Understanding your real estate website’s traffic statistics helps you refine your online marketing approach and improve you Internet presence.

RE/MAX used Google’s analytics to rethink their real estate website. After incorporating changes spurred by website traffic analysis feedback, RE/MAX improved their return on investment by driving leads to their real estate agents for less money.

However, in order to use the statistics, you need to understand what the statistics are reporting.

Website traffic analysis software, such as Urchin and Google’s Analytics, allows you to review:

• which search engines or websites are directing traffic to your site,
• which pages receive the most traffic,
• which pages are the highest entry and exit points, and
• average time visitors remain on your website.

Three main areas to look at are “hits per day” which includes search engine spiders checking the site; “sessions per day”; and “pageviews per day”. To measure how captivating your site is, simply compare the number of sessions to the number of pageviews. Google Analytics reports give this figure as “Average pageviews per session”. The higher the number the better since it indicates that your website viewers are checking more than one page per visit. Sessions that only have one pageview usually indicate that your visitor came and went without finding value in your site. Google also gives you feedback on the average amount of time website visitors stayed on your site.

The other area you should check is the “unique visitors”. This indicates visitors browsing your site from different IP addresses. This helps you figure whether you have repeat visitors from one area, such as a search engine’s spiders, or visitors from several sites. One item to also take into consideration is you may have several hits from services like Comcast or Qwest that actually are unique visitors that are using the same Internet portal.

One caveat is to beware of certain free analytic software since the price of the free software is to allow advertising on your site. IMCD Web Design uses traffic tracking software that accurately follows user browsing patterns without turning your website into someone else’s revenue generator.

IMC uses software that tracks search engine ranking as well as Google Analytics and Urchin’s traffic analysis software to fine-tune real estate agents’ websites to position themselves to capture their target market. Contact us today if you need a website that brings you a return on your Internet marketing dollars or if you are adding to your marketing muscle with a new site.

The constancy of a real estate website keeps your marketing presence strong through the unpredictable nature of the market. The April 2008 homes sales figures show an increase in residential sales that surprised market forecasters who figured for a Fall 2008 turn around in the real estate market. Then comes June’s figures that surprise everyone with the steepness of housing drop. The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors pointed out that April’s imminent sales contracts picked up, notably in regions that suffered significant price drops, “Bargain hunters have entered the market en masse, especially in areas that have experienced double-digit price declines.” The sales figures did not note whether the buying market was driven by home buyers or investors capitalizing on the home prices.

The April sales contracts turn-around was most marked in the Midwest and West real estate markets, possibly indicating that these markets have homes priced to meet both a buyer’s interest and borrowing capacity. Even with the bad news of the economy reacting to both home sales figures, continuing subprime credit ripples, and the federal bail out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the good news is real estate is a hot topic, keeping it in the consumers mind.

Besides the multi-billion dollar bailout, Congress is currently considering giving another tax break to home buyers. If the bill passes, it may help reinforce the improvements in residential real estate sales. Another real estate tax break may give impetus to releasing the pent-up demand built up by a population increase that has not seen a corresponding increase in home sales. The United States continues to have home sales levels taht are more typical of the market 10 years ago. In the last 10 years, the population has increased by 25 million people. The 2009 resale housing market will be affected by another long term economic situation: the increasing cost of building new new homes. With China’s economy hungry for steel, copper and oil, the cost of materials and transportation is increasing, which has a direct affect on the entry level pricing for new home construction.

With the attention to real estate in the news, a real estate agent website ranking high on the Google and Yahoo searches stands to harvest leads from the market-tracking home buyers. These buyers are finding current mortgage rates and the low real estate prices matching their personal loan prequalifcation levels. Although April’s mix of sales did contain a high number of foreclosure and bank sales, it was not the majority. A real estate agent from the Gulf Coast of Florida remarked about the banks’ pricing of foreclosed homes, “The ‘real’ is back in real estate and homes are now affordable.” With June’s figures and lower home prices, investors are finding certain real estate markets where the rental income exceeds the mortgage payments and thus a good time to invest.

If improving your real estate website with a blog or simply getting your own real estate agent website has been on your back-burner due to the market slowdown, now is a good time to seriously put it on your Action List. With the threat of inflation in the news, buyers are looking to protect their wealth by investing in good deals on vacation condos, second homes and retirement properties. These investors are most likely to make their moves in the near future, as interest rates start moving up. IMCD Web Design’ real estate websites have helped many real estate agents increase their warm leads and home sales. Is it time to see if IMC can help you increase your warm sales leads and home sale closings?

In a competitive real estate market, control of your Internet marketing means directing how you appear to 90% of the potential home buyers searching your market. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported earlier in 2008 that the number of home buyers using an Internet search to check the latest listings of homes for sale increased almost 10% from 2007 to 90%. Yet, according to a report released May 14th, only 60% of real estate agents have a personal real estate website. The remaining 40% depend on their real estate firm’s website for Internet visibility or work for a real estate company that has no Internet marketing.

This is a boon for real estate agents who have secured their domain names and personal agent websites, and even more so for agents who invested in a professional real estate website design that has brought them attention, traffic and leads.

The benefit of having your own real estate website is that it builds credibility to you as a professional Realtor and drives leads to your phone or email inbox. From IMCD Web Design’ research, one of the greatest points of leverage for an agent’s personal website is adding a real estate blog. You can research blog effectiveness for your real estate market – simply type in your market’s keywords and check the personal agent or local Realtor websites that rank and keep tabs on which ones consistently rank high. Of those ranking high, you can do some secondary research and see how many times a week or month posts are made to the blog.

Just in a quick search on May 15th, the number one real estate website for “Dallas real estate” has a blog with at least one entry a week. The number two position for “Cleveland real estate” also has a very active blog. In the very competitive market of Chicago, the first local real estate website ranking on the first page has a very active blog.

IMC has found blogs to help its clients Internet presence in several ways:

• the blog adds keyword-rich content to the site,
• it is the easiest way to add content and address real estate issues in your area, and
• the blog software “pings” the major search engines, telling them a post has just been made.

Search engines usually browse inactive websites every three weeks. Real estate websites that add material on a regular basis get be checked every week. With a blog entry, the website is checked every time the search engine receives a ping.

In a time when the majority of property searches occurs on the Internet, your professionally designed IMC real estate website is a key marketing asset where you can control the content and are in the driver’s seat to increase your visibility.

1. How does real estate website optimization deal with niche real estate markets?

Discovering real estate niche markets is a two pronged discovery: the real estate agent’s market experience and a search of keyword usage databases. The reason for directing several web pages’ content to a niche market is to harvest the small quantity, but high quality leads. The use of the niche keywords provides the screening process that tells your website visitor exactly the market you can help them with and tells you exactly what kind of property your visitor is searching for.

2. As an agent, I don’t have direct control over my website’s meta tags – what can I do to boost my website’s rankings?

Due to years of “keyword stuffing” of meta tags – the practice of putting any subject related keyword in the meta tags regardless of the web page’s actual content – search engines assign a low priority to meta tags. The highest priorities go to a web page’s content, the quality (more than quantity) of incoming links and the amount of web traffic your website attracts – all areas a real estate agent can control on their website.

Real estate agents are actually in the driver’s seat for helping their website’s visibility. Investing in adding a blog and neighborhood news tool and taking some time every week to add content on your real estate market is the best thing you can do for your real estate website. Next, follow some of our earlier tips to make sure you have taken advantage of all the qualified (i.e. have to do with real estate in some way) areas you can to place incoming links to your website. Third, make sure you have your website address on your business card and direct your clients to visit your website (and give you feedback).

3. I hear that Flash is bad for websites and yet some of the highest ranking real estate websites are using it, what gives?

The reason some designers caution against the use of Flash is that it does take up valuable real estate on the web page and does not provide content that the search engines can read, especially any words that are graphics and not text. Some Flash home pages also are so graphic intensive they take a long time to load, causing a certain percentage of website visitors to quickly leave. But this well-intended advice must be balanced with the idea that appealing to the search engine is not the main purpose for your real estate website.

Flash is a very effective marketing tool to present a captivating real estate slide show. Catching the attention of your website visitors is the doorway to capturing leads. On the technical side, there are ways to limit Flash’s loading time. True, the search engines can’t read the graphics, but if the real estate website is designed correctly, there is enough content on the page for the search engines to index the page. Bottom line: your real estate website is a marketing portal whose target is the website visitor. Create the site that has an attractive design and the best content and the search engines will follow.

IMCD Web Design takes a systems approach to creating a seamless real estate Internet marketing strategy and website design. With the continued migration of real estate clients migrating to the Internet to do their real estate searches, effectiveness of a real estate website in attracting and landing leads is ever more important.

IMC integrates the eye-catching design and content as well as a website platform that allows real estate agents to react swiftly to changes in the markets tastes and direction.

In the ever-evolving world of the Internet, IMC’s marketers, writers and designers are always studying and implementing the latest website standards, content presentation and search engine optimization techniques. Yesterday’s successfully launched real estate website always improves the one to be created tomorrow.

In helping our clients establish a high return on investment Internet presence, part of IMC’s Internet marketing system includes:

1. Keyword research with agents to hone down market areas and discover under-served area niche markets;
2. Creation of fast loading, attention-grabbing Flash slide shows;
3. Setting up a website framework that allows agents to add content to the site easily and in a search engine friendly manner through feature listings, blogs and neighborhood news tools; and
4. Linking busy real estate agents with professional writers to provide excellent real estate market material for the website.

If your real estate website investment has not brought you the warm leads that other successful agents are enjoying, then it may be time to boost your image and Internet presence by contacting IMCD Web Design at (303) 688-1331 and we can go over the first step in improving your financial picture.

It is our mission to help our clients Win on the Web!

We take a holistic, synergistic approach to internet marketing. We realize that the sum of a truly effective web presence is greater than the sum of its parts. Let us help you take your internet marketing to the next level.

In the evolving world of real estate Internet marketing, a new and successful real estate website strategy has evolved called “hyper local” marketing. This strategy has been driven by three elements: Google (the usual given), home buyers search techniques and real estate agents’ ability to build great website content base with neighborhood news tools and blogs.

Google decided to steer search terms “yourcity real estate” to larger real estate firms and directory style websites. Theoretically these websites are authoritative lists that give home buyers and sellers more options from which to choose. The algorithm will most likely get tweaked some more as time goes on. When Weather Underground shows up on the first page for real estate keywords, one has to wonder… What this means is that the Google front page competition shifts to the neighborhood, suburb and smaller real estate market areas’ keywords.

Home buyers’ search techniques are migrating to niche markets since A) the Internet can zoom in to any level of search granularity and B) using the broad search term “yourcity real estate” tends to turn up out of state, national websites. To find local Realtors and Realtors with specific areas of expertise, real estate searchers are using keywords that are becoming more market specific, such as “residential single family detached yoursuburb”.

With real estate agents able to research and add niche market specific blog entries to their websites, website visitors are able to find agents by their niche markets. Neighborhood news tools allow agents to post large articles that can encompass an areas history, scenic and cultural attractions, school data and general neighborhood descriptions.

The traffic that hyper marketing attracts is smaller in volume, but higher in quality. The real estate Internet marketplace is ripe for real estate agents to add their neighborhood or niche market content to their websites.