All About the
Real Estate Industry on the Internet
Less Than 5% of all Real Estate Websites are Productive
Yes, less than 5% of all real estate websites produce significant results. By results we mean activity leading to sales. The productive websites are drawing volume visitor traffic from the internet and producing leads. The other 95% are not realizing enough visitor traffic. Why? The most common reason is that people do not find the website when they search on the search engines. Many webmasters and most of the companies that specialize in real estate websites tell their clients to promote their websites in their print media, advertisements, business cards and such. But, if a prospect finds your ad or otherwise learns of your website from printed material it means the prospect has already found you before he learns of your website. So, you are not acquiring a new prospect just addressing one you already have. Since your advertising is local in nature the prospect who is relocating from elsewhere in the country (or world) is not going to see your advertisement.
So, how do you reach out to those prospects outside of your local area on the Internet? The first and foremost source is the search engines. In addition, placing links on other websites and in directories also draws visitors. Now, most of the webmasters and companies mentioned above will submit your website to the search engines. But, they do not optimize the pages of your site so that they earn top positions on the search results. So, you are indexed in the search engines but your pages are not getting the exposure to people searching (they seldom go beyond the first 3 pages of the search results).
Now here is the tough question. How do you get your existing website up on page one of the search engines? Or, where do you go to have a website created that will get you good results? There are several answers. You could have your website re-designed by a firm that offers page optimization for the search engines. Alternatively, the same or a similar firm could develop promotional pages that would be placed on the search engines and send visitor traffic to your site via links. If you are planning a new website this same firm could provide this service.
What volume of visitor traffic should you expect? How can you tell if your website is successful? Well, here are statistics collected from more than 1,000 real estate webpages. The average conversion rate between visitor traffic and inquiries is 30 to one, 30 visitors to one inquiry. Now this is visitors and not "hits". A website drawing 300 to 500 visitors a month should produce 10 to 16 inquiries. This is a good manageable volume. Above 20 inquiries a month one person will be struggling to handle the activity. From this activity you will eventually develop sales of between 6 and 10 homes a year. It may take nine to twelve months to fill the pipeline and be closing sales on a regular basis.
What does it cost? Whatever the method promoting your website on the search engines should not cost more than $1,200 a year. You will have an initial set up cost and then monthly fees to monitor the activity and maintain the search engine positions. If you seek a greater volume of visitor traffic it will cost proportionately more.
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