What is the importance of a professional website presence for your business?  That’s think for a minute.  How many times have you come across an opportunity and one of the first things you do is search the company, view their website and determine if they are credible?  Let’s face it, in today’s day and age a professional website can make a huge difference for your business.

In this article I will go over what, who, content, even some don’ts on how to best set up a professional and dynamic website presence for your business.

What kind of site do I need?

My career did not start as a real estate investor.  Both of my degrees are in business, but I actually started in IT and have 10 years of experience with web development and ecommerce.  I know my web technologies and there are endless technologies available, but one that stands out the most Joomla.  This is an open source, content management system where you can add already programmed plug-ins and have tremendous functionality, content and professional look and feel to your site.  It hits on all criteria when I searched for the best technology including ease of use, flexibility, scalability, performance and especially cost.

From Joomla’s site

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

Who can help set up my real estate site?

Not all people have the time or ability to set up their site, create a professional look and feel, write the content, populate the content, go live and maintain the site.  I for one, have so much going on with my real estate business that I searched for an expert consultant and that is exactly what I found.  Joomla has a resource center with expert consultants that can help. 

What content do I need?

First off, if is important to have a nice professional look and feel with a logo or company name and easy to use navigation.  Here is a list of items that are very important for the content of your real estate website.

1. About Us – briefly explain what you do, your target market, your offering, why you, where, etc.  Often this can be your mission statement.
2. Contact Us – Make it really easy for a visitor to contact you.
3. Our Projects/Services/Products – It is important to build credibility and show a successful track record as well as market and show you are currently busy.
4. Blog and News Section – Most of the visitors land at these pages.  Whether they find you through a web search or find your link on a forum, email signature, newsletter or social media.  Post high quality information and market using forums, newsletters and social media to get traffic, high clicks per visit and repeat visitors.
5. Competitive advantage – Why us?  What do we do best?  This is often best a tagline or slogan.
6. Give out free stuff – The best way to drive traffic and earn money on the web is by giving out free stuff.  Free info, blogs, articles, guides, contacts, resources, whatever it may be give out free stuff and you will get traffic, build credibility and have the opportunity to monetize the traffic.

Don’ts

1. Do not try to make as much money as your can off every visitor thru affiliate links, buy this, buy that, purchase my property, etc.  It doesn’t hurt to have some additional income streams but make sure it is appropriate, quality and do not go overboard or it will be a major turnoff.
2. SEC rules – Financing deals is the biggest challenge for many investors, but this does not mean you can promote “Invest with Us” without an appropriate approach.  Do not say risk free, guaranteed and be very conscious of SEC rules as a private investor funding your deal is considered a security and will be regulated by the SEC.

Even if you do have a site, I strongly recommend checking out Joomla and implementing some killer content to your site.  One last piece of advice, use Google Analytics and all its useful reports to monitor your traffic.

Image by adria.richards via Flickr

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How to Create a Professional and Dynamic Real Estate Website

Having a website is important for anyone in the real estate business. Unlike ten years ago, the technology and the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs available today, allow anyone to build a website without having much html knowledge.   In fact, I see a lot of real estate investors building their own websites.

Since I am a real estate marketer, I visit a lot of real estate websites to see how real estate investors use their own website as a lead generation and internet marketing vehicle.  There are many problems I see some real estate investors make on their websites that kill their conversions, search engine rankings and lead generation rates. 

One of the biggest mistakes I see is not having a clear call to action

Many real estate websites have too many things happening on their pages.  For instance, I reviewed one website that discussed how the investor can help the seller get rid of their house, and covered and all of the different benefits the sellers will gain by using that investors services.   The problem with that is that when someone arrives on that page, reads the content on there and decides that they would like to get in touch with that investor, there is no clear call to action for that visitor to take.

Your web page needs to have a clear call to action

When I say clear call to action, I mean exactly that.  For instance, you can put up a big button on there that says “Click here to get your free 1/2 consultation” or “Click here to sell your house.”

Remember, a lot of people on the internet don’t read everything on the page.  Attention spans are short, and you need to capture the attention of your viewers. Therefore, when you put up a big button with a strong call to action, it will help you lift your conversions to get people to use your services.

One more thing, remember this line:
“A confused mind always says NO”

Therefore, make sure that you are extremely clear and that you don’t give too many choices to the visitor.  If someone has to make a choice, even if its something as simple as telling them to contact you via phone, email or web form, they’ll be less likely to take the action.  Why?  Because they’ll have to decide between the phone, email or web form.

What I suggest you do is to put up a form on that page that only asks them for their name and email address.  Make sure you tell them that their info will be safe with you and that you’ll take care of everything from that point on (Note: not only should you tell them that their info is safe, but you should also do everything to protect that information for that person).  That way, they take the simple action of contacting you and you can follow up with them.  You become in control and you are the one who will point them in the right direction

I hope this short article helped you out.  Now go back to your website and go through your pages.  While doing that, ask yourself this question.  “If an 8 year old arrived on this page, would they know what to do next? Would they do what I want him to do?”

Better yet, have an 8 year old actually go to your site.  Tell them what you want to them to do there and then watch what they do and how they do it.  Watch where they stumble/pause, where they move their mouse, and what actions they take on the site.  This will show you what your visitors might be doing on your site and what you can do to make things easier for your visitors.

If you have any questions, post them in the comments below and I’ll answer them for you.
To Your Success,
Peter Kolat

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How To Get More Leads Without Getting More Traffic To Your Real Estate Website

1. Loopnet.com – Loopnet is probably the largest and most well-known commercial real estate listing site. They claim to have over 630,000 active commercial real estate listings on their website. It costs $24.95 a month for visitors to have access to all of the property listings. The free membership for visitors allows full search capability, however, only a limited number of results are shown.
2. Realup.com – Realup is brand new to the market and officially launched on May 17, 2009. It appears that all of the memberships for both buyers and sellers are free. The website says that “our property listings are charged based on a pay-per-results pricing model, setting us apart from our competitors and providing the greatest value to our partners and clients.” So, they are basically charging for the traffic or leads that your listing generates. This sounds good in principle but from my experience the technology for these “pay for the lead” type of systems is usually too weak to determine what a valuable lead is.
3. Costar.com – Costar offers the ability to search for all commercial property types. Basic listings are free for real estate professionals and property owners. It costs $24.95 a month for visitors to have access to all of the property listings. The free membership for visitors allows full search capability, however, only a limited number of results are shown. They offer information on “space available for lease, comparable sales information, tenant information, properties for sale, property information for clients’ web sites, industry professional directory, analytic information, data integration, property advertising and industry news–throughout the United States as well as in the United Kingdom and France.”
4. Lead-Trac.com – Lead Trac is designed to give investors and commercial real estate professionals access to following data about commercial real estate: property data, owner data, phone numbers. They also offer direct mailing and marketing tools within the website. Pricing starts at $69/user/county/month.  In addition to the monthly plans, they have an unlimited access plan that they sell on a per county basis.  This plan ranges from $1500 to $3000 per county per year.
5. CIMLS.com – What makes CIMLS different than many other similar sites is the fact that visitors can search listings for free while realtors and property owners can also post their listings for free. Realtors and property owners have the option to upgrade to a Gold account for added exposure. The Gold account costs $14.00 a month for the first month and $20.00 a month for every month thereafter.

Photo Credit: quinet

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Where to Search for Commercial Real Estate Online

Note from the editor: We at BiggerPockets.com don’t believe that there are ANY real estate “secrets.” While the headline suggested below is great for marketing purposes, in reality, all the real estate information that exists is out in the public realm. You just need to know how to find it. Our site is a great place to do just that. Enjoy the article, as Peter is a pro when it comes to website marketing, but keep in mind what I said before – there are NO SECRETS!

Over the last couple of weeks, I wrote couple of articles on real estate website mistakes.  These mistakes are pretty serious.  Hopefully, you were able to read them and correct them, that is if you had them in the first place.

But we are not done yet.  This past week, while talking to one of my customers and doing our one-on-one 1 hour consultation, I went ahead and checked out his website.  The minute I hit his URL, I saw a big problem.  This single problem, that can be fixed in a matter of minutes, is costing real estate websites hundreds, if not thousands of visitors.  Are you curious as to what this mistake is?  Well, I won’t keep you waiting.  Here’s the problem.

When I arrived at his website, I saw something that many real estate websites do; it’s one of the biggest conversion killers you can have and one of the first things your visitor sees when he/she arrives on your website.  It’s the first sentence which in most cases reads:  “Welcome to YourWebsite.com! (or whatever that websites’ name is).

Does your website say that?  If so, then keep reading.

Why “Welcome to my website” is one of the biggest conversion killers

Imagine this scenario for a minute.  You are heading for foreclosure and looking for that ultimate solution on the internet hoping that someone out there can help you.  You go to Google and type in “how to save my house from foreclosure.”  Google returns thousands of results and you click on one of the top returned results.  You arrive at the website hoping that you are going to find the solution to your problem.  You arrive at the site and it says:  “Welcome to…”

What do you do next?  You click the back button and look for another website.

How do you solve the “Welcome” conversion killer on your website?

Here’s the solution.  You need to present the visitor with a powerful headline.  Remember, you only have few seconds to catch that visitor’s attention and you don’t have the time to do it with an ENTIRE web page.

You need a catchy, mysterious, psychologically infused headline that will drill down to your visitor’s deepest problem and force them to read the rest of the page. How do you do that?

Most powerful headlines have three ingredients in common.  They ask a question, stir up curiosity and present a problem to your visitor.  For instance, instead or writing: “Save your house from foreclosure with Savemyhouse.com,” you can inject this headline with something much more powerful.  How about this headline:

“Discover How You Can Stop The Creditors Harassing You During  Dinner With These 7 secret Methods You Can Use In The Next 15 Minutes…for FREE”

Isn’t that headline much more powerful than Welcome to…?  (I just came up with that headline while writing so it’s not as good as it could be.  By the way, you can use it on your website if you like.  Just make sure you deliver on the promise.  One last thing, I can already hear some people saying that my headline doesn’t work because there are no easy secrets to solving someone’s foreclosure problem.  Just use your imagination and work the example to your advantage.)

Now, Let’s analyze that headline.  First, they can discover how to do something.  These 2 words are very powerful and they trigger curiosity.  Next, the headline paints a familiar, yet very painful picture for them creditors harassing them during dinner time.  Then, the headline tells them how to solve that problem with your 7 secrets.  And last but not least, the headline tells them that they can use these 7 secrets fast and for free.

Now, if you were heading for foreclosure, wouldn’t you take 5 minutes to read what’s on that page?  Better yet, wouldn’t you give that website your name and email address to find out how you can solve your problem with 7 simple methods you can implement fast and for free?  You bet you would.

So there you have it.  use a headline on your home page and every other page on your site.  Remember, not everyone arrives on your home page.  Most of the traffic will come through your internal pages.

One last thing, your headline should be in the biggest font on your web page, inside the H1 tag.  The color should be red or blue (sometimes blue color works better so test it out on your own web site).  The headline should be centered with quotes around it.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.  As always, I’m here for you on BP site so take advantage.

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

Photo Credit: Flikr

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Is your Real Estate Website Committing This Conversion Killer?

Last week, I wrote the first part of the two part series called Are you committing this mistake on your real estate website? Part 1 of 2.  If you haven’t seen the first post, I suggest you head over there after you finish reading this one.  Today I am going reveal the second mistake I see a lot of real estate websites make on the internet.

So what is the real estate website mistake #2 you ask?

Mistake #2 refers to the subject of list building.  There are 2 parts to this problem.  The first problem I see a lot of real estate websites make when it comes to list building is that they DO NOT build the list in the first place.

I think that a lot of real estate investors still think that real estate business is a one deal business.  You find the property, strike a deal, close on it and  move on to another deal.  Believe me, these type of investors are leaving a lot of money on the table.

Let me just say this:  If for some reason something happened where I lost everything including all of my websites, social media profiles, thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers and all I was left with was my list, I would be able to rebuild my business.  On the internet, your list is your business.  Imagine this for one second, you have a list of a few hundred rehab investors in your area; how fast do you think you will be able to flip your next property?

The second portion of this problem is the fact that a lot of real estate websites ask for too much information.  For instance, I have seen websites where the owner asks the visitor for name, address, payment info, mortgage info, debt, how many payments left, etc.

Now, when was the last time you arrived at a website you found on Google and gave the site owner your personal information?  Today, people are more skeptical about internet security than ever.  Viruses appear on the internet every day, credit card numbers get stolen, identities get stolen and email boxes get spammed.  People are very hesitant to give up their information.  If you don’t think that’s true, next time you are asked for you email address by a real estate marketer, notice how hesitant you are to do so.  They have to give you something really good in return, don’t they?

What is the solutions to this problem?

First, if you are not already doing it, start building your list on your blog or website.  For instance, if you are trying to find motivated sellers, build a list of motivated sellers on your site.  Remember, you’ll need to give them an ethical bribe like a free video, audio or a PDF report that will show them how to solve their problem.  That’s how you’ll get their info.  By the way, when you ask for their info, ask for their name and email address only.

Then, after you get their info, you send them what they requested and start building a relationship with them.  You help them with their problem without ANY expectations.  Don’t sell to them, don’t try to convince them that you are their one and only answer.  Believe me, when you provide them with killer information on how they can solve their problem, they’ll ask you to help them.

They’ll feel like they made the decision themselves.  They weren’t sold and when it comes to signing that deal, they won’t back out because they feel like they got pressured into it.

Why am I building that list? What happens after I close the deal?

The possibilities are endless but that’s for another discussion.  Just remember, your relationship with that buyer, seller or investor doesn’t end there.  Think about it, what happen when someone moves into their new home?  What do they need?  What if you were the person who already took care of that for them and got them a great deal on what they want/need?  You’ll become their new best friend   Believe me, many local companies are looking for more business.  You can create a win-win partnerships and everybody wins.

So that’s all for today.  Let me know what you think in the comments below.  Remember, start building your list.

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Are you committing this mistake on your real estate website? Part 2 of 2

Real estate websites are all over the place.  Just type in “real estate website’  into Google and you’ll get thousands of results. Some real estate websites are good but most of them are pretty bad and I’m being nice here.

Today, I want to talk to you about the first problem I see made on hundreds of real estate websites and this one problem is causing those websites thousands of leads and possible deals.

Make Sure Your Real Estate Website is Focused on Your Target User

The first big mistake I see many real estate websites make is that they are very unfocused.  What do I mean by that?  Let me give you an example.  A typical real estate investing website will target sellers who are in foreclosure.  Let’s say they hire a good SEO company or do a pretty good job themselves and make it on the first page of Google.  Great!

Now, this website can bring in some targeted sellers to the site.  But when that seller who is heading for foreclosure clicks on the link to go to the site, he does NOT get what he asked for.  Most of the time, he ends up landing on the main page and/or very unfocused page.  So what happens next?  The visitor clicks the back button.

What happens to that website?  Not only does it loose the visitor and a possible deal but it’s bounce rate goes up. (bounce rate is a % rate that tells Google how targeted the site is.  If the bounce rate is high, that means that people leave the site (bounce) without exploring it further and Google will give it a negative point to it’s quality score.)

As you can see, that one problem can have a big effect on your website.  So here is the solution:  Whenever you are designing your web pages, make sure that they are TARGETED to your end visitor, to the person you want to bring to the site.  If your target audience is a seller who is heading for foreclosure, make sure that the page DELIVERS on it’s promise that was given to the visitor in the search engine result and that it ONLY targets that one person.

Remember, you always need to talk to just ONE person on your web page.  Think about it, at any given time, there is just one person reading your page unless he has his wife or a group of people reading the web page together.  Hopefully, you see my point by now.

Make Adjustments Until You Speak to Your Visitors

If you change this one element on your page, you should see a difference in your bounce rate (it should go down), time a visitor spends on your site and the # of page views should increase.  And that’s just for starters.

In conclusion, talk to one person on the page and make sure that the page focuses and ANSWERS the problem the visitor came to see.  Also, make sure that you don’t have a lot of distractions on that page like adsense ads, many links to other distractions, flashing buttons and so forth.  You need to stay focused.

That’s it for today.  Next week, I’ll discuss the other issue I see many real estate websites make and believe me, that problem is costing those sites a LOT of money.  Those websites are leaving a lot of money on the table.  So make sure that you come back here next week or add me to your colleague list here on Bigger Pockets and you’ll know when I write part 2.

One last thing, if you have any questions or comments, let me know in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Peter Kolat

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Are you committing this mistake on your real estate website? Part 1 of 2

Log into the blog . . . check comments . . . remove useless SEO comments . . .

A Look at SEO Blog Comments that Will Sink Your Company

Getting SPAM comments on your blog is certainly an annoying thing, particularly because of all of the filters on blogs these days, but more annoying, in my opinion, are the SEO companies who are doing their clients an injustice by posting crap comments in order to get some notice for them.

For example:

Click image to enlarge

For those of you who can’t see, the top comment reads:

i am totally against the rising price of lands. one should think with his heart that everyone needs land to live and it is gift of Jesus.

There is really no need to say any more. The comment is incoherent and has nothing to do with the post, titled “Latest Real Estate Market Data Showing a Whisper of a Bottom.”

The second comment, which is also incoherent drivel, reads:

real estate has become one of the business for the people and they are the main reason for rising the price of the land which is not at all good and totally a fraud way to earn.

While I understand that some people don’t fully understand that comments are supposed to make sense, or have something to do with the post they are writing about, what then makes it all the worse is that the commenter can’t follow directions either.

It clearly states above the submit button on our blog’s comment section: Note: Blog comments exist so readers can engage in conversation. We kindly ask that you use your real name instead of some keywords for your name. Not doing so may result in your comment being removed.

As you can clearly see from the image above, instead of using their name, or even a pseudonym, the commenter is using the KEYWORDS “Dillon real estate.” Considering that the website they were promoting has the URL ( http://www.dillonrealestatesale.com/ ), this is probably a wonderful thing, except for the fact that our blog is a NO FOLLOW blog, and again, since our instructions clearly indicate that we do not appreciate comments from these SEO commmenters.

So What . . . who cares?

Actually, I care, and so should the person paying the person posting the comments. After seeing comments like these, I usually do a quick IP location lookup to see where the commenter is writing from. As you can plainly see from the image to the right, this person is sharing his comments from the middle of the ocean. Odds are these people will post using fake IPs or their IP will derive from somewhere in southern Asia (India in particular).

In this case, our poster, whose name I’m guessing is Ravi (you can see that his email address is ravi941981@ymail.com), wasted his time, as we simply deleted his comments. That said, I’m guessing that he or his firm could care less anyway, as he is likely getting paid to promote the Dillon Real Estate website. Every day we remove comments like these, whose purpose is to promote one real estate website or another – every day!

Beware of Paid SEO Services!

While there are certainly some good companies doing SEO, the above example shows that there are many out there who are doing a disservice for their clients. Sadly, in most cases, the website owner will have little idea that they are getting taken, and even worse, they are likely paying an arm and a leg for this crap service. I’ve heard of some of these companies charging up to thousands of dollars a month to do SEO.

The key is to know what you’re getting into. Everyone wants their real estate or other website to do well in the rankings on the search engines, but before hiring an SEO firm, you better know what you’re getting into. Get references and follow up with them. See if the results match the price you’re paying. Learn what SEO is, and how these companies are going to optimize your site for you. Don’t get taken!

These Kinds of Comments Reflect Badly Upon You and Your Company

I don’t know who owns the website I mention above (doing a whois on the site revealed privacy shields), but I hope that they soon realize that whoever is promoting their site is simply wasting their money. In addition, do you really think that I’d want to do business with this person now?

By hiring seedy SEO companies or posting SPAMMY comments on other blogs yourself, you create an image for your website that is far from positive. In the short term you may get away with it, and frankly, you may see some benefit from it, as many people do not delete or filter comments regularly, but in the long term, you’re just ruining your brand.

Once you’re brand is tainted, that’s all folks!

This Article is Copyright © 2004-2009 BiggerPockets, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Stop Paying Useless SEO Companies to Promote Your Website!