Every real estate web design finds two givens in any Internet marketing campaign. The first is that online marketing competition for any particular real estate market is commensurate with the profit derived from ranking high in the search engine results for that market. The second is without the proven techniques of Internet marketing used in professional real estate web design, a website will not be able to enter the online competition.

What is at stake? With the growing trend of home buyers turning to the Internet first to search for available property and home sellers researching real estate agents and brokerage firms online, the future market leaders will all have dominant visibility on the search engines. The Internet has proven a boon to start-up companies for its blindness to the size of companies and its tendency to level the playing field, where traditional areas of market might are insignificant and online market might counts for everything.

Follow the cause – effect sequence, 80% of potential clients are searching for real estate services online and will work with real estate agents they find online. Real estate agent websites that are buried deep in the search engine results will be relying on word of mouth and traditional print advertising. Traditional print advertising only accounts for 15% of your potential market’s search habits.

IMCD has built a successful real estate web design business creating effective websites for real estate agents and brokers. Their real estate websites have achieved high search engine visibility and the resultant competitive edge – capturing the attention the 80% slice of the real estate market pie.

Increase the return on investment of your Internet marketing efforts. Contact IMCD’s sales team about a real estate web design that will keep your real estate company competitive in the ever increasing online real estate market. IMCD has a wide spectrum of web designs from custom real estate websites to template-based semi-custom real estate web designs to meet your Internet marketing investment needs and improve your online presence. Position your company today for the real estate deals of tomorrow!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral part of effective real estate web design. Search engine optimization is not solely a science of getting your real estate website to the top of the search engine results, it is also an advanced Internet marketing tool for increasing web visitors who are looking for your information, homes for sale listings or home selling services – it serves as a pre-qualification step for your sales leads.

A sign of ineffective SEO in real estate web design is situations where the web development team does cursory keyword investigation and does not create a keyword sales funnel that targets particular web browsing shoppers. The shotgun approach to gathering sales leads often backfires due to its lack of focus. It has the same effect of asking a busload of people “will anyone will lend me $5?” No one responds…or they respond in ways your call to action did not intend.

IMC does our SEO homework of researching our real estate web design clients’ market along with the strengths and benefits of their real estate service. After the market research, an Internet marketing strategy is put together that includes choice of target keywords. However, beyond keywords, IMC web designers have analyzed over a dozen different areas of our real estate web designs that incorporate search engine optimization features. Each of these areas integrates seamlessly to provide your real estate company with and Internet marketing presence that targets you niche markets and target your potential clients.

If your online marketing efforts have not increased you search engine visibility or bringing you consistent sales leads to your website, contact our real estate web design sales team. Besides our real estate web design hat, we are also an SEO company that knows how to plan and execute a formidable Internet marketing strategy. Our web design goals are to make your real estate website bring you the best sale lead generation possible. When going through the online marketing minefield, it pays to follow a market leader who knows where the hidden mines are that can impair your Internet marketing program.

Is your real estate website positioned for reaching the active home buying and investor market? IMCD  has found that even in this real estate economic downturn, real estate agents who have positioned their Internet marketing message to reach the foreclosure and distress sales market are staying active. What can you do to position your real estate website to capture foreclosure sales leads?

The first step that IMCD recommends for our real estate web design clients is to make use of our extended real estate agent Internet marketing package which includes a guest book – contact page. This content and marketing specific web page addresses the needs of home buyers and investors who are looking to benefit from the buying deals available. The contact form gives the real estate agent detailed information on the type of property the buyer is interested in purchasing.

The second step is to make sure your real estate website has a content management system, such as a real estate blog or article manager, that allows you or your agents to quickly and easily add informative content, news, and pictures. IMCD offers several content management systems that our real estate agent and broker clients have found fit their need to be able to easily add content to their websites. Several of our real estate website clients have seen that by adding a content management system that they use at least weekly, they have had great success appearing high in the search engine rankings.

Part of the overall Internet marketing plan to the active foreclosure market is to always position your real estate services from the position of the benefit clients receive. The feature of fast notification of new foreclosure listings benefits to your clients since they can get an early offer in on the property. People inherently like to hear about business offers from the point of view of how it benefits them.

Underlying all the market specific content is making sure you have a real estate web design from a web developer like IMC that has a track record of effective search engine optimization (SEO). Without effective SEO, your website does not have the competitive edge necessary to reach your online market.

Contact IMCD’s real estate web design sales team to see get your Internet marketing strategy fulfilled by one of the top web designers for the real estate market. Attract attention, capture leads and build your real estate business with IMCD.

Real estate marketing is largely a self-promotion industry. Are you the quotable real estate expert in your town? With several steps, you can both increase your visibility and the visibility of your real estate website. Any real estate news is good news if you are an area real estate expert getting quoted in the papers on the TV or radio. Plan to be the expert by laying the foundation in your real estate website.

IMCD helps real estate agents implement an entire Internet marketing strategy of which the real estate website is the centerpiece. By adding a content management system such as a real estate blog and/or article manager to a real estate website, real estate agents have a ready platform to comment on area real estate news or give consumer education. The content management system sets up the foundation of an agent’s or broker’s expert insights.

As you create blog entries with plans to create press releases, you can quote yourself in your entries. Make sure your quotes can be lifted out as “sound bites” and stand on their own if used by news reporters using your blog as background information.

The second step, after creating a track record of several months of entries, is to create press releases. With the turbulence in the real estate and economic arenas, finding items to create news releases is at an all time high

The format for a press release is similar to creating a blog entry with two critical differences. The first area is at the top or the press release, add the release date and your contact information identifying yourself and your company and then list several contact points such as cell phone, email and your real estate website. Following the important lead-in information start with your riveting headline and entry. The first sentence of the press release should cut straight to the action so the reader knows why this release is newsworthy.

The second area is the last paragraph. This serves the same purpose (in an abridged format) as your About Us page. Include a short company or personal description highlighting your professional credits and years in the business as well as a link to your real estate website.

Finally end your release with three hash marks or number signs (###) centered on the page.

An additional step selling your services, just as in selling real estate, is to develop a relationship with the reporters at the newspapers and media outlets who cover the economy and real estate. Remember, Donald Trump didn’t garner his early press coverage by waiting for the newspapers to discover him.

Your real estate website can serve as your foundation to your proactive media campaign. Turn any national or regional news to your visibility advantage. Contact IMCD today to position your real estate website for maximum usage as your personal professional branding and media outlet.

Landing pages allow real estate agents to send a solid message to target markets, improving the efficacy of their real estate website‘s online marketing strategies. Landing pages are web pages created specifically for a targeted ad campaign or addressing the needs of a particular market. Other online marketing tools such as banner ads or rich-media advertising links to the landing pages.

By linking web traffic from your banner ad to a landing page instead of the home page, real estate agents save their visitors from needing to click over to the main message. The landing page is the natural extension of the marketing message begun in the banner ad. Banner ads, by the nature of their limited size, tend to market in “sound bite” size messages. Their purpose is to excite enough interest that the visitor clicks to go to your website.

IMCD integrates the need for landing pages into its real estate website design. IMCD’s extended Real Estate Marketing package includes landing pages for the home buyer, home seller, investor, new home buyer, mortgage pre-approval and foreclosure property markets. Each page has information specific to your real estate company and that part of the real estate market.

Landing pages serve a further purpose in providing keyword-rich content tightly focused on particular markets giving your website greater keyword targeting exposure in the search engine results. They can also be “buzzword-rich” for the particular market you are addressing.

As with all your marketing web pages, make sure your landing page has attention-grabbing headlines, easy to read paragraphs and a call to action. The tried and true marketing message “Why buy, why buy from me, and why buy now” should be clearly delineated. The idea that you personally solve the web visitor’s problem with some sense of urgency is a message that historically draws the best response.

With external links from your banner ads directed to your landing pages, you build keyword specific marketing avenues fulfilling your overall Internet marketing strategy. With multiple targeted messages online, your website is always positioned to address the popular keywords of the period. With the shake-out in the real estate industry, the foreclosure and distress property sale landing page has become a top draw with home buyers and investors seeking to take advantage of the current inversion of price to value and the questionable future of the dollar’s value.

One way to think of landing pages is going trick or treating with three bags or leaving Santa five stockings with different names at the chimney. Only with no threat of penalties for double dipping! If you are ready to dramatically increase your Internet marketing exposure online, contact IMCD’s sales team today. Our graphic design team’s banner ads coupled with your additional landing pages significantly boost the effectiveness of your online marketing strategy.

IMCD Web Design assists experienced real estate investment brokers with a real estate web design that can be targeted to property investors. Investors often meet with an information “underload” using the Internet to review properties since most real estate web designs are targeted to the residential home buyer and seller markets. IMC real estate websites have several investor-friendly real estate marketing tools to generate contacts in the active investing field.

Investors differ from residential home buyers first and foremost in that they are usually not looking to become an owner-occupant of the property. Most investors are looking for replacement properties for a 1031 exchange, add property investments to their self-directed IRA fund, or simply keeping an eye out for a good income producing property. Another investor niche market is the real estate investment clubs that find property investment an alternative to the vicissitudes of stock market investing.

IMC Realtor websites are used by real estate agents to target investors looking for discounted properties with a Foreclosure and Distressed Sales web page and new property notification system. IMC’s Featured Listing real estate marketing tool can also be adapted to investor needs by adding fields, such as whether properties have tenants, positive cash flow or in areas with appreciating property values.

On the other end of the investment property spectrum, the luxury home and popular vacation and resort properties, with their track record of price stability even during an overall housing slump, appeal to high-end property investors. By tracking the high-end market in a real estate blog, real estate brokers can draw investor traffic to their website as well as send notices the search engines that new material tagged for the luxury home market has been added to the website.

Real estate broker websites by IMCD Web Design targeting luxury home buyers and property investors has kept many brokers busy in the current market. Sales leads generated from valuable visibility and high positioning in the search engine rankings are one of IMC’s clients’ key tools to thriving amidst the market turmoil. IMC’s real estate web design sales team can help your real estate company improve your Internet marketing campaign with both search engine optimized websites and search engine marketing strategies.

Podcasting technology for real estate websites, and Realtors novice to the experience, is rather simple for beginning the process. Once you have your feet wet creating your podcasts on real estate news, great new listings or insights on the housing markets financial picture, you will appreciate what you might like in the way of technological upgrades. The best part is that podcasting technology works equally well on PCs or Macs – no new computer needed (unless this is the excuse you were looking for to upgrade to bigger and faster).

In a nutshell, the podcast simplest hardware set-up is use an external microphone plugged into your computer. With the use of software, you record you podcast and store the file on your computer’s hard drive. After recording, make any edits (to cut out a cough or statement you wish you hadn’t said) and save the audio file in the MP3 file format. Then using another software, possibly one on your computer or stored on your website server, upload the MP3 file to your website and create any links on your web page or blog entry to link to the MP3 file.

Breaking it down, first is the microphone. By all testing, an external mic captures the sound of your voice better than the ones provided with the computer. For software, keep it simple and download the free Audacity sound recording and editing software that works on Macs and PCs. As a Mac owner you may already own Garage Band, which does the job admirably well also.

Once you understand the basics and you cotton to the idea of using podcasts as a part of your real estate Internet marketing strategy, you can move into more professional recording devices. For under $250 you can get a professional low impedance microphone, small 4 input mixer board and headphones. Sennheiser E835, Shure SM 57 or 58, and Audix OM-2 all have good mics for around $100 – $150 (check Ebay!). A favorite mixer is either the Mackie or a Behringer – they both have excellent small mixers for great prices. The benefit of using a mixer is you can easily mix two mics and record interviews with other brokers, Realtors players in the local real estate market. Mixers also give your the capability of mixing in music at your intro and exit to add spice to your podcast. Then add a decent pair of headphones – unless you have them already for your stereo system.

Work with your real estate web designer or webmaster to make sure your blog is set up with the necessary plug-ins for podcasts. IMCD Web Design uses a popular blog platform that easily works with podcasts, so if you are already working with one of the industry greats, your segue from blogging to podcasting should be a seamless evolution.

When judging the need to podcast and learn something new, remember that pollsters were surprised to find the many baby boomers are listening to podcasts – they are not reserved for the teenage non-real estate buying markets! Contact IMC’s Realtor website sales team to see how quickly you can boost your sales leads with a real estate web design that incorporates both a real estate blog and podcasting capabilities.

Part 3 of 3