In past articles I have given many, many ideas for content for real estate websites from agents that have top ranking in Google.  Really, you just need to have a clear profile of your target customer and then that will dictate all the things they will want to know about the real estate in the area.

For instance, huge numbers of young, single women are now buying condos for themselves (more than single men).  So what do the single 25-35 ladies want to know about condos?  Well, if you’re one of them living a condo then you’ll know very well about what their lives are like and what the personal and professional interests are.  Write about real estate in the area of course but write about the commercial establishments available in the area.  Are there hip and trendy bars in the area?  Write in your real estate blog about you going to hang out there with your gal pals and how you found the experience to be.  Does the area have places to take your dogs?  A dog park is a major asset to dog owners.  Does the building forbid dogs?  You need to know these things before showing a dog owner a suite! Continue reading →

First of all, you have to consider the information of today’s consumers and most importantly the specific information needs of your target market.  I’ve said it many times before and so I’ll say it again.  You really should focus your efforts solely on a small, niche market.  Don’t be like the masses of mediocre real estate professionals who try to cover huge geographic areas and are really jack of all trades (IE geographic areas) and masters of none.  When you restrict yourself to 1-3 neighborhoods it’s much easier for you to cover the real estate information for those areas.  You can’t possibly know homes in 10 areas and know as much about any of them as a competitor who focuses on 1 or 2 and lives in one of them.  I always say to real estate professionals that a great place to place your branding is in the immediate area you live in.  The longer you have lived there, the more you will know the area, it’s people and its resources, and your passion for working with real estate and buyers and sellers will be palpable and contagious and you will get a large referral base soon enough.  Some real estate professionals only focus on several large condo buildings and do very, very well. Continue reading →

Your real estate website is central to all your online marketing efforts.  All your efforts at using Facebook, Twitter, free online classifieds sites, email marketing and so forth should be used solely for promoting your website, and your website’s only goal is building your email database (as detailed in my last 6 part article series “All Roads Lead To Building Your Email Database” and many other articles throughout my blog – subscribe to get updates today!).  But very, very few real estate agents put a lot of thought as to exactly what is on each web page on their web site and what shouldn’t be there.  We need to start thinking of each web page on your real estate website as what’s known as a landing page.

Now what is a landing page?  Most simply, it is page where people “land” when they discover it in some way.  They may be directed to a landing page via finding one of your listings (or one from your farm area you want to promote) by finding it on a popular free online classifieds site like Craigs List or Kijiji (by the way, Kijiji has now surpassed Craigs List in Canada in popularity.  Use both always for your real estate business!).  A person may be directed to a page on your website where you discuss something to do with residential properties such as how condo corporations work (eg. What a condo corporation fund is) and how to avoid buying a condo in a building that will arbitrarily raise its condo fees.  Detailed, current information is especially important to people buying condos as an investment because a sudden spike in condo maintenance fees can make an investor’s monthly cashflow situation go from positive (IE making money) to negative cashflow (IE losing money), and that (coupled with negative media articles on the local market) can sometimes make an investor sell an investment property in haste, needlessly causing them to lose money or just break even on their investment.

So this article series is intended to help all residential real estate professionals craft compelling web pages that a) get noticed, b) get signups for your email mailing list, and c) make you more money.  Good?  Let’s go!