A good friend of mine & colleague runs a real estate brokerage out of Gulf Shores, AL. We have known each other for ~5 years, mostly through the niche (now not so niche) group of agents who do a ton of online marketing. We were worried about link profiles before SEO was cool. :)

Since we’ve done this for a while, we both get a laugh (and a little irritation) out of misguided and misleading marketing attempts made by competitors who either understand online marketing and make intentionally misleading claims, or who don’t understand online marketing and like the taste of boot. This morning, I was emailed the following print ad:

The first step of any search marketing campaign (SEO or PPC) is keyword analysis – determining how much traffic a given keyword will generate, and how competitive that keyword is. Not surprisingly, Lighthouse 1204 doesn’t generate a ton of traffic. Using the keyword selector tool provided by Google, I see that the traffic is so low, they can’t even estimate it. You can probably count on one hand how many people search for this term on an annual basis.

If I were managing Meyer Real Estate’s online marketing, I would highly advise them to not waste a dollar or a minute going after “Lighthouse 1204″ because it’s highly unlikely that ranking for this term would result in a sale.

Now, there is quite a bit of traffic to be had for the longtail, which is why an indexable RETS/IDX system is important, but that’s a conversation for another day. Ranking for these longtail terms does nothing to serve the seller, but does help out the broker/agency/agent quite a bit. When a buyer/renter searches for a direct address or MLS #, they will find RETS/IDX data (nearly identical data) on 60-70% of page 1, so they’re almost always represented. As a listing agent, you’re servicing your client no better by ranking on page 1 for their address, but you can definitely serve yourself.

Lighthouse 1204 Around the Web:

• Lou Lynch’s take on Lighthouse 1204
• Eric Blackwell on Lighthouse 1204

I haven’t talked about it publicly a lot, but I’ve been working on a RETS/IDX system for the past two years.  We’re still a couple of months away from our “broad release,” but we do have a stable version ready for pre-release in 10 markets.  The system is pretty powerful & we’re rolling out new features weekly.  Right now, I feel like we’ve feature matched all of the major RETS/IDX systems out there and our pre-release pricing is about 50% what the competitors charge.  When we launch our broad release, our feature list will beat the competitors handily, and we’re planning to charge 75% what they do.  If you like the search features on this site, then you’ll like Displet’s RETS/IDX – map search, property listings pulled into WP pages, indexable property detail pages, and TONS of backend settings/options.  Here’s a link to our pre-release pricing and here’s a link to our portfolio.  We’re rapidly expanding, so if you’re not in a market our pre-release covers, let me know, and there’s a good chance that we’ll want to expand there.  We typically offer deals to the first agents in any market b/c we need feedback on the system performance in that specific market.

My IDX/RETS company, Displet, just rolled out SEO friendly URLs to everyone, so my three sites were updated with this feature.  Basically, this adds the property address to the URL of that specific detail page, which helps the search engines to know what the page is about.  Ex. http://search.ericbramlett.com/residentials/detail/320258-7014-greenshores Displet is rolling out features pretty regularly, and we blog about them on the Displet blog, but I’ll also blog about them here, from time to time.

by: Marc Rasmussen – Sarasota Florida real estate

Is your home for sale and languishing on the market? Has your home been for sale for a long time with no luck and fewer and fewer showings? You might be a bad or out of touch seller. Here are six signs to watch out for:

1) “My house is the best!”

Despite the fact that your home has been for sale for a long time without attracting an offer you still think your home is the best. All of the buyers that have viewed your home are wrong and you are right. You think your home is better than all of your competitors. It does not matter that one of your competitors is a bigger home, newer and on a better lake. Your home is still better – “just because it is.”

2) “We don’t need to lower the price”

Even though you are getting fewer and fewer showings as time goes by and none of the buyers put in an offer you still think your home is worth what you are asking. You are right about price and everybody else is wrong.

3) “We just need more advertising”

Your solution to the problem is more advertising. Instead of cleaning, fixing, improving your home or lowering the price you believe your home has not sold because it has not been advertised enough. You think your Realtor should spend more money advertising your home because that will make it sell. The most effective tool a Realtor has is the MLS (multiple listing service). In many cases that is all the marketing you need to sell a home. I can price home a right, provide easy access and stick it on the Sarasota MLS and there is a good chance it will sell.

Remember, buyers look at several homes when deciding on a home. Let’s assume your Realtor puts your house on the front page of the Sunday newspaper every single week. That may drum up buyers that look at your home. However, those same buyers will look at the competition too. If your competition is a better value then your advertising just helped sell them.

4) You want too much for your upgrades

Your home is gorgeous. You recently updated the kitchen, bathrooms, flooring and landscaping. You spend $125,000 on the improvements. The problem is you added $200,000 to the asking price of your home because of the improvements. You won’t always get dollar for dollar on improvements. Those were your improvements. The buyers might have chosen a different tile or granite. Make your improvements wisely because you might not always get the money back.

5) You know more than your Realtor

Even though you have sold a handful of properties in your life and your Realtor might have sold more than a hundred homes you still know more. You don’t need to listen to the expert who works in the trenches day in and day out. What do they know? Afterall, your house is the best!

6) The market is wrong

You ignore the fact that many of your competitors have sold since your house has been on the market. The buyers who have seen my house are wrong. The Realtors who came through on the caravan are wrong. My Realtor is wrong. I am right!

If the above sounds anything like you then you may need a dose of reality. The real estate market dictates what your home is worth. You just get to decide if that price is enough for you.

I wrote a post a couple of years ago detailing how to stop Homefeedback.com spam.  The post still gets traffic for keywords like “homefeedback spam” so it’s obviously relevant and people obviously search that term (which means others feel homefeedback.com and spam are somehow related.)  Today, Homefeedback.com/ShowingSuite.com contacted me and asked me why I feel their system facilitates spam.

Hoemfeedback.com facilitates spam because it helps their users automatically generate & send unsolicited emails.  They are CAN-SPAM compliant, so are doing nothing illegal.  They provide a way to opt out of each communication (between the sender/listing agent and recipient/buyer’s agent) and are facilitating emails sent because of a specific action taken by the recipient.  However, they are facilitating email that I have specifically requested not to receive.

A couple of years ago, before blocking Homefeedback using gmail rules, I contacted the company and requested to opt out of all emails automatically sent by their system.  Their reply was an adamant, “No.”  They cited their CAN-SPAM compliance (which I was aware of) and stated that I can opt out of each specific sender’s email.  Obviously, I want to opt out of each sender’s email, as I had just asked them to opt me out of every sender’s email.  However, they would not comply with my request.  So, they are facilitating spam.

I provided a better solution to their company.  If they (and all feedback companies) would allow the recipient to set global preferences, they would provide a better experience to the recipient & sender.  If I could globally set my Homefeedback recipient settings to “never” to “5″ as a number of emails per showing, this allows the recipient to receive the number of reminders they wish, and helps the sender avoid looking like a spammer (and theoretically keeps the sender from being labeled as such, or from being opted out of.)  Out of respect for my other agents, I would more than likely set my global recipient limit to “1″ as I don’t mind receiving feedback requests, and often fill them out.  However, after the 3rd, 4th, or 5th reminder, it gets a bit old.

Full disclosure: I do use an automatic feedback service – ProAgentSolutions.com.  ProAgentSolutions has the same deficiencies as HomeFeedback, but isn’t as prolific, so I didn’t have a grudge against them when I shopped for a service.  Combine that with the fact that ProAgentSolutions.com is much cheaper than HomeFeedback, and my decision was made.

Automatic home feedback services are effective, and they do provide real value to your sellers.  However, they need to raise the bar and hold themselves to a higher standard than CAN-SPAM.  If any home feedback service is listening:  Provide the global settings I’ve outlined, and I will move to your service, and recommend it to others.

The days of houses selling with little or no effort are over.  After the real-estate market appreciated at astronomical rates during the first half of the decade, the real-estate market has tilted to favor homebuyers over home-sellers.  Do not get discouraged, this does not mean your house will not sell, it just means you might have to do more to get it sold.

There are a few suggestions to aide you in this process of selling your home quickly and for a fair price.  First, make any repairs you know need to be made.  In this day of short sales and foreclosures, you need your home to take on a different look.  You do not want to compete against the properties that need TLC, make your property desirable for a homebuyer not interested in a fixer-upper.  Another tip for selling in a slow market, price your home to sell.  The demand for real estate has softened significantly.  This means price is everything and if you are not prepared to sell you home at fair market value, then maybe you should wait to sell.  Pricing your home above fair market value will drive potential homebuyers away.  A home seller must also be flexible in today’s market.  Make sure your house is ready to show at all times and do not limit access to your home.  Not being flexible could cause an agent to bypass your home and move on to another that has no stipulations.

Lastly, in todays market it wise to bite your tongue even in the toughest of situations.  Sometimes a potential buyer will come with an offer that you and your seller may consider too low.  Resist telling them that or even worse turning your nose up at the offer.  Remember it takes a lot of time, energy, and patience to sometimes get any offer out of a potential buyer, and even a low one is a sign of interest.  Always counteroffer any offer, you never have anything to lose by countering, and everything to lose by dismissing or rejecting the offer without at least considering the interests taken to submit one in the first place.  Following these few simple tips will hopefully make your home selling process a little easier in today’s tough real-estate market.

Author & Realtor, Angela Kraushaar, is available for your Katy area Real Estate needs.  Visit her realty website at: Katy Homes For Sale / Katy Home Search / Katy Foreclosures.

The cool factor is not just about showing off. Sometimes it’s about showing people that you have the capacity to imagine the next generation of real estate technology, that you have what it takes to appeal to the bleeding edge of modern home shoppers, and—this can’t be overlooked—that you’re willing to try something different and pique our very human curiosity.

A QR code looks like this:

It’s not your fault if you don’t know what it is, either. The vast majority of U.S. phones have no native support for reading QR codes, which is really just a 2-dimensional bar code. This added dimension, however, adds an entirely new layer of information—the kind of information that you can’t squeeze onto a 6 x 24 rider sign. Yes, you can put it on a flyer, but that’s so boring, isn’t it?

What’s the message behind the Pollock-meets-cubism mess above? A listing pulled off Eric Bramlett’s website:

6029 Mount Bonnell, 78731 / $329,000 / Built: 1984 / Sq. Ft. 2043 / 3 bed 2.5 bath / Acres 0.09 / Austin ISD /

Here’s what it looked like on my phone:

Most modern smart phones can read QR codes with the help of a 3^rd party app. From what I gather, the next generation of phones, like Google’s Nexus One, will have native support (as phones in Europe and Japan already do). On my iPhone, I have  i-nigma, which is free. Using the phone’s camera, it converts the pattern into readable text.

Here’s where it get’s interesting: QR codes can also store links. Have a mobile website? The QR code can contain a link to a page with all the listing info you can dream of, complete with pictures, your contact information, you name it, displayed perfectly and loaded quickly on the average web-equipped smart phone.

This QR code looks the same, but contains a link that most readers will recognize:

The image above references a listing mock-up page of my personal blog, which contains the same basic listing details, but also a picture of the listing (it could contain many). Since my blog is equipped with mobile device detection, if one were to read this code from their mobile phone, they would be automatically directed to the mobile-friendly version of the listing on my site. Try both versions to see the difference.

Here’s another screen shot. It’s not the prettiest, but it took me all of 1 minute to put together this page:

So what about those that don’t have a QR reader on their phones (the majority of Americans)? Explain it to them on your website. Put a URL next to it that corresponds to an area on your site that discusses QR codes. And, what do you know? You got them to visit your site, with your listings, contact info, and all that other killer content you have to capture leads.

Who’s going to be the first to try it?

Ian Greenleigh works for Flat Rate Web Jobs, creating and monetizing blogs for small businesses, real estate & independent professionals.

I started a new meetup group for “Real Estate Geeks” in Austin.  If you’re in the Austin area & are passionate about social media & connecting with clients online, this is the group for you!  Our first meetup will be at Apothecary on January 14th at 6pm.

Here’s a link to the group:

http://www.meetup.com/austin-real-estate-geeks/

I look forward to seeing old friends & meeting new!

I just went live with the first acceptable revision of my new theme (in case you hadn’t noticed.) :)  If anyone has feedback on the design, it would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve been getting a lot of messages from Zillow lately, so I finally called them back today.  I assumed it was regarding advertising, and I was correct.  Chad from Zillow called me to offer up their “per zip code” ad space.

Unless you’re launching or running a major brand campaign, impressions are a really bad metric to decide for or against ad space.  Your bottom line number is closed transactions, and it’s easiest to crunch these down to # of transactions per click (conversion.)  Most ad salesmen will quote you impressions because it’s WAY more impressive than clicks.  When talking w/ one of these guys, always follow up the impression data with, “what’s your click through rate?”  You simply multiply the click through times the impressions, and you know your estimated traffic (clicks.)

So, this conversation was no different.  Zillow offered to sell me ad space, per zip code (which is nice that you get to target a specific zip.)  So…first question: “How much?”  They sell the space at different rates for different zips, and I assume the rates vary with the average selling price of property in that zip.  We got started with 78746, which is Westlake.

To advertise on Zillow, 78746 goes for $260/month.  The sales guy immediately let me know that I could expect 22k impressions per month.  So, since I don’t track impressions, I immediately asked about click through.  Their national average is 0.5%, which is totally decent.  At this rate, you can expect 110 clicks per month, at a cost per click of $2.36.  I pay for clicks on random sites, and I average $0.30/click, and cap myself at $0.50.  So, we were way off from each other, and that was the end of the discussion.  $2.36/click is on par with major keywords on google, yahoo, and msn.  I don’t buy those keywords, so it was an easy decision.

I think it’s fantastic for Zillow that they’re able to sell ad space at this rate.  They’ve built a quality brand, and people are apparently willing to pay a premium for space on their site.  If I owned a major brand, I would seriously consider advertising there for the branding potential.  However, I think traffic for major keywords on the search engines is a little more qualified than zillow traffic (for me.)  So, if I were choosing between the two media, I would choose the SERPs over Z.

My main point is to make sure you know what the most important metric is for your own advertising, and to always get this info before making a decision.  22,000 is way more impressive than 110, but both numbers refer to the same ad space.