Ever wondered which keywords you should be targeting with your website content? Here’s a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Go to Google.com, Select Google Account settings

Go to Google.com and log into your Google account. If you don’t have one just follow the links to sign up.

Once logged in, roll over “Settings” and click on “Google Account settings.”

Google.com Front Page

Step 2: Navigate to your Adwords account

Once in your Account Settings, click on the AdWords link. If you don’t have one you’ll need to add AdWords to your Google account. Do this by clicking on “AdWords” under the “Try Something New” Section.

Google Account Page

Step 3: Navigate to “Opportunities”

Once in your AdWords account, click on the “Opportunities” tab.

AdWords Account

Step 4: Navigate to “Keyword Tool”

Once in your AdWords account, click on the “Keyword Tool” link.

AdWords

Step 5: Use the Keyword Tool to find what people are searching for

Google’s Keyword Tool is one of the most useful tools on the internet. Now that you’re here, enter a keyword phrase into the “Word or Phrase” box, then press “Search.” A long list of results will appear.

Interpreting these results will take some time, but the main things to notice are the global searches and the average cost per click (CPC).

Keyword Tool

Final Note

I strongly recommend investing some serious time and effort into using this tool prior to implementing a content strategy for your website. Choosing extremely popular keywords means LOTS of competition, often with deep-pocketed companies and search engine experts. Though it’s not impossible to compete with these folks, it’s MUCH easier to target keywords that aren’t quite as popular, but still provide you with good volumes of traffic.

Before I Begin

Business is all about image, and every good business owner strictly vets everything a prospective customer sees during the course of a transaction. I speak to hundreds of REALTORS® in many markets around North America and one message I’ve heard loud and clear from top producers is:

“Image is everything. Every flyer, business card, website, etc. must look sharp and consistent – no exceptions.”

The photos below all have one thing in common: they’re bad – and not because of the way the subjects look, but because of the things they’ve done (or not done) to ensure that their photos are terrible. They all say the same thing to a prospective customer:

“Perfection is out of reach for me, so don’t expect anything special.”

So, without further adieu – here are the top 5 worst agent photos I’ve seen in the last 6 months:

#5 – The amazing oil-spill jacket

Shiny Jacket?

Is it leather or pleather? Neither: it’s a brand new fully-plastic jacket from “Armani GarBaj”. At least the over-powering red sign in the foreground distracts us from the most damaging part of this photo: the crappy point-and-shoot camera you’re so intently using to demonstrate to everyone that you’re not a professional photographer.

“I take my own photos…”

You sure do. And that’s why you chose this photo to put on your website.

#4 – The great-to-terrible machine

Flattering is so 2009

Advertisement: If you’re looking for a photographer who can remove your bothersome good-looks from any photo, then look no further! I specialize in cream backgrounds, tilted camera angles, poor lighting, cutoff arms, straight-on mugshots, and much, much more! Don’t get stuck with another flattering photo you can be proud of… Call me today!

There’s no reason this woman needed to look so bad! Worse yet, IT DIDN’T NEED TO GET ON HER WEBSITE!!

#3 – Unluckiest arrow

There's an arrow pointing at your... left.

The only thing that’d make this photo worse is if “home” was replaced with “fly.” Sign-aside, the brick-sized cell phone completes this masterpiece of “bad”.

Surprisingly I really like this photo. The sign is obviously well-intentioned, but so misguided that it’s startlingly hilarious. I’d also be inclined to list with this guy just to see if he still uses that cell phone. Well done sir – you’ve won me over by your ridiculousness.

#2 – The Impersonator

Rockalike

Apologies for the size of the image, but it was all that I could find. I’ll go soft on this one because it’s not all that bad. In fact, if it was on facebook it’d be downright great! Unfortunately it’s on your website, and unless it’s combined with a guest appearance of “the rock” at my open-house, then I’ll pass on your marketing expertise – sorry.

#1 – The winners! (losers?)

There were three winners:

Class of 85: Voted most likely to fail in real estate

Always the bridesmaid, never the top producer

In conclusion

Believe it or not, these are all genuine profile photos on active REALTOR’s® websites. The worst part is that it took me less than an hour to find them – along with about 20 that I didn’t use.

I’d estimate that at least 1-in-10 REALTOR® photos is absolutely terrible, meaning that there are at least 200,000 more photos out there that belong in this article.

You’ve been using craigslist and/or kijiji to promote your listings, but which one works better?

What are eBayClassifieds, Kijiji and Craigslist?

For those of you who don’t know, eBayClassifieds, Kijiji and Craigslist are free online classifieds websites that allow anyone to post items for sale in their area, and are some of the most used websites in the world. Posted items include everything from pets to vacuum cleaners to mattresses to real estate. Craigslist alone attracts a staggering 20-billion pageviews every month!! Here are some interesting facts you may not have known about these websites:

• eBay is the largest player in the online classifieds market, owning 25% of craigslist, 100% of Kijiji, and 100% of eBayClassifieds
• all websites are mostly free, making their money from preferred services including: paid job postings (craigslist), preferred ad placement (eBayClassifieds and Kijiji), and a variety of other services
• the owners of Craigslist have been accused of being “anti-capitalistic” by facilitating free local transactions and not pursuing massive profits in their company
• On March 30, 2010, eBay decided to close many international kijiji websites and rename its US site to eBayClassifieds.com. Despite their failures in most markets, Kijiji remains the dominant free online classifieds services in Canada and Taiwan, and continues to operate in a handful of other markets.

Why are these websites important?

Because they are searched by millions of people every day and represent one of the largest internet “communities” in existence. Getting in front of this community is completely free and can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a business’ bottom line.

So which one is better?

Let’s take a look:

Traffic by Region

*Alexa rank is a good indicator of website traffic that ranks all website from most popular (1st) to least popular (several billionth).

Posting Options

Estimated time on front page (the most important thing)

This is difficult to estimate, so I chose three cities to use as examples:

• Edmonton, Alberta, Canada – Edmontonians are kjiji users through-and-through.
• Vancouver, BC, Canada – Vancouverites are very technically savvy and use free classifieds services extensively. They are also a hybrid market, being in Kijiji’s hold-out territory but still using craigslist extensively.
• Chicago, IL, USA – America’s second-largest commercial center, this is a natural choice.

Here are the stats for a real estate listing posted in the “real estate for sale” (or equivalent) category.

The verdict

In my opinion, taken on most criteria, Kijiji/eBayClassifieds is better than Craigslist, hands-down. Here’s why:

• Craigslist used to be fantastic at attracting FSBOs - When REALTORS® and Brokers learned about this, they started piling MLS® listings into the FSBO sections. This has forced the FSBOs to go elsewhere, along with the traffic that once looked there.
• Exposure on Craigslist is so minimal it’s not worth the time – having an effective exposure of minutes or seconds (Chicago) just isn’t worth the time to post. I’ve had many top producers tell me this in the last few months.
• Kijiji/eBayClassifieds is what Craigslist used to be – they may not have the same volume of traffic as craigslist, but kijiji/eBayClassifieds’ market share is still substantial. Traffic is more easily measured, and effective advertising time is still good.
• Kijiji is the best of both worlds – Craigslist is great because it’s free – but you can’t upgrade your service even if you want to. Kijiji allows you to do this with paid links, ad upgrades, preferred placements, etc.

My bet is on Kijiji/eBayClassifieds becoming more and more useful over the coming years.

Real Estate Websites companies make lots of up-selling offers to their customers, but which ones are legitimate and which are ripoffs?

“Surely most website companies don’t offer ripoff products to their customers? That’d be bad for business…”

You’d think so, but unfortunately that’s not the case. We hear countless stories from customers moving to RealPageMaker about scams their previous providers were offering. Here are some of the more common ripoffs we hear about:

1. Keyword Reselling

Keyword reselling involves an intermediate company offering to send more traffic to your website by getting you a higher ranking in Google for certain keywords. They charge either a flat monthly fee or large one-time yearly fee.

“But don’t these companies offer a service?”

They do, but the service involves marking up Google Adwords by as much as 50%! Not only that, but they’ll occasionally get the content of the advertisement wrong, or in some cases just do nothing.

How to avoid this scam: Getting Google adwords is simple and effective. Either contact your website provider or refer to Google’s advertising solutions link at the bottom of their website.

2. Adding backlinks to social media sites

“Social Media” is undoubtedly the most trendy phrase in advertising at the moment, and unfortunately with hype comes ripoff.

Companies offering to “boost” your social media status by twittering or facebooking for you are blatant scams. The nature of “social media” marketing prohibits third parties from being effective resellers of any related service.

How to avoid this scam: Luckily this one is relatively easy to spot – if anyone offers “social media” products, just ignore them.

3. Craigslist and Kijiji auto advertising

Paying a company to automatically add your listings to Craigslist or Kijiji is behind the mark. These two services used to be reasonably effective lead generators but have recently lost their luster because:

• There are too many people advertising their listings on these free services
• In the past the public visited these sites to find FSBOs, but because of increasingly more MLS® listings they are now looking elsewhere

Some providers offer flat-fee services to add listings to these services, and other charge monthly premiums. There are two BIG problems with this:

1. Adding listings to Kijiji and Craigslist is quick and free – a REALTOR® should understand the process before paying someone else to do it.
2. Adding the listing only once is a waste of time. In large markets like Vancouver or Chicago, a listing on Craigslist will remain on the front page for as few as 3 minutes. Because of this they need to be added back constantly to be effective. No service I’m aware of offers this.

How to avoid: Do it yourself, or don’t do it at all.

4. Full Website Management for $50/month

Companies telling you that you’ll never need to touch your website after it’s up are full of it, and make me angry. These are examples of poor sales people who’ll say anything for a sale.

“But why can’t my website provider do this?”

Unfortunately $50/month isn’t enough to hire someone to write content and manage your website. $500/month for website management is about as little as you should be paying if you choose this service – and make sure you use a reputable firm… I’ve heard countless stories of customers being over-promised and under-delivered.

How to avoid: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

5. Multiple Domains Names are Important

This is one of the oldest up-sells in the book. Multiple domain names pointed at your website will accomplish only two things:

1. Reduce your ranking in Google, and
2. Cost you more

There is absolutely NO benefit to having more than one domain name. Period.

How to avoid: Easy – only buy one domain name.

6. Single property websites

Having a separate website for each individual property is an expensive and useless proposition. Here’s why:

• Websites take several weeks or months to rank in Google. Your single-property website will never generate traffic itself.
• Sites like Realtor.com and MLS.ca don’t allow you to specify a separate website for each listing – you’ll need to route traffic through your personal website. Kinda defeats the purpose doesn’t it?

This is a great way for a website provider to up-sell a customer, and a great way to spend extra money on something that’s completely useless.

How to avoid: Don’t have more than one website

It’s a tough market out there, and the invisible hand is pushing many REALTORS® to innovate their sales strategies accordingly. Here are three excellent marketing angles I’ve seen recently:

3: “Free iPod for your Referral!”

Okay, so it doesn’t need to be an iPod, but a number of REALTORS® I know use the “referral giveaway” to drum up business from time-to-time during slower months. Some things your competitors have considered with this strategy:

• Make it a “Monthly” draw – giving away an iPod for every referral can get expensive quickly. Entering people into a draw is a great way to reduce this cost.
• If the quality of the referrals is very high, consider making the prize more expensive, like a vacation, or house-cleaning for a year…
• Make sure to advertise who you gave the gift to – if it’s a draw, make sure EVERYONE knows who the lucky winner is!

2: “Customer appreciation BBQ”

I’ve seen several REALTORS® host annual customer appreciation events for all past customers. They’re a lot of work, but they’re a great way to keep in touch with clients and keep your name fresh in people’s minds. Some of the angles to consider include:

• Location: if it’s outside, make sure there’s a roof somewhere in case it rains. Also, public parks a notorious for filling up during peak hours, so get there early.
• Vegetarians: they’ll feel awkward about you feeling awkward… make sure there are vegetarian options.
• Kid-friendly: If they bring their kids, make sure there’s something to do (badminton, soccer balls, movie, etc).

1: “Your home sold in 180-days, or I buy it!”

I’ve always liked this one – it’s straightforward and sounds awesome! Whenever I’ve seen this done properly and honestly, it pays dividends. Unfortunately this strategy isn’t always kept “above board” – here are four ways I’ve seen REALTORS® ruin this approach:

• They may require the seller to buy one of their other listings
• They may predetermine the “guaranteed price”
• They may charge an additional fee
• The may have a maximum allowed price

REALTORS® I’ve seen who are successful with this type of campaign adhere to the following:

• Full disclosure - if you are going to list at a price that sells immediately, let the prospective customer know upfront.
• Don’t be afraid to single-out the right sellers – make sure prospective customers know that this “deal” is for them only if they are “highly-motivated” to sell.

No-gos

Here are some “creative” approaches that I’ve seen fail time and time again:

• List on the MLS® for only $495! – I must admit that when I first saw a REALTOR® doing this I was intrigued. The problem is that it always fails, no matter what. The only REALTORS® who should offer this are those that are willing to move back in with their parents and wear the same clothes for the next decade.
• 1% Commission! – Here’s another bad idea – this might be a good way of bringing customers through the door, but once they’re there you’ll be Bad-News-Betty: “it’s 1% PLUS the buyer’s side commission, or your house probably won’t sell… Sorry.”
• Free Video Tours! – If you’ve read my other posts you know what I think about online video. If you offer free video tours you’ll: 1. be on the hook for $500, and 2. need to be EXTREMELY careful that the tour looks good or the house won’t sell.

People experienced in the industry know that when times are good, lots of people become REALTORS®. The question is: what is the right number of REALTORS® in a balanced market?

NAR Membership Trends

Here’s a graph showing NAR membership numbers for the last 25 years:

NAR Membership 1975-2009

1975 was the first year of the computerized MLS® system and you can see a boom in membership through the latter part of the 70′s up to 1980. The result of the savings & loan crisis, recession and the ensuing crash in commercial real estate (and residential real estate to a lesser extent) is clearly shown in the early 80s.

1985 – 2000 is the most statistically valuable portion of the curve for the following reasons:

• Lending during this period was still subject to strict anti-recession legislation (which ended in 1999 when the 106th congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act)
• During this period there was sustained economic growth in production without speculative bubbles (except the .com boom of course)
• NAR membership levels stayed relatively constant during this period, with only minor fluctuations
• This period represented a relatively stable real estate market with only marginal overall annual appreciation.

During this time there were an average of 756,121 REALTORS® in the US.

“Ok – so that’s how many there should be right now?”

Not so fast – there are other factors at play:

Membership as Percentage of Population

Here’s a graph with data from NAR and the US Government Census.

NAR Membership as Percentage of Population

Looking at the same period as above (1985-2000) there REALTORS® averaged 0.29% of the population.

Real Estate Values

Here’s a graph showing average real estate values over the last 30 years:

Average Real Estate Prices 1970-2010

This graph shows an almost identical trend to the two others, but with a so-far softer landing than for previous corrections.

How Many REALTORS®?

Here are my numbers:

• Average US population growth: 1.04% per year
• Average portion of population who are NAR members: 0.29%
• Not taking into account any over-corrections

NAR Membership Projection Until 2015

According to this crude estimate, there are currently 211,570 too many REALTORS® in the US to conform to a historically balanced market. Based on prior corrections, history suggests they will leave the industry within the next few years.

So What’s the Good News?

This data is an excerpt from a presentation I recently made to the RealPageMaker board that was purposed to guide our sales expectations for the next 24 months. During my research I discovered that these numbers are slightly misleading – sure, the correction isn’t over, but the majority REALTORS® leaving the industry are the same ones who joined it spontaneously in the early part of the decade. They are the part-timers who wanted to “get rich quick.” My expectation is that as these people leave the industry, career REALTORS® will reap the benefits (many of the top producers I speak to regularly are already seeing this).

RealPageMaker.com got a much-needed makeover today!

Our Old Website

Our new Website:

New Website

RPM 3.1 Listing Detail

We’re extremely excited to announce that after months of development and weeks of testing, the development team here at RealPageMaker has just deployed RPM 3.1, our most significant upgrade since RPM 3. Though the majority of the development has been done “under the hood” there are some notable visible improvements to your website.

What’s Included in the Release

Here’s a rundown of the major changes included with this release:

New listings architecture

• listings are now stored according to a “floating field” architecture which allows us to build new options and more flexible searches
• easier-to-use exclusive listings
• more information stored for each listing

Improved performance

• MLS® search engine is faster
• improved geo-coder accuracy
• more interactive geo-coding
• faster feature listing loading

Improved features

• more comprehensive feature sheets
• more flexible graphical analysis of listings
• larger images
• more obvious contact form on listing details
• linking capability from listing details
• even fewer clicks to get to information

Search engine optimization improvements

• better listing details URL structure
• listing data more easily seen by search bots

Future development

We’ve been busy with this release for almost 4 months, and now that we’re complete we’ll be turning our attention to several big new features that our customers have been requesting. As always, if you have any ideas about how we can make your website better, don’t hesitate to let us know.

You slam-dunk the listing presentation, get the seller’s signature on the contract, enter the property details into the MLS® system, and start selling right? Not so fast: there may be things missing on that listing that could cost you big bucks if you’re not careful.

The Survey

We’ve conducted surveys in the past (see New Year’s Resolution for REALTORS®), but none as comprehensive and revealing as this.

We built some “intelligent” software that went through thousands of random listings throughout the MLS® systems we work with and performed a variety of experiments.  Here are the results of our work (in a nutshell):

• Listings surveyed: 13905
• Errors with mapping coordinates (total): 1% (of these, 87% were rural properties)
• Errors with mapping coordinates (rural properties only): 4.2%
• Listings with incorrect contact email addresses (extrapolated): 2%
• REALTORS® responding to our notifications that their information was incorrect: 14%

Keep in mind that this survey is DIFFERENT from prior surveys in that we’ve actually used the information DIRECTLY from the MLS® data that’s advertised to the public.

“I don’t get it – why is that so important?”

This survey took us a long time to complete because we needed to reference sites like REALTOR.com and MLS.ca that use REALTOR® contact information straight from boards and associations.

“Sorry, I still don’t understand why this is such a big deal?”

Because this is the information 90% of consumers will use to contact you!

The Result

The good news is that most information associated with listings is correct. The bad news is that information on 1/50 listings isn’t. The really bad news is that most REALTORS® we tried to tell about this problem didn’t care enough to fix it.

The Action

We’ve put together a 5-minute checklist that every REALTOR® should use after entering a listing into their MLS® system:

1. Check the contact information
   • Go to Realtor.com or MLS.ca (Canada), submit the contact form, and make sure you receive the email
   • Scrutinize the contact information on the listing
   • Ensure your website link is working
   • Make sure the contact information on your website is correct
   • Though we don’t have actual statistics, we did notice that many listings have incorrect information for the brokerage. Checking this information is also extremely important.
2. Check the mapping coordinates
   • Again, go to Realtor.com or MLS.ca (Canada), and make sure your listing appears in the correct location on the map. If it doesn’t, contact your board/association/MLS®.
   • Check the coordinates on your website.

We Need Your Help

We’re going to continue and even expand our testing of listings to deliver more information like this. If you have statistics you’d like us to track drop us a comment or send me an email: sam@realpagemaker.com.

Video blogging can be a good idea (IJustine and Justin Bieber have made careers on YouTube) but where it can make, it can also break…

Video 1: Reading-rambler. (a great “stop” at 0:56).

I wish I was successful enough to shoot a video, put it up on youtube, and see how much it cost me in lost deals. Stop.

This would be a great video for teaching skills in anger management, but Eric seems to be using it to play Russian roulette with his business. Stop.

This video illustrates exactly why some actors get paid so much: they have skills that most of us don’t (Eric especially). Stop.

Video 2: The inside joke

It’s good to celebrate making money (I’d argue it’s even healthy to reward oneself with some private gloating from time-to-time), but posting it on YouTube for customers to see (many of whom are still reeling from the largest collapse in the housing market since the great depression) is business suicide, no?

I checked out the middle REALTOR’s website and it’s extremely professional – nothing like the caliber of this video. Unfortunately for her over 2000 people have already watched this brand-tainting video.

Video 3: The blatant pitch of cheese

Viewers can almost excuse the word stumbling and questionable cinematography in this video, but his pitch about professionalism is destroyed in the final seconds when the phone number he says is different from the one shown. Incidentally I found this video that has exactly the same background music and style but didn’t make my list because it doesn’t have a motorcycle ride-in.

Bonus Video: Cheese done well

This has it all: cheesy music, car driving, and a shameless pitch.

I like this video. Short, sweet, backed up with facts, and an option in case I hate the guy.

UPDATE: Bonus, Bonus, Video

A reader sent me a link to this next video after reading this article. Quite frankly I don’t know what to make of it – either this is some kind of brilliant marketing plan or this guy has completely lost it.

Conclusion

The vast majority of real estate videos are horrendously boring and not worth discussing. The good news is that most have fewer than 10 views.

The scary fact is that there’s no shortage of people risking their professional integrity for the sake of “social media”: approximately 25 new potentially business-wrecking real estate videos are added to YouTube every hour.