Filed under: Realtor Websites – Best Practices
What Content Should My Real Estate Website Have?
Always remember your real estate website should serve only one purpose: building your email mailing list. That is, your website needs to entice visitors with enough valuable, current local real estate information that they will want to sign up your mailing list and receive information updates from you on a regular basis. If they don’t sign up, it’s likely these visitors will never come back to your site, so you won’t have any further opportunity for building relationships with them. So getting people signing up for your mailing list is absolutely essential. Search Engine Optimization drives qualified prospects to your site, and your site captures these leads so you can develop relationships with these people via email.
Your website’s information and style should reflect (more…)
March 9, 2011
- How much savings (apart from my down payment amount) will I need to have for renovations for the bank to finance a fixer upper property?
- Their limited income coupled with their lack of knowledge of what they will have to regularly spend in owning a home. This includes electricity bills, maintenance, etc.
- Considering a home outside the city that’s less expensive and more desirable but much more of a strain on their aging car plus extra mileage means more money spent on gas plus less time with their family
Financial History Issues
- My credit score could be higher. What can I do to improve it?
- Concern over outstanding debt (student loans, credit cards, line of credit) preventing them from affording a satisfactory home
- Where do I get my credit report? What is my credit score?
- There are errors and omissions on my credit report. What can I do about this?
- Is there more than one credit reporting agency? (more…)
November 25, 2010
Financial Concerns
- their overall lack of knowledge about financial matters makes them hesitant to know whether they want to buy a home. This can include any of the following areas:
Procedure/Protocol Issues
- Should I get pre-qualified for a mortgage before looking for a home?
- Can I borrow the down payment from family or friends?
- Can I contribute from my RRSP towards a down payment?
- Do I need to get a letter from my employer stating my income?
- What’s the difference between getting pre-qualified and pre-approved for a loan?
- Will our monthly mortgage payments ever go up or down?
- When should we re-finance our home?
(more…)
November 24, 2010
We don’t want to neglect Short Tail keywords. Even though we may pay more for them, there are fewer of them and so it will be quicker to create ads for them. We want our website to have a chance of getting exposure to people who are just starting out with their search who have very common and very basic questions and concerns. If we don’t, we risk losing them to our competitors if prospects find their sites first and stick with them throughout their research and buying process. That happens with information rich sites not just on the most basic information but also contain the specific, detailed information they’re looking for about homes in the area.
So let’s step back a bit and consider the initial, most common questions asked by first time home buyers: (more…)
November 23, 2010
The following keyword phrases indicate personal situations banks might frown upon when it comes to mortgage applications:
Mississauga condo financing student
Mississauga condo financing disability leave
Mississauga condo financing maternity leave
Mississauga condo financing sick leave
Mississauga condo financing stress leave
Mississauga condo financing union strike
Mississauga condo financing sabbatical
So with these keywords you’re going to get two types of people seeking mortgages seeing your ads: those who readily qualify for a mortgage and those who don’t. For those who think they readily qualify you should have an Adwords ad with (more…)
November 22, 2010
Credit History Long Tail Keyword Phrases
Mississauga condo financing FICO Score
Mississauga condo financing Equifax Score
Mississauga condo financing Credit Score
Mississauga condo financing Credit Health
Mississauga condo financing credit card history
Mississauga condo financing personal loan history
Mississauga condo financing personal line of credit history
Mississauga condo financing business loan history
Mississauga condo financing business line of credit history
Mississauga condo financing student loan history (more…)
November 19, 2010
We want to consider all the search keywords that people might use for any of these above 6 ways of searching. So let’s start with part i) Should I buy a home? There are basically two types of people here:
- those who understand the benefits of owning a home and therefore want to own one
- those who don’t understand the benefits of owning a home and therefore don’t care about owning one
In most cases people want to own their own home, and if they didn’t, they certainly wouldn’t be searching for one. So the next question for these people is: what do I need to have to purchase my first home?
People may search Google by giving keywords related to the answer to this question, so let’s look at some of the different possible Short-Medium Tail keyword phrases someone searching for a Mississauga condo might use: (more…)
November 18, 2010
What you should do for each type of buyer or seller is map out the buying or selling process step by step from beginning to end. Once you’ve indicated each stage of the process you’ll find it easier to know what questions are typically asked during that stage. If you’re having problems figuring out what each stage is and the order in which they occur take a look at some real estate websites’ FAQ areas. They’ll often have these stages along with the most common questions first time home buyers ask during each stage. I’ve grouped them in categories to give shape to the process first time home buyers go through: (more…)
November 17, 2010
Since all Google searches start with a question someone has, we need to think of all the possible questions people ask when it comes to buying and selling real estate.
Now there are a LOT of questions all of the numerous types of buyers and sellers might have at any given time during their search. For the truly intrepid you can go all out and design your AdWords campaigns and landing pages to reach as many of these people as possible, and the following articles will help you do that exhaustively. However, most of you will find the prospect of doing that much work pretty daunting. So it’s best if we make a list of all the different prospects we might encounter and then narrow our focus to only those who typically buy and sell in our farm area. There’s no sense in designing AdWords campaigns to reach prospects unlikely to buy or sell in our farm area.
So these are the most basic descriptions of all the different types of prospects we might want to market our real estate services to: (more…)
November 16, 2010
Another person might have just gotten pre-approved for a mortgage for $275,000, so their Google search might be “Mississauga Condo $275,000” or “Mississauga Condo $250,000-$275,000”.
Another person might want to live in Mississauga to be near family but commutes to work via Go-Train to Toronto, so since they don’t have a car being close to a Go-Station is of prime importance to them. So their search might be “Mississauga Condo Go Station” or be more specific (“Mississauga Condo Erindale Go Station”) by naming the Go-Station nearest where their family lives. (more…)
November 15, 2010
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