different than the 100,000 other agents who have the same template.

To your success online.

Creating the right content for your real estate website is essential to dominating the search engines and getting new customers.  Get the help and examples you need with our real estate website content system.

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