Real estate agents increased their website usage according to the National Association of Realtors 2009 Technology Report. In fact the Internet had moved into the third most important position for generating leads after referrals and repeat business.

The top four uses are to post listings, communicate with clients, provide maps to properties and generate sales leads. 58% of agents update their personal websites, with 25% using their real estate blogs to increase business. Podcasts and YouTube videos are not as highly used, partly due to the technical learning curve needed to create the audio and video files. The technology barrier does not stop 36% of the Realtors and brokers polled from downloading and listening to podcasts for business purposes.

With real estate websites able to send emails automatically alerting agents that a lead has been submitted on the website, it is no wonder that the top mobile device agents use are Blackberries (32%), Palm Treos (14%) and iPhones (10%). These smartphones have keyboards and wireless Internet capacity that allows for reading and sending emails as well as the much used functions of phoning and texting. 42% of the real estate agents were planning on buying or replacing their smartphones in 2010 (compared to 9% who were planning on obtaining or replacing a basic cell phone with no texting or Internet capacity).

Overall, real estate agents are going more portable with digital cameras, smartphones and laptops far and away the most popular hardware agents are looking to purchase or upgrade. Over 50% of Realtors and brokers use a web-based email service like Yahoo or Google, allowing them great latitude in where they can check their email – at the office, at home or at an Internet cafe.

Brokers and Realtors both are increasingly using their brokerage and personal real estate websites to post listings. From 2007 to 2008 brokers increased usage from 72% to 83% and Realtors increased using their personal agent websites for listings from 53% in 2007 to 59% in 2008. Overall, 81% of the survey respondents have listing search capabilities on their real estate websites

When it comes to custom websites versus template real estate websites, over 50% of the brokers and a third of the agents invest in more customized websites with increased branding, personalized content and added options like article managers, integrated blogs and list managers. If you are looking to increase your real estate website’s return on investment, contact IMCD to see how quickly we can improve your online lead generation!

Real estate agents positioning their real estate websites for the expected influx of troops from Fort Hood in the coming months can use this information to attract potential clients. By utilizing a real estate blog to inform newcomers to the Colorado Springs market of both real estate news and home mortgage and first-time homebuyer benefits, agents position themselves on the Internet as experts in the Colorado Springs market. Building “creditworthiness” is key to moving your real estate website visitors to becoming warm sales leads.

Colorado Springs real estate market, with its large military housing market, is benefiting from the recent extension of the $8000 First-time Homebuyer Tax Credit. For most markets the extension ends in 2010, however real estate markets, such as Colorado Springs with several bases in the area. Benefit from the military first-time homebuyer’s extension that runs until April of 2011.

Since many of the military getting assigned to Fort Carson are newcomers to Colorado Springs, their referral network relies to a greater extent on Internet real estate searches. Internet Marketing Consultants (IMC) clients have used their IMC semi-custom real estate template websites to target this growing market. By utilizing a real estate blog integrated into their website, they can quickly write about changes in mortgage and tax laws affecting military personnel as well as new homes coming on the market.

Though on-base housing can accommodate some military families, housing forecasts expect 75% of the troops will require off-base housing due to shortages of available housing real estate.

Colorado Springs is also the second most popular place for military retirees to call home after San Antonio Texas. With close proximity to Denver and Southwest Airlines inexpensive travel routes, retirees have the ease of transportation of a large city while comfortably enjoying the benefits of living in the Colorado Springs real estate market.

Whether your Colorado Springs real estate website needs to target the military market, growing high tech sector or the commercial real estate area, IMC has the real estate template website or custom package to meet your online marketing investment needs.

Realtors just starting out with their personal real estate websites may be daunted by the task of gaining visibility in a mature online market. However, what agents have in their favor is the level of entropy in the online marketplace. IMCD Web Design (IMCD) has created Realtor websites that have achieved success in breaking into the search engine ranking by leveraging key elements in the web design. Why do these key techniques work time and again to drive successful real estate website launches?

The “if it is not broke, don’t fix it” psychology rules online website maintenance and upgrading thinking. Successful brokerage firms and agents put up websites and update listings, but they don’t usually have a pain point to update the website’s underlying technology until the traffic has already moved away.

IMCD constantly upgrades the unseen, “under the hood” web design architecture of our real estate websites to give our clients the much sought after “unfair business advantage”. In online marketing, advancing web design technology and adherence to ever evolving web standards always penalizes the static first-to-the-field websites. New real estate web designs, by their very nature, have an advantage in the this developing online market.

The best way to assess your real estate website, is to think in terms of “if I was to relaunch today, what would I do differently?” With this mindset, real estate agents can always entertain ideas that will improve their website, for example, adding more interactive Web 2.0 features like blogs or online surveys. The worst mindset to have about your website is to see it as a static marketing investment, like a billboard or bus stop bench. Static marketing in the online market is always left in the dust by actively updated websites.

After technology, comes the keywords targeted in the content. Newer keyword research detects the shifts in home buyers’ and home sellers’ search patterns allowing real estate agents to recast their marketing in the way searchers are looking. If certain keywords are dropping out of your tracking results of keywords used by web visitors to find you, it is an early warning that either the market has shifted or you need to fine tune your keyword placement.

If you are ready to launch your new real estate website or replace your old technology website, contact IMCD’s cutting edge web designers. We know what it takes to give you an unfair business advantage!

A real estate website that ranks high in the search engine results is imperative for an effective online website marketing campaign. First, in North America for most markets, most online searchers by far click on the first website listed in the search results. Far fewer click on the remaining offerings. In China, it is different in that searchers click seemingly randomly on any of the first page listings.

Next, real estate agents have found out according to the National Association of Realtors that home buyers that are not referrals tend to stick with the first real estate agent they contact. It may seem counter intuitive that, on what is generally a person’s biggest investment transaction in their life, buyers and sellers do little background research and tend to go with the first agent they find.

In researching various real estate markets across America, IMCD’s website marketing research has found that in suburban areas local real estate agents do not fare well getting their websites to the first page. The good news for IMC’s clients is these are markets that are more easily and effectively penetrated by a new agent real estate website since the failings in the other agents’ personal sites is due to fundamental flaws in their ability to use the most search engine-friendly architecture and top optimization of keywords in the content.

In working to situate your website high in the search engine ranking results to be first in attracting a home buyer’s attention, IMC has designed and constructed many sites for both large and small real estate markets that bring their owners profitable returns on their online investments. High search engine ranking translates into higher web traffic in your sales funnel. Sales lead generation is the best benchmark of the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.

IMC customizes our real estate web designs and search engine optimization to the critical areas of your specific market – be it residential, commercial, resort condominium or second home vacation spots. Each real estate market has its unique keywords and market sentiment to take advantage of to gain greater traffic and visibility.

Contact our online marketing specialist today to obtain your unique, customized real estate web design that best overcomes the barriers to entry to your competitive online real estate market. Our successful real estate web designs make it easy for your potential clients to find you.

Having a proven real estate web design is necessary for getting your foot in the door of online marketing. A successful Realtor website strategy is to use your competition’s strength to your real estate online marketing benefit.

Depending on your market, search engine experts estimate that external links to your website can effect anywhere from 20 to 80% of the factors used to index your site. When search engines index your real estate website, they are logging and categorizing your keywords and measuring your relevance to online searches against all your competition. External links to your website from heavily trafficked business and real estate web sites, be it a chamber of commerce site or one of the gorillas in the home for sale listing world, are of great benefit to your website’s ranking.

In applying Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” to online marketing, real estate agents can turn the gorillas’ strength in market visibility to their own advantage. By commenting, posting or advertising on a gorilla website and providing a link back to their own Realtor website, agents begin to take control of and build their external linking strategy.

IMCD creates real estate web designs that have a proven track record for capturing the attention of web visitors that arrive at your site from the array of feeder websites you generate. A web visitor that checks the content on 2 or more pages of your real estate website is far more likely to turn into a warm sales lead.

Online marketing strategies are always a two-pronged affair: first, of course, is getting web visitors to your website. The second is getting visitors to not only stay, but interact in some way, either by filling out your contact form of emailing or calling you regarding a property you are offering. IMC has crafted many custom websites and customized real estate web design templates that successfully implement the two pronged online marketing strategy.

Successful Realtor website owners treat their external links as an online home buyer referral system. Just as a referral from a respected member of a church or business community is invaluable for steering new contacts, the gorilla sites are the respected members of the online community that can be used to direct traffic to your site.

Contact IMC for that Realtor website that will capture the attention of your website visitors. Our professional real estate web designs can fulfill your online marketing needs by generating much appreciated warm sales leads.

When your real estate websites looks great, gets rave reviews from people you show it to, but your real estate web design does not bring in new home buyers and sellers as clients – it may be time to reassess your online marketing. Ranking high on a search engine’s keyword search results is the key to getting new business. What many Realtors do not realize is that websites can have the same look, but have vastly different ranking due to the way information is presented to the search engines. This is not necessarily the information your potential client sees.

IMCD’s website design and Internet marketing can offer Realtors several areas that contribute to burying your real estate website in the search results:

If your Realtor website is a Flash site: graphics, navigation and text are all in Flash. Flash imagery, like all graphics, cannot be deciphered by search engines. Flash graphics have to be used in balance so the written text can impress your visitors and be indexed and categorized by the search engines.

Your web design uses JavaScript navigation. JavaScript navigation may allow web designers eye catching methods for navigating your website, but it fails to take advantage of a the search engine optimizing capacity of navigation using Cascading Style Sheet technology. Navigation is a key area search engines use to determine what are your important pages and subject matter.

The real estate website uses a splash page as the entry point. IMC real estate web designs make maximum use of your homepage. Many beautiful Flash real estate web designs give up major search engine optimization points with splash pages for their home page.

Real estate sites whose graphics are hosted on another website. This is usually a drawback of using certain prepackaged templates. The web design companies place a link on your website where you see a graphic that actually downloads the graphic from their website. You are paying them to advertise their services to the search engines on your site! IMC includes all your real estate website images on your website’s domain and uses all the ethical search engine optimization techniques to boost your website’s ranking.

The web design is using the old frame website architecture. The utility of frames has long since been replaced with CSS template websites. Frames are not search engine friendly and hide most of your content and keywords. By replacing your frame website with a modern CSS website, you should start experiencing better search results within months, especially if you have owned your domain name for several years.

The site takes a long time to load, but the graphics look crisp and clear if you wait long enough. This is usually a problem on older websites or real estate websites created by an amateur. With file compression techniques available today, real estate websites, even with their multitude of house images, should load quickly and retain the crisp resolution of the images.

Website lacks credibility. Credibility is established quickly by letting websites visitors easily find out how to contact you. IMCD’s real estate web designs incorporate proven credibility-building techniques in every real estate web design.

Contact us if you are ready for better sales lead generation from your Internet marketing investment!

Real estate web design templates are a real temptation for real estate agents and brokers seeking greater online marketing visibility. For the best return on your online marketing investment, make sure the right template web design tempts you. IMCD Website Design, with a track record of helping agents and brokers successfully launch their template real estate websites, offers the following insights for your selection process.

First, remember search engines are color blind and visually impaired – Google cannot discern what an image is about. The key to effective graphics is their use combined with Cascading Style Sheets and hidden text. IMC optimizes the graphics on every page so the search engines know what markets your real estate website serves.

Second, make sure that your website is “loyal” to you. Many template websites utilize hidden links that point to their websites, such as hosting the graphic images on their real estate web design site. Unknown to the website owner, Google counts every hidden link as a vote for the web design company’s site. IMC provides templates that are structured to give maximum search engine optimization for the real estate agent’s website.

Third, check the template company’s real estate websites portfolio in depth. In our review of real estate website template portfolios, we found many sites that went live with important pages, such as the “About Us” page blank. Often in the do-it-yourself scenario, agents think they will get back to filling in the spaces, but history shows that some of these sites have gone four years without any maintenance – busy agents are talking to people, not editing their websites.

Real estate agents that work with IMC always see a professional real estate website appear on launch day. IMC provides agents and brokers a checklist of text and images needed for web site completion. When the site appears, all pages are “ready for prime time” and optimized for the particular real estate market.

Finally, check the search engine results for their market. IMC has clients whose websites rank in the first position or on the first page of search engine results for many markets. Even though Google changes it search algorithms from time to time, our constant SEO research keeps our templates for real estate websites fine-tuned to take advantage of the new changes.

To improve your return on investment and your real estate online marketing presence, contact the real estate web design experts at IMC. Our real estate website templates provide you with a valuable asset that profitably promotes your real estate business.