Real estate agents can forge connections with potential home buyers and sellers by adding QR codes to business cards, flyers, newspaper ads, direct mail, online property listings and lawn signs, using different QR codes to direct consumers to different sites or information. Different QR codes can be imbedded in different marketing vehicles to help track their effectiveness. QR codes are also proving effective in building social media relationships between real estate agents and potential clients. QR codes are still novel enough to generate excitement and curiosity. People can’t seem to resist scanning QR codes when they appear in Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. Their popularity and convenience are making real estate QR codes the preferred method of linking to detailed information and video tours of new property listings.

As smartphone become the new communication standard and consumer interaction becomes increasingly mobile, QR codes are expected to become the go-to method of imparting information to real estate consumers. PropertiesOnline.com can help you add this powerful mobile marketing tool to your real estate tool bag. Free real estate QR code generation is included with all Properties Online website products.

Use Real Estate QR Codes to Boost Website Traffic is a post from: Properties Online Blog

The launch of Real Estate Network will allow the 43,000 real estate brokerage firms, 376 multiple listing services and numerous real estate franchises that currently participate in ListHub to expand their real estate marketing reach by choosing to send their property listings to one or more network members. Members of the new network retain the right to pick and choose the network members with whom they will share property listings and may refuse to share listings with select network members at their discretion.

In the Real Estate Network launch announcement on PR Newswire, Move CEO Steve Berkowitz called the new network “an industry-friendly initiative” that “maximizes and ensures broker control” over the promotion of real estate listings. While Real Estate Network rules are similar to the Internet Date Exchange (IDX) listing parameters imposed by multiple listing services, the game-changing difference is that Real Estate Network mandates a uniform nationwide listing standard.

Several aspects of the new network are generating talk in the real estate community. The possible demise of multiple listing services seems to be the greatest potential impact the new network might have on the real estate industry. Some industry watchers are also predicting that online realty lister Zillow will suffer from competition with a new, broad-scale listing network. The biggest winners may be smaller real estate firms that stand to benefit from free access to real estate tools developed by their bigger brethren.

New Real Estate Listing Network Challenges MLS is a post from: Properties Online Blog

A single property website used to be one of those “nice to have” things that only the especially savvy realtors use. Not anymore: as the Internet plays an increasingly bigger role in the home buying and home selling process, more and more sellers – and buyers – are expecting to see a listing website.

A listing website is a Web page that is dedicated to a single property, or a single listing. It’s a wonderful way to present a property, because it creates a one-stop place where all the relevant information about a property, including photos, neighborhood photos and even disclosures, can be found.

Single property websites are very easy to find online, because their URL usually contains the property’s physical address, which means that when someone searches for the address, the single property websites will likely be the first result they see.

Sellers are expecting you to create a single property website for their listing because they see it as something “extra” that you are giving them – as going above and beyond. Most don’t realize just how affordable listing websites are for agents, and how easy they are to create, because they look so professional!

The best thing about a listing website is that you can create a demo site before winning a listing, present it to the sellers, and then- after that beautiful website helps you secure the listing – you can go ahead, pay, and take it live. The site will stay up for a full year, and will include built-in, easy to use tools for sharing properties on a wide range of social networks.

Savvy sellers expect their agents to be savvy too, and this means knowing how to leverage every possible online tool to help them sell their home quickly and effectively.

Sellers Expect a Listing Website is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Once you have an agent website, you should make sure it’s optimized for search engines. But Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long-term effort to get your site to the top of the search results. It can take months until your efforts pay off and requires constant monitoring and tweaking. In the meantime, for faster results, you can use Google Adwords.

What is Google Adwords?

Google Adwords is Google’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad network.  PPC is an Internet advertising model, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. For example, if you work in Seattle, you would likely want to base your Adwords campaign on keywords such as “Seattle real estate,” “Seattle homes for sale” etc. If you manage your Adwords campaign well, your ad could appear on the first page of search results, under the “Sponsored Links” tab.

Why Use Google Adwords?

As explained by Google, Countless home buyers use Google to browse for real estate information each month. Google Adwords enable you to reach prospects in your region at all stages of their home search – while they’re looking for properties, checking out locations, and selecting an agent.

Google AdWords can be a very effective  tool for sending more traffic to your real estate site. Google AdWords  offers a measurable, pay-for-performance solution that enables you to determine your costs and only pay when a prospect clicks on your ad to visit your website. You can continually monitor your campaign to see what’s working and what’s not, and you can modify or halt your campaign at any time.

An important aspect of Adwords for real estate agents is that it enables you to target users by location. This allows you to reach home buyers and sellers specifically within your service area.

Controlling Your Adwords Budget

You should be aware that if you’re not careful, your Adwords budget can easily balloon and get out of control. If you’re just starting out with Adwords, it might be a good idea to pre-pay for your first campaign. This will ensure that you don’t go over your budget.

Converting Adwords Traffic To Leads

A well-managed PPC campaign is likely to increase the traffic to your site, but that traffic will stick around and turn into leads – and possibly clients – only if your site is attractive, rich in information and interactive. The last thing you want it to pay for clicks that end up bouncing off your site. Before starting your PPC campaign, make sure your agent site is as good as it can possibly be.

Nice Video from the UK with more information about google Adwords:

An introduction to Google AdWords

Adwords and PPC advertising for Real Estate Agents is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Adding video to your agent site also allows you to reach out and connect with more potential clients. While a text-rich website is important from an SEO point of view, adding video to your site enhances the user experience, which is an important factor in the success of any website.

Real estate websites are sometimes “dry,” even a little boring. By adding video to your site you can add an entertainment factor that your visitors would appreciate. As a result, your website will be more “sticky” and visitors will stay around longer, browsing.

Since we believe video can greatly enhance realtor websites, our real estate websites are equipped with a YouTube plug-in that enables you to easily place a YouTube video on any page of your website. Our built-in YouTube player allows you to add video to your website either in the media panel or in the body of any website page.

Adding video to your website using our YouTube plugin is easy, and it makes your website interactive and fun for your visitors. Take advantage of this free tool – it’s a great way to improve your agent website.

Agents – Engage your Visitors with Video is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Ever wonder where your property website traffic is coming from? Over the past 6 months we have compiled analytics on over 1,400,000 visitors to approximately 15,000 single property websites and created this infographic to showcase our findings. Our study shows that having a top level domain name is clearly an advantage for both SEO and direct traffic.

Some of the highlights:

• Facebook has overcome Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow to become the #2 top referring website behind the King of all referrers – craigslist
• Mobile traffic is up 600% over the past 18 months
• Single Property Website can drive 55% more traffic to your listing than virtual tours or online flyers
• Google generates 80% off all search engine traffic

Single Property Websites – Traffic Report is a post from: Properties Online Blog

SEO, or search engine optimization, is important for any website, and this is true for real estate websites as well. Essentially, SEO helps to make sure that your website will be found on the Internet.

Optimizing your web site itself, or on-page optimization, is just part of your efforts to build a web presence, but it’s certainly a major part.

If a search engine bot crawls your web pages but your web pages don’t “tell” it what your site is all about, then the search engine will not be able to index your web site correctly, and people who search online for what you offer will not be able to find you.

For example, if you sell real estate in Austin, Texas, your site’s title tags and copy need to include related keywords such as “Austin real estate,” “homes for sale in Austin” etc.

Another important factor in determining whether your website will rank well for your main keywords is inbound links. Search engines show strong preference to websites who have links from other websites pointing at them. High quality agent site companies have tools in place to help your agent website get links.

Engaging in social media will also bring you links over time, because the people you connect with will learn about your site, and if you provide useful material, they may link to it.

Another important aspect of on-page search engine optimization is to add a blog to your real estate site. A blog, unlike a static site, tends to be rich in text. If you write it correctly and include your main keywords throughout the text, a blog can give your SEO efforts a significant boost.

Real Estate Websites: Why SEO is Important is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Over the years, Google has been fighting against spammers and their spam sites. It was almost like a game, but it was a high-stakes game: Google’s top priority was to only serve relevant, legitimate results to its users. Spammers had a different idea: their goal was to get their low-quality sites to the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs), even if for a short time, slap Adsense ads on those sites and earn nice amounts of money from all the traffic that would click on the ads to exit the disappointing site.

Determined to win this war, Google has tweaked its famous search algorithm, adding more and more tools and parameters that would make it nearly impossible for a spammy site to climb to the top of the SERPs. Google has pretty much won this war – and a big part of that is the insistence that sites have backlinks from other sites before they can get higher rankings (and in many cases, before they can be indexed at all).

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are links that other sites are sending to your site, and they are essentially an indication of  your website’s reputation on the Web. A site that has no backliks is suspicious and won’t have good search engine rankings, because if other sites do not acknowledge its existence, then it could be a spam site, or it could simply be a low-quality site. Google doesn’t want to see either at the top of the SERPs.

You Need Quality Backlinks

But it’s not enough to get backlinks. They need to be quality backlinks.  When Google first added the backlinks parameter, spammers were quick to create “link farms” – sites whose sole purpose was to send links to other sites. Since this process can be automated, spammers were able to send tons of links to new sites. As soon as the folks at Google figured out this was going on, they tweaked their algorithm yet again, de-indexed link farms, and they also added the requirement that at least some of the links that a new site receives need to be quality links, from reputable sites.

How Does One Get Backlinks?

So How do you get those coveted backlinks? The best way is to create a truly interesting, high-quality agent site; write an interesting blog; and connect with others in your space using social media tools. When you write your blog posts, link to other blogs (make sure they are reputable), and leave comments on those blogs. Sooner or later, one or more of the people whose blogs you frequent and the people you interact with using social media, is likely to link back to your own blog or site. If you get links from reputable sites or blogs, all you need is a handful of those links to convince Google that you are for real.

High Quality is Key

Another way to get backlinks is to submit real estate articles to article directories such as EzineArticles, including a link back to your site in those articles (follow each directory’s linking rules). But whatever you do to get backlinks, remember that gaming the system is pretty much impossible these days. Your material, whether submitted to a directory or published on your own blog or site, absolutely must be of high quality.

Google Backlinks – Why Do I Need Them? is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Real estate videos are hot! They are one of the fastest growing marketing trends for real estate professionals. Perfect for a social media and for an Internet savvy generation, real estate videos provide buyers with a rich experience, they beautifully capture and highlight each listing, and – when included in a single property website  – they deeply impress sellers and help you win listings.

Here are our must-dos for creating a great real estate video:

Keep it short

Attention spans on the Internet are SHORT. People are busy and don’t have time to watch anything that’s longer than a couple of minutes. The ideal real estate video is about one minute long.

Add a soundtrack

The right soundtrack gets people in the right mood and will help them enjoy the visuals included in the video.

Include still images that highlight different angles

The idea is to get an almost three-dimensional feel of the house, and including a sequence of photos of the same room taken from different angles is a great way to achieve that. The real estate video software will create smooth transitions between the photos and zoom in/out effects, so you don’t need to worry about that.

Add captions

While you shouldn’t include too much text in a real estate video – after all, this is about visuals, it’s important to include a few captions that highlight the most important information you would like to share about the property.

Most importantly, don’t forget to have fun! Creating a real estate video is a wonderfully creative process, and one of the best ways to truly showcase a property. The final outcome is always so exciting to watch. Play with your options, have fun, write short descriptive captions, and the end result will be fun to watch and to share online.

Real Estate Videos – The Must Do List is a post from: Properties Online Blog

Still marketing your listings with flyers and print ads? While these no doubt still work, you should not be missing out on the amazing power of the Web! Using Web tools to market your listings, when combined with traditional marketing methods, will expose your listings to a significantly larger number of prospects and can help you land listings.

There are many ways to market your listings online, including posting them on your agent site, creating a single property site for each listing, and using social media channels such as a blog, a Facebook business page or a Twitter account.

One of the more exciting ways you can market your listings is by creating a real estate video for each of them. This takes advantage of the “fun” and “cool” aspects of online marketing and has a great potential of becoming viral and being shared by many users.

Creating a video for your listings is easy with the right tools. A site such as Virtuets, for example, enables you to create stunning videos for each listing, using still images, music and special effects. You select the genre and the soundtrack that best fits the property, and the Virtuet engine does the rest.

These engaging videos are included in each single property website and will help you land listings by impressing even the most discriminating sellers. The videos can also be uploaded to YouTube, embedded into your agent website or blog, and posted on your Facebook business page.

Step into the 21st century by using one of the richest media available to agents. Impress sellers and buyers alike, and create a name for yourself as a social-media-and-tech-savvy agent. Don’t allow yourself to be left behind!

Market your Listings with Video is a post from: Properties Online Blog