You just launched or updated your website and it looks great – attractive visuals and interesting copy, with all of your listings profiled in detail and promoted on your homepage slideshow. Now that you’re up and running, how can you best drive visitors to your website?
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, there’s no one silver bullet. Marketing your website will need to become a key component of your overall marketing plan.
Some additional tips:
Make your site unique: Think about what you can do to make your site stand out from your competition on the web. One way to do this is to offer information to your visitors that is available nowhere else. This is especially helpful if you are selling in a resort or vacation area or deal with a large relocation clientele.
Focus your keywords: You will have a better chance of ranking on search engines for targeted, relevant terms than trying to be everything to everybody. This will help your potential clients get a better feel for what you bring to the table that is truly unique and different. Quality traffic from people interested in your services will result in a better conversion ratio.
Track your traffic: Our advanced traffic analyzer system gives you the ability to know what links on other websites are driving traffic to your website, and what keywords people are using when finding your website on Google and Yahoo!.
Be very careful: As a website owner you will receive many unsolicited emails from companies claiming to be able to “guarantee” you top search engine positioning or submit your site to “10,000 search engines and directories.” These are almost always scams. Before you spend, talk to other business owners and deal with reputable companies. Again, there are no silver bullets in ranking on search engines.
Be patient: It will take some time for you to get a good ranking for your site, even with a guaranteed search engine inclusion service like Yahoo. Once your site has been proven to be a relevant answer to a search query, you will naturally see a gradual increase in ranking.
While the 70% is more conventional wisdom than documented fact, there is absolutely no doubt that link popularity plays a significant role in determining search engine results. The higher the number and “quality” of sites that link to your website, the more attention Google and Yahoo! give to your website. Quality is defined by volume of visitors and relevancy to your site.
Your link campaign will be most effective if the websites that link back to your site are other popular, legitimate real estate-related websites and other relevant local or professional websites. If you can contact and receive links from established sites that are already in good standing with search engines, this will help boost your own ranking as well. They will often ask for you to link to them in exchange for linking to you. This is usually called a Link Exchange. There are few short-cuts to a good link development campaign – you should avoid automated link exchanges or purchased link programs that involve linking with sites unknown, which may not help, and can even hurt your website rankings.
Local search engine marketing is a form of online marketing that consists of several strategies specific to promoting a business in a local region including:
Search engine marketing can help you build your business by:
People search the Internet everyday using search engines like Google, Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. Perhaps they type in “Orlando condominiums” or “San Diego single-family homes” as they search for specific properties in a local market. The search engines deliver results found within the specified geographic area instead of from around the world. This focus on delivering geographically relevant results is known as “Local Search.”
The following list includes several of the major search engines and web directories that focus on delivering high quality Local Search results to their customers.
The key for these search engines and web directories to generating successful local search results to their visitors is having a rich and complete local business directory. If you choose, you can individually complete the forms to supply information about yourself or company to each site. Some of these sites have premium paid listings while others do not charge any fees. We know you might not want to take the time to individually register your business on each of these sites. But don’t despair – we now offer a service to add your information to eighteen local search resources by just filling out one set of forms.
iHOUSE LocalNet gets your name, phone number and website address out there quickly, easily, and cost-effectively. We make sure your information is correct and consistent on every local search resource listed above and more – a total of eighteen major Internet Local Search Engines and Business Directories. LocalNet provides registration services only to popular top-tier local search resources – search engines and web directories that have millions of visitors daily looking for local services and businesses like yours. What’s more, your business profile is hosted as a stand alone web page on our Agent Directory—yet another place that you can be found on the Internet.
A Time Saver
A Link Builder and Potential Traffic Driver
What is your time worth? Check out LocalNet today!
Robert Warner started with iHOUSEWeb back in 2009 in the Customer Service Department helping over 10,000 clients with all of their Real Estate Website questions. After launching the YouTube training videos for iHOUSEWeb he moved up to the marketing department where he helps design and write marketing materials as well as managing the Social Media side of iHOUSEWeb.