Sunday, November 19, 2006

Real Estate Bloggers Have a Substantial Advantage Over Their Competition

In my area of Orange County, Debbie Ferrari is sort of an online real estate celebrity. Why, simply because she embraced online real estate much sooner than the rest of the industry. As a result, she claims that the bulk of her business comes from leads generated online, and in looking at the volume of links to her on Google, I am inclined to agree with her statement.

In stark contrast, we look at new agents that have recently received their real estate license from the State of California. Many of them have some understanding of e-mail, possibly a single website that they purchased from Advanced Access or Point2Agent, and very little else in the way of online exposure. Unfortunately for many of these new agents, many of their prospective clients are searching online as their primary method of finding a REALTOR.

Unfortunately, we can no longer enjoy the first mover advantage that Debbie Ferrari had when she purchased multiple URL’s just after the dot com boom. However, we can take advantage of how prospective clients are searching for real estate services online by making an online presence known.

With that in mind, Blog Blog Blog!!!! If you are not are not already posting a blog and podcast on the web, you are missing the opportunity to drive a substantial number of clients to your website. Your blog serves a number of functions, not the least of which is increasing your reach by broadcasting your message across the net. There are so many websites now that 99% get buried in the search. However, those with an active blog on topics that pertain to local markets generally generate a much greater presence online and garner much more traffic.

Where your website generally serves as an online billboard that is quickly forgotten after a visitor leaves, your blog is a continual journal of interest that if written well can keep visitors coming back again and again. In addition, if the topics of your blog pertain to your local community, chances are many of your readers will be your prospective clients.

Now the title of this essay is that real estate agents with blogs have a much greater advantage over those that do not. I would like to clarify that statement by explaining that real estate agents that blog and have an active online presence in their community are much more likely to connect with prospective clients that search for real estate services online.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What you say is very true, and I should know because I am Bill Koelzer ( www.Koelzer.com ) the webmaster for www.DebbieFerrari.com and husband of Debbie. It has taken us about 10 years to get her site to where it is today, but even now, we still spend 2-3 hours a day on tweaking it. Why? Because someone is always gaining on ya, right?

We REALLY need to get started blogging to keep Debbie's site #1 among Realtors in Orange County on Google organic search, and we need to be publishing more articles.

My dozens of articles published-----http://realtytimes.com/rtapages/billkoelzer.htm ---- in agentnews.com give her site a good boost, but as the original post says, ya gotta be blogging, blogging, blogging and publishing news articles all over the web in relevant locations in order to keep Google happy.

VERY happy is preferable to just ... happy.

Anyway, loved the post and keep up the great work here. Bill Koelzer

--------------------
Bill Koelzer, CBC, APR
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