Internet tip #5-25 (search engines)
SECOND in a series on search engine optimizationYour real estate website can be found in three ways: (1) accessing it via your domain name, (2) being listed in a search result when visitors search the Internet, or (3) being a sponsor (understand this to be a fee-based service) website on search engine(s). Let's review these one-by-one.
Directly accessing a domain name.
You must let people know that your website exists. When you promote your domain name using traditional means, people can access your website by using that name. You should print your domain name on your business cards, flyers, and every piece of advertising. Real estate consumers will see the domain name and will use it to visit your site. Your objective is for every piece of traditional advertising to result in one or more visits.
Searching and finding your website
Internet visitors the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) to search the Internet. They enter a search term or keywords and then view the results. These visitors click on they returned websites -- especially the ones that appeal to them. They generally limit their effort to the first two pages. That means about 20 websites will be visited. Your objective is to be as close to #1 as possible. This is a challenge.
Sponsor sites
If you are a sponsor, your website will show up on the first or other early page of an Internet search. For example, an Internet visitor may enter "Los Angeles realtor" while looking for real estate agents. In addition to the first ten results, there is also room at the top and right for fee-based results. At the top are sponsor sites where websites pay specific "advertising" fees to be displayed. On the right are "pay per click" sites. We'll discuss "pay per click" in another article.
Once you have a production website, you should determine which of these approaches (or combination of these approaches) will be used to promote your website. Unless people know that your website exisits or unless people can find your website, having one will do no good. Your specific approach will depend on what you want to accomplish. At this point you should decide what you want to accomplish from your website. Here are some thing to consider:
- do you want to found by 100s or 1000s of random visitors? how many?
- do you want to use your website so that your selected prospects / clients to get to know you better? purely as a service? to educate them?
- how much money will you be able to spend on Internet promotion?
series to be continued
posted by Shig Nishio @ 10/25/2005 11:09:00 PM
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