So, you’ve set up your real estate website, you’ve put in the work, and what happened? Crickets. I feel your pain.
This is what happens to the vast majority of people that set up websites, so know you are not alone. The internet is a very crowded place with real estate investors clamoring to rank so that they snatch up all of the motivated seller leads. It’s not enough to just follow the ‘build it, and they will come’ philosophy anymore. You’ve got to make sure you are set up for success and know what works right now, and what doesn’t.
If you find yourself stressing over that problem, thinking that your website was a huge waste of time, then you’re in luck because that’s exactly what we are going to show you how to fix in today’s blog. We’re going to show you what is necessary in 2016 and beyond to have your real estate investor website getting traffic and generating the motivated seller leads you need. After all, the real estate investing business is all about turning leads into deals.
Getting Started
Ok, let’s say, for example, that you just published your first real estate investing website last night. You wake up the following morning expecting to see leads flooding your inbox, but that isn’t the reality. It can’t be the reality, because your website hasn’t existed long enough to be indexed in Google yet. It will happen, you just need to be patient. However, while it is crucial for your website to appear near the top of the search, you don’t have to be the number one result.
Business 2 Community, an online business building journal, conducted a case study and found that “while the top Google listing still gets about ⅓ of all clicks, the organic results earning the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th spot now receive the other 63% of the clicks, leaving only 4% of clicks to anything lower.” One of the key points of SEO that people just starting out with a website overlook is how important it is for your site to be searchable in Google. We’ll take a look at effective SEO further into this blog. For now, let’s look at your web presence.
Why it’s Important to Build an Online Presence
Aside from just having a stunning, easily searchable website, you also need to have a presence online. Your web presence can range from professional social media accounts, to a blog on your page that stays current. In fact, “companies that blog have 97% more inbound links,” Hubspot found in a 2015 annual marketing report, “[and] 92% of companies that blog multiple times per day have acquired new customers [as a result].” Being sure to post relevant updates, and staying current with your clientele, will not only direct traffic back to your site and ultimately your services, but it will also help increase your presence online.
Keywords are important in helping your clientele find you. You want to make sure your keywords are words or phrases that are frequently searched by your target demographic. For a real estate investor, that could include keywords or phrases such as:
- We buy houses [your city, your state]
- Sell houses fast [your city]
- Need to sell my house [your city]
You will notice that [your city] was appended to the phrases. This is because it’s much easier to rank for a locally with these keywords than it is to rank nationally. If you were wanting to buy houses in Boston, it’s much easier to have your website show up when someone types, ‘I want to sell my house in Boston’ if your website is clearly targeting Boston.
Going Mobile: Ease of Use
While web presence is essential, being mobile friendly in today’s digital market is equally as crucial. “Not surprisingly,” says Search Engine Watch in an article about mobile platforms, “67% of mobile users will leave a website if they become frustrated with the site’s navigation.” Having a website that is difficult to use on mobile devices will cost you 67% of your potential clients. And, sure, there’s the argument that most potential clients are searching you on a desktop or laptop more, but that school of thought is no longer correct.
In 2015, comScore’s research on mobile usage produced results stating that by March of that year desktop-only internet users was at 10.6%, while mobile-only internet users was at 11.3%. Those results showed that the trend in platform usage was going to continue to grow in favor of mobile-only users. With that as the case, having 67% of your mobile users become so frustrated they leave your website is costing you a lot of leads.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
Ok, so we’ve talked about giving your website time to get indexed, building a web presence, and being usable on all platforms. If you’ve noticed that your website might not be getting enough clicks, the answer is very reasonably because of one of those problems. However, another problem that people tend to face is not marketing themselves correctly. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the biggest ways Google will determine if you’re searchable or not.
Basically, the strategy behind SEO is to make sure the content on your website is relevant to what a potential lead is searching for. Take Danny Buys Houses, by Danny Johnson, for example. Because the area he buys and sells houses in is San Antonio, the home page of his website has to do with the city. In fact, the header of the website says “We buy houses in San Antonio”, and is then followed up by “sell your house fast.”
So Basically…
To answer the question, your website is generating leads for you as long as you optimize all of the things we’ve talked about. To start, if your website is brand new, it just hasn’t been indexed yet. Give that time, it will happen. To help your website be more searchable, build your web presence more. Link your professional social media accounts to your website, and visa versa. The more you can interlink yourself, the better. Get circulating. Remember to be mobile friendly. The majority of internet users are using mobile devices for searches, so be useful to them as well. And always have an SEO strategy. Be searchable, and accessible, for your targeted clients.
If your website has optimized all of these qualities, then your leads will be coming in in no time. Get out there!
Don’t Have the Time For All of This?
As a real estate investor, your time is best spent getting out there converting leads into deals. Hundreds of real estate investors use LeadPropeller for their websites because of the ability to set one up within minutes…no need to know how to code and no need to come up with what the website should say. We also provide managed pay-per-click and SEO services so that you don’t have to become an expert in all of these areas.
Let LeadPropeller do that hard work for you, so you can do the fun part of real estate investing – deals! Check out LeadPropeller.com or call us at 210-999-5187 to discuss getting your web presence going and working for you.