While attitude has a lot to do with success, there are many tangible ideas and tools virtually anyone can take advantage of. As you will quickly realize, hardly any of those ‘revealed’ in this article are secrets or mysteries. The real secret lies in the ability to take action and apply the ideas, rather than in the knowledge itself. Here are three ideas.

Top Agents Are Easily Found on the Web – With a third of all home buyers starting their search online, and a whopping 90 percent using the Internet in the buying process, the winning agents are those found more easily where buyers lurk. There are consumer real estate portals, search engines, auction sites and classified ad sites. The Point2 listing syndication service available for free through nearly 250 MLSs and associations in the United States is a great way to achieve high exposure with virtually no effort.

Another way to be found is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Today you can automate SEO, with the new Site Builder website product by Point2, launched this past June. Just select the city you operate in and a website with great initial SEO is generated for you, meta tags and all!

They Take Time to Add Rich Content to their Websites – This mystery does not pertain to a technology tool, but a discipline. One agent we know of and that we wrote about in a separate story gets 80 percent of his business from his website! That is a number worth paying attention to. He does it by engaging visitors with rich content.

“If I had to pick one aspect that works… well, actually there are several. I believe the ability to display a large number of photographs, room for plenty of information and the creation of a virtual tour environment is very much appreciated by my clients and potential clients. These three features not only serve to market the property well but also reflect on the client’s perception of my professionalism.”

They are Good at Converting Leads into Revenue – You might be surprised at how many leads are left to rot in agent inboxes. As the majority of prospects will go with the first agent who responds to them, having the right tools in place to help you be first out of the gate is key. Check if your website incorporates a lead management system that captures inquiries coming in from your listing syndication efforts and if it routes leads to your cell phone. This is extremely important to beat the 30 minute patience guideline of online prospects. This strategy is a winner!

Perhaps one of the greatest myths out there is that knowledge is power. It is not. Knowledge without action is nearly useless. Power, as Tony Robbins, one of my favorite life and motivational coaches says, is the ability to take consistent action towards a specific goal. That’s when luck also seems to kick in!

Building a website is easy.  Getting traffic to it is not.

Do not lose hope however, as there are small adjustments and changes that you can make to not only drive traffic to your website, but also keep those people there.

1. Content is King

People go to websites for one thing: information.

When using search engines, we all enter in search terms for the information we want to find, whether it be movie titles, band names, or listings in a particular city.  These terms and nuggets of information will go a long way to attracting people to your site and keeping them there.

What information do your clients often ask for when speaking with you?  That content should be on your website.  What information do you ensure you give to new clients?  That content should be on your website.  What knowledge about your local area do you possess through experience?  That content should be on your website.

One of the best things you can do with your Point2 Agent website is adjust the default content you received when you first created it.  While it is great content to start out with, our content pales in comparison to the knowledge, experience, and expertise you have about your local market, its neighborhoods, its listings, and its people.

Want some assistance with ideas?  Check out the Education Sessions on editing and design strategies.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Each search engine possesses what they term “crawlers” or “spiders” whose job it is to navigate through websites and make note of the information they find.  Again, content is king – and those crawlers love the king.  They worship the king.  The more custom content you have on your site, the better.  While we don’t know the formulas those crawlers live by, we do know that they prefer fresh content that they cannot find elsewhere.  Providing your own information that is different from everyone else will help you stand out to those crawlers.

Crawlers look at things like page titles, meta information, and the domain name you purchased for your website.  Sound confusing?  Join the SEO Education Session for ways that you can get started on your SEO to drive traffic without having to pay a single dollar.

3. Linking

Ever taken a look at the list of ‘friends’ someone has on Facebook?  That feature makes visible groups of people and how they network amongst themselves.  You even receive suggestions as to people you may know through someone else, or a friend can suggest that you ‘friend’ someone.  It’s all about forming bonds with others.

Linking of websites works in the same way.  Website A provides a link to website B’s domain name, which tells the online visitors looking at A that they may also enjoy reading the information on B.  Now, if B is nice, it will also have a link telling its online visitors to check out A.  That linking and backlinking not only helps to drive traffic (sending people to another site and receiving traffic in return), but it also aids your SEO efforts .  Crawlers recognize the linking and networking that is occurring and pay particular attention to the number of people who are following those links.

As an interesting note, referral traffic from website linking accounts for over 40% of the traffic we receive on our own Education Team website.  I just created another link to our website…it’s that easy!

4. Blog

A great place to start linking between your website and others is a blog .  While a website provides consistent information, a blog can be more “this moment now” in providing information on market statistics, open houses, local attractions, etc.  It can also be a great way to quickly disseminate brief pieces of information that just don’t seem to fit in with your website (ie. roadwork construction, being out of the office for a few days, etc.).

This online web journal provides you the opportunity to not only talk more about real estate, listings, and market trends, but also about other topics that matter to you.  Have a particular hobby that you are passionate about?  Put it on your blog.  Have an opinion on that trendy new restaurant that opened last week?  Put it on your blog.

It may seem trivial and inconsequential, but remember that people go online for information.  Often the information is related to entertainment, which may account for the incredible popularity of YouTube.  Whether it is music videos, ’stupid pet tricks’, or some dude doing an AC/DC cover in his basement, it’s on YouTube.  Your blog can be business related, but it can also have an element of fun to it that showcases who you are outside of real estate.

Think of your blog as as your website’s mullet.  Business in the front, party in the back.  It’s all good.

5. Marketing

Of course, no matter how much great information you have on your website or blog, no matter how much you link to other sites, and no matter how good your SEO work is, you will not see the increase of traffic to your site if you don’t market it.

What does “market it” mean?

It means that wherever you advertise yourself, your listings, your business, your website address should be there too.  Business cards, email signatures, sign riders, bus benches, magnets, keychains, pens, listing brochures, listing presentations, mugs, shirts, hats…you get the idea.  From this point forward, wherever you would put your name, put your website address with it.  Your website is your twin.  It is the online version of yourself.

This may sound extreme, but it will make your website stand out from your competitor’s websites.  Chances are, those online visitors will form a relationship with that online version of you well before they actually meet or talk to you.  With over 80% of the real estate market going online first to look for potential houses, this trend won’t be changing anytime soon.  Learning more about online marketing strategies will be key in driving traffic to your website.

Online visitors are a lot like drivers on the road.  They know what their final destination should be, so take the streets and avenues that they feel will get them there.  The destination for online visitors is information.  They know what they want to learn or find, so look for websites that are going to provide them that information.  You can’t control where they go, but you can put up the road signs and help the search engines provide the maps to the information you provide on your site.  With any luck, those visitors will love what they see so much, they’ll stay.

So build it.  Customize it.  Blog about it.  Market it.  They will come.

The Real Estate Web Guy, Michael Carbonara.

Formerly a real estate professional, Michael utilizes those experiences and skills to assist his clients in not only designing and customizing their Point2 Agent websites, but also providing assistance through virtual entry of listings, training, and Search Engine Optimization assistance.

For more information, check out Michael’s website.

What images does this evoke?  Hopefully, you are thinking of websites, as that is the most powerful form of online marketing that you are currently using to gain exposure for your business and your services!

But what does “online marketing” mean?  How can you market online in other ways in conjunction with your website?  How do you turn your website into a lean, mean, online lead generating machine?

Online marketing is a way of selling products and services over the Internet.  Usually, this means websites that contain information relevant to the capabilities, functionalities, and benefits of said product or service.  With most people going online for key information regarding everything from clothes, to education, to real estate, to self-help, this medium for reaching the masses has become increasingly powerful.  General word or term searches have become the quickest method to access specific information on a topic from all corners of the globe.  The world is, literally, at your fingertips!  “So, how does this relate to my website?”, you ask.  There are many things you can do to be part of this massive information sharing that is occuring.

You have already taken the first step by creating a website, having recognized the need to put yourself in front of these millions of people hunting for relevant information.  The next step is to customize that site with the content for which these people are searching.  Applying this directly to real estate, what is there in the neigborhoods that you service that stands out the most?  What are the names of the specific neighborhoods?  What terms and phrases would these online hunters be using?  Is there a local attraction that draws attention?  All of this data should be used within the content on your site, as well as your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those specific pages.  This customization will help the search engine crawlers find you and your website, thereby increasing your online marketing!

Another great way to share this information is through blogging.  Point2 Professional and Premium members have the opportunity to integrate their own blogs within their websites, providing another online marketing piece.  We talked earlier as to how people are like hunters – they skulk around the forest of information that is the Internet.  They are looking for their prey: the specific content that meets their needs.  Hunters want their prey, and while they are willing to spend the time to make sure they get what they want, they want a fairly quick capture.  The same applies to our online hunters. 

They are willing to spend a bit of extra time to find better quality information, but they don’t want to spend hours reading through it.  Blogs alleviate this aggravation, as they are meant to be short and quick captures of key pieces of information that could include everything from real estate specific events like open houses, to local events like parades, to advice-type articles like vantage points for watching the local parade.  Keep yourself focused on what matters the most to people within your community, as well as those visiting your community. 

This works in your favour in many ways: entries don’t require a lot of creation time, they help your SEO efforts, you will appear to be the expert of that community, and people will repeatedly return to your site once they know that you will deliver the information in an easily-digestible manner.  Okay, done with the hunting analogy!

Another online marketing tool is Point2 Syndication, which gives you the power to syndicate your listings out to the Point2 Syndication Partners.  Since online visitors look in a variety of places for their information, the more you are exposed in those venues, the better the chance of those markets seeing you and what you can potentially offer them.  Having the control over which listings are syndicated to each Syndication Partner gives you the chance to control how that online marketing tool works for you, your business, and the listing itself.  Syndication also helps with your SEO, as it can redirect visitors to your website and blog, further online marketing tools you have implemented!

Since the premise of online marketing is getting the information onto the Internet, and since the goal of visitors on the Internet is to find this information, we have covered aspects that will help you be found: customized content on your website, SEO customization for terms and phrases that are specific to your serviced areas, blogs with concise paragraphs relating to topics that are specific to readers, and using the Point2 Agent to syndicate listings to Syndication Partners.  Changing the conventional way of looking at marketing by incorporating these online marketing tools with traditional marketing strategies, you will be covered on and off the Internet. 

Quote to ponder: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

~ Tanya Spilchak, Education Coordinator, Point2 Education Team

In case you haven’t already heard, today Microsoft officially unveiled the newest iteration of it’s search engine, Bing, which aims to accomplish three things:

• Replace its often maligned Live Search

• Reposition it as a “decision engine” rather than a simple search appliance with an $80 million dollar cross-media marketing campaign.  As an aside, you can check out the first commercial for this campaign here, and no, contrary to my previously affectionate post, I don’t like this commercial one bit!

• As always, try to grab some market share from other search engines.

So how is it?

After spending a little time with it over the past couple of days, and*gasp*  setting it as my homepage instead of iGoogle, I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised.  It might not be the “Google-Killer” it was billed, but is a step in the right direction.   While I don’t think it will become my default search engine (I simply have too many services tied to Google in order to make that switch), I do think that it brings some great features to the user search experience.

The following is a rundown of some of these standout features, and how you can use them to get the most out of your queries, be it for real estate or otherwise.

Categorized & Related Searches

Whenever you complete a query, Bing will 1) provide you with a list of logical results categories for you to filter through in order to get access to the information you want quickly, and 2) display a list of the most common related search queries based on your original results.  For example, when I searched “Canada” the most common related searches were for the 411 service, an airline, and my bank!

Large Results Previews

This will likely be the fist thing you will notice when you first use Bing.  When you mouse over a search result you will notice a expandable box to the right of the result that when hovered over will give you a preview of the information on the page as well some of the prominent topics on the page.  This is a huge time saver, and will undoubtedly save users untold time and wasted clicks, in addition to being almost flawlessly implemented into the search experience.

Video Search & Previews

The prevalence of video on the web is growing at a fevered pace, so it makes sense that companies invest in new ways to search video instead of conventional text.  Bing ups the ante by offering a short description of the videos in results, referring sites, length of the video etc. But the best part is that you can preview video results with full audio with just a mouse-over – this will be a long way towards making sure you get the video you are looking for.

Smart Image Search

Image search is where almost everyone is going to agree that Microsoft has pulled off a coup against Google.  Besides the gorgeous snapshot presentation, the endless scroll results (no more clicking “next page”!), and the loads of filtering options in on the left panel,  Bing gives you the ability to show images similar to those displayed.  This is huge news for all those who spend way too long searching for the perfect image.

Bird’s Eye Maps

Don’t have Google Street View in your area yet? *cough* all of Canada *cough* Well then you are in for a treat.  Probably my favorite feature of Bing has to be the “Bird’s Eye” views built into the maps search which gives you a high-resolution satellite photography of most urban centers.

Now I know you are probably thinking, “so what? Google does this as well”, but the difference is that the Bird’s Eye imagery is taken on an angle rather than straight down – this means you can actually make out things like the signs on buildings, how tall a structure is,  and all manner of topographical features.  And to top it off, this imagery is taken from all angles, so you can rotate all around an area and get the Bird’s Eye view, rather than just a fixed angle.

In my opinion this is the perfect option in between conventional maps and Street View, and will be a valuable tool for real estate professionals since you can tag areas (like a properties) and send that link to prospects.  Hopefully this tech makes its way into marketplaces like Zillow and Trulia.

So there you have it.  What, in my opinion, are the most compelling features of Bing.

Do I think that these additions will change the tides in the search wars?  Probably not.  After all, Google has brand “ownership” on search and I don’t think they will be dethroned any time soon.  However I think Bing will gain market share at the expense of other brands in the market, such as Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask with this newest offering.

Also, if you would like to give Bing a shot, or just would like to see how its results stack up against Google’s make sure to check out the comparion search tool created by BlackDog.ie – all the search goodness, with none of the messy commitment!

If there is one SEO trick everyone and their dog seems to know, it is that inbound links from reputable sites generate authority, and supposedly lead to a higher Google page rank over time; which of course will lead to more traffic/prospects/$$$/yada yada yada.

While this is all fine and dandy, the proliferation of social media tools on websites which allow for user participation (oh like this blog perhaps) has led to a nasty little bit of a gaming when it comes to inbound linking – what I like to call “comment duping”.

What is this nasty affliction you may ask?  Simply put, this is when a comment is left with the sole intention of leaving a link back to their own site or blog, but is thinly veiled so as not to be confused with your typical spam comments.

How exactly does it differ from conventions comment spam?  Well besides not being about suspicious pharmaceuticals, ways to increase your virility, or poker, these comments will at least attempt to half-heatedly acknowledge the post on which they are commenting before moving into the shameless self-promotion phase.  Here are a couple examples from a post I recently read on the Canadian housing market: “Good post!  Check out my Top Ten List of Crazy Cats ” or “Canada is in a recession.  Visit my blog for more details!”

A prime example of real-life useless information.

Ouch.  I don’t know about you, but if I was the administrator of a blog that had these comments show up I would be hammering on the “delete” button faster then you can say “captcha”.  It is not even the fact that you are trying to game Google that really annoys me, but that people don’t realize that if you craft a genuine or well-thought-out comment people are going to naturally want to check out your site!  It just needs a little more effort then simply inserting a URL.

In an effort to help administrators pick out comment duping, as well to help others make sure their comments are genuine & not misconstrued as dupes, I threw together a few commenting do’s and don’ts into a handy little chart.  Feel free to use it, pass it around – heck, even sew it onto a pillow if you want – as long it helps one person create better comments, or helps one blog administrator from going nuts I am happy.

Click on image for the full-sized version!

Have any other commenting pro-tips for the masses you would like to share?  Leave a comment on this very post and let everyone know!  That is if I haven’t already completely scared you off commenting for the next while…