Yesterday I talked about using only one website for your real estate business and today I will discuss the benefits of using multiple websites to increase your lead generation. In theory it is a numbers game, the more sites you have out there, the better chances you have of generating more leads. These websites can be full listing websites, informational based sites or a simple landing pages (lead capture pages). The type of site you use is up to you, factors to consider is the cost to create and develop a specific site along with the cost to market them. If you are able to do most of the work yourself, then you have an advantage over most real estate professionals and only your time is needed. However, most real estate professionals are not web developers and this post is mainly for them.
When incorporating more websites into your real estate business, your overhead will go up. With that cost will be risk, so you have to weigh the risk vs. the reward. Before having a website developed, someone should be doing their research and home work first. You do not want to spend money to have a site developed without knowing the keyword phrases you want to target and is their even a demand for them in your targeted area.
Hosting
The cost for hosting is very cheap, you can go with a company like HostGator and get their business hosting plan for $12.95/month to host as many domain names as you need. You can take that a step further and get their Reseller base plan for $24.95/month, hosting as many domains as you like and even have custom name servers. I will explain name servers, cross site linking, etc. in a future post. If you are looking to run several different listing websites with a third party company like Point2 Agent, then your cost will go up a lot more. That choice is up to you and their are other alternatives.
Development
This will be the most money you spend up front, you do not want to just pick anyone to develop your websites. Their is a big difference between a web designer and a web developer with marketing knowledge and experience. I have seen many times where someone has a great looking website, but the coding was a mess and was no where near being search engine friendly. To maximize your marketing efforts in the future, you want a clean design for both the viewer and the search engines. I will do a future post on what to look for when hiring a web developer and not just a web designer.
Marketing and Testing
This is an easy one as well, more sites to market will mean more out of pocket money to get them generating leads for you. Not a problem though, if someone did their research properly for your keywords and targeted area then you should be able have the sites pull in leads. If you plan on using a PPC campaign, then be prepared for split testing different landing pages and ad campaigns to help gain the maximum bang for your buck. If you ask your web person or marketer about split testing and they ask you “what?” then it is time to look elsewhere for those services. You should never drop a website when a marketing campaign is not going the way you would like it to. You already spent the money to have it developed and now marketed. You need to analyze your traffic stats and make changes to the site or ad campaigns (if you are running a PPC) and make changes to increase your conversion rate. A few simple changes like font style, font size, headings or even the color of your form or call to action button will help increase the sites conversion.
The Rewards For Your Efforts
So you have put the time and money into your new websites to try and blanket your target market in your area, you now have the ability to gain the advantage over other real estate agents in your area. They have one site or many a few sites but those sites are not seen and yours are, that is the key to having multiple real estate websites! You are giving your real estate business the chance to generate leads from several different sources all of which you own and control. I am sure you have heard the phrase “do not put all of your eggs in one basket”. That phrase applies to your website and traffic source as well.
You Do Not Like To Put All Of Your Eggs In One Basket
If you can afford to create and own several real estate websites, you will have your eggs spread out in several different baskets. This way if one of your sites traffic slows down or the search engines changed something and you fell from the front page, you wont worry as much due to the fact you have other sites generating leads. You can have sites strictly for Google/Bing/Yahoo (PPC), Facebook Ads, email campaigns, or even listing sites for different cities.
Still Brand Your Name
I would be putting your name and contact information on all of your websites, you want to drive the point home that you are a big time player and are marketing your services everywhere for your clients. What is your response when you see John Doe ranking high for one keyword, then you go to your Facebook and see another website that has his name all over it, then you see he is paying for a Google PPC campaign with a third site for short sale information in your area? Some people take this route and it is not the wrong way to go down the road, they just chose to take the multi site road instead of the single site road.
Types Of Real Estate Websites You Can Use
Listing Website – Show your current listings or offer a full MLS search for specific cities. If the market is big enough, you could create sites for strictly foreclosures or short sale homes only.
Informational Site – These sites will not show any listings on the domain name, however you could have a listings button that when clicked will take the viewer to your listing website to search for homes. The intention of these types of sites is to offer information to the reader regarding what they had searched for and are great for certain PPC campaigns. Site size can range between 5-20 pages depending on the content you would like to cover. Every page would have an easy to find short contact form for the viewer to fill out for more information.
Landing Page – Also referred to as a lead capture page is great for email campaigns or even Facebook ads targeting short sale or foreclosure help. It is a well laid out page that contains just enough information on it for the reader to skim through and easily fill out a form or pick up the phone and call you direct. The single style landing page is no longer recommended to use with Google PPC campaigns as the quality score will not be very high. I will go into landing page quality scores in another post for you.
Blogs – Blogs are like an online journal (this site is a real estate internet marketing blog) where you can login and post any type of information you like to your readers. The information from you would be more geared toward the city you sell real estate in and information to help home buyers and sellers feel more comfortable with the entire process. You can read my post regarding real estate blogs and how it can be a good selling tool for your business.
Conclusion
Like I said yesterday, you do not need to have multiple real estate websites unless you feel the need to or have the budget to spend on developing and marketing them. A small agent can start with a single site and build up from their as with well established real estate agents and brokers you have the capital to engage in marketing multiple sites. Yet to come will be information pertaining to integrating a landing page into your current website along with Google quality scores, what to watch for when cross linking with your other sites and how colors can change the outcome of your lead generation pages.
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Real Estate website are always helpful, we get different choice and best services out of it and becomes helpful to every individual to take right quality of step.
Thank you for such great information.