6 Ways to Maximize Your Real Estate Website for 2016

By Tyler Zey

The New Year is an excellent time to reflect on what lead generation efforts did and didn’t work on your real estate website during the previous months. Getting leads from your website is simple. However, simple does not mean it’s easy. To help you get started, here are 6 ways to maximize your REALTOR® website in 2016:

Website Content

You’ve heard me say it before...Content is King and more content = more leads. Creating content on your website (or having a website that creates content for you) can only help your business become more discoverable and thus, produce more leads. Whether you’re generating content through blogs or videos, you’ll be building trust, which is invaluable for you and your future success in real estate.

Earlier this year, I came up with 3 Formulas To Turbo Charge Your Real Estate Content Marketing and Dominate Your Market. You’re more than welcome to use one of these plans to kick-start your 2016 content marketing. And while you’re on your way to becoming a king of real estate web content, make sure to stop along the way and take a look at how you’re utilizing (or not) on-site SEO. Your on-page SEO optimization is the very thing that will determine whether or not you show up in search results. So, where should you put these keywords? Start by creating a list of keywords you want to rank for and then make sure you have web pages to support all of them. Remember to place the keywords in these five areas:

-URL
-Page Title
-On The Page (several times)
-Title of Images
-Image Alt Tag

You can read more about real estate SEO here.

Add These Landing Pages

Landing pages are simple pages that give your visitors more information while capturing leads for you. Use side-bar calls to action (we’ll break this down in the next step) and strategically placed links on your site to direct traffic to your landing pages. Also, be sure to optimize the pages so they convert well for mobile viewing and browsing.

For example-- Real estate lead generation has three main landing pages that work:

1) The Seller Home Valuation
2) The Free Buyer’s Guide
3)  The Free Seller’s Guide

Make it easy to access these three pages in your website design:

To maximize your website, I also suggest getting set up with Lead Lock. Lead Lock lets you instantly turn any page into a landing page. This will allow you to use the content you already have to collect leads and the setup only takes seconds! All you have to do is add #LOCK behind any of your blog post URLs, and you’ll then have a landing page that looks like this:

Calls To Action

Capture the attention of your web traffic and convert them to leads by offering something of value. A simple tool like SumoMe will help you add active lead capture elements like Popups and SlideIns. These tools, when setup correctly, can really help you dominate real estate lead generation. If you’re not totally sold on the idea of Popups, consider using a Popup Chat so your visitors know you’re there for them and ready to help.

Sync Up with your CRM

You need to maintain the same level of follow-up with all of your leads and, let’s face it, managing any number of leads is completely unrealistic without a CRM.

If you don’t have a system in place to be able to automatically follow-up with leads, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose them. So, make sure your website hooks up to your CRM so when a lead captures, they will directly deposit into your CRM. When you’re choosing a CRM just keep in mind the primary function: to convert more leads and systematically stay in touch with all your contacts.

Start Blogging to Get Traffic

Seriously, it’s (almost) 2016. Your website needs a blog. Ninety percent of all homebuyers start their search online and pretty much 100 percent of them use online research methods throughout the process. And did you know that websites without a blog get 4-6 times less Google search engine traffic? Just look at how much Zillow or Trulia invest in online content. They do it because it yields major results. At this point, having a blog isn’t an option, it’s a requirement, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have options for how you create this content.

Try these tips if you don’t like writing:

1) Record video answers to common real estate questions and pay someone on Fiverr to transcribe them for you. This will give you high-quality video and blog content in minutes!

2) Outsource the writing of blog content. While this isn’t my favorite, you can easily have someone create blog content for your business.

3) Leverage the power of others. Do you partner with lenders or companies? Ask them to contribute written blog content on a regular basis.

Facebook Retargeting

Did you know you can upload your lead list to Facebook Ads? Go to your real estate CRM and export all the email addresses of your leads into a CSV file. Then, upload that CSV to Facebook Ads here:

A special group of people has now been created who you can now show your special ads to. Your lead conversion can seriously double. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

Of course, it will vary by market, but you’ll want to write down the top three objections you’re given by all leads. After that, make a video talking about that objection and then create a Facebook video ad campaign that only shows your video to that special list of people. Essentially, you’ll be “pre-selling” your leads on the idea of using you before you even call them.

Ultimately, my advice to you is to come up with a goal for your 2016 website and stick to it. Perhaps it’s to help buyers find their homes, or help sellers feel confident to list with you. All real estate sites have to grow your business, that’s just the bottom line. But in my experience, it’s difficult for a website to do two things at once.

Moving forward with one particular goal in mind will help you identify when your REALTOR® website is successfully helping people and helping your business grow.

Tyler Zey writes real estate marketing tips for Easy Agent Pro.