Ramp Up Your Online Real Estate Visibility
Being a real estate agent has changed dramatically over the past decade. And the trends continue to point in the direction of more technology. Yet, the reality for most real estate agents is that they simply don’t know how to keep up with all the changes in marketing and online lead generation.
Nowhere is this more pervasive than on a typical agents website. Realtor.com says that over 90% of home buyers and sellers start their process online. That must mean there is tons of traffic to be had in real estate. Motivated buyers and sellers are simply there online looking for solutions. There’s no denying that.
Yet, the average agent is lucky to get over 50 visitors to their website every month.
This presents a problem and huge opportunity for agents looking to stand out from the crowd. Whether you’re looking to get more listings, buyers, or help sell your listings faster, the road to success is building up consistent website traffic.
Website traffic will be as important to Realtors over the next 5-10 years as referrals are. In fact, website traffic is largely like referral marketing. You get traffic from social media and other websites that link to your site and refer traffic your way.
That’s how the web works. And that’s how real estate works.
But how do you go about building up more traffic to your real estate website?
The answer isn’t complicated. You only have 3 ways to get traffic to your website. And there are proven methods of using these 3 tactics to increase the number of visits to your own website.
The main three ways you can get traffic to your real estate website are:
- By having a popular real estate blog
- Understanding how to use social media for real estate
- Paid Ads in various channels
Do you want to see some good examples of top real estate websites? In my post there are real estate agents who have mastered the art of driving qualified traffic to their sites. These Realtors understand what it takes to have a thriving business from their online activities. Go ahead and take a look – it may give you some ideas on how you can change up your marketing strategy moving forward. You will see exactly why these agents are well past their first ten thousand visitors!
Let’s start by discussing the first option, blogging:
Blogging is simply the practice of putting written or video content on your website. The most useful blogs in real estate are ones that are helpful.
How does this help build up traffic?
Well, the only way to get anyone to visit your website without paid ads relies on some type of content. Do you want people to visit your website from social media? You need helpful blogs that educate them on topics they are interested in. Bill Gassett does a great job at this over at his Maximum Real Estate Exposure blog. In a recent article Bill provides helpful information on taxes when getting a divorce. This is the kind of information that people will search online for. Bill provides a thorough understanding of how divorce can impact your finances especially when it comes to taxes. In speaking with Bill he told me that he is averaging around 44,000 visitors a month to his blog/website!
Do you want traffic from Google eventually? One of the best ways to get people visiting your website is by publishing useful blog content just like Bill does on a regular basis. I encourage you to go take a look at the top sites that show up for your keywords. Most of the sites like Zillow, Trulia, and other top ranked websites publish more than one blog post per day. They aren’t doing this for nothing. Publishing helpful content almost automatically does SEO for you.
The second way to get traffic is through social media.
Social media traffic can actually be pretty predictable and growth can be exponential over time. If you’re writing blog posts, you can easily schedule their publication to multiple social media accounts. And then get clicks back to your website.
You have the standard social media sites that you should be on like Twitter and Facebook. But there are also newcomers like Youtube and Pinterest that are having a huge effect on real estate website traffic. In 2014, the number of people who typed find a Realtor into Youtube grew by over 41%. Mastering how to use social media channels for real estate should be a key consideration for all Realtors looking to ramp up their online exposure.
The thing to realize here is that it is almost impossible to get large amounts of social media traffic directly to your IDX listings. Social media just doesn’t work like that! Think of these networks as a co*cktail party. If you met someone who was remotely interested in buying a house soon at a party, you wouldn’t take them through all the listings you have. You’d answer their questions they have about buying.
If you want to succeed at getting more traffic from social media, you have to “Give to Get.” Overtime, a healthy mixture of blogging with social media marketing will yield a consistent stream of traffic to your website. And the cool thing is that this stream acts a little bit like an annuity.
It grows with time. Once you start getting search engine and social media traffic to a website, it’s hard to lose that traffic. You will find that if you keep blogging at this point new blogs get new traffic. And older blog posts continue to bring in traffic. This creates a multiple effect which can be really useful for finding new clients month after month.
The third way to get traffic to your real estate website is through paid advertising.
Unlike social media and blogging, this method has a more immediate impact. You’re able to get people directly interested in real estate transactions to your website. The two big players for this type of marketing are largely Facebook and Google. There are ways to setup profitable sources of leads on both of these networks.
That being said, the downside of a advertising only based approach to website traffic is that you’re renting traffic. The moment you turn off the ads or run out of ad spend you are going to stop getting traffic. You are also then tied directly to the success of the advertiser. For example, Facebook ads were around half the price one year ago that they are today.
You’ll also find that the leads from these ads are sometimes of lesser quality than from organic traffic methods. Organic traffic typically builds more trust with individual leads before they give you their information. This yields a higher quality of lead that on average converts to clients at a much better percentage.
All this being said, I firmly believe that real estate agents need to prioritize getting traffic to their websites now. A good first goal should be hitting 10,000 visitors a month. And to help every realtor do that the Easy Agent Pro team put together this helpful info-graphic that explains every step of the process. We talk about blogging, social media, email marketing, and over arching goals for your traffic growth. You can also see 16 hacks for real estate websites that drive more leads and real estate business.
Here’s How To Get Your First 10,000 Website Visitors:
About Infographic Real Estate Websites by Easy Agent Pro
What do you think?
If you have any questions about getting real estate website traffic, let me know in the comments below. Or reach out on social media. And I’ll be sure to help you out!
Tyler Zey is the digital marketing director and contributing editor for the real estate digital marketing blog on easyagentpro.com.Easy Agent Pro helps Realtors with some of the best websites and marketing available.
