That’s great, you have the tools necessary to start generating some leads. But the next step is to start driving some web traffic, and also, to get those web visitors to stay on your site longer as they consume, read and engage with your content.

The more time they spend consuming your content, the more time they’ll have to consider your service offering — hiring you as their real estate agent. 

Here are some little known ways to get site visitors to stay longer…

1. First and foremost, eliminate all the clutter. 

Be a minimalist. Here’s what I mean…

If you have too many tabs on your header navigation, too many widgets on your sidebar, and you have call to actions spewed all over the place, you’re just adding clutter to your site. And frankly, that’s making it more difficult for consumers to find what they’re looking for.

Simpler is better. So think about the main, primary pages that you want to drive traffic to… Only link to those in your navigation. Get rid of the unnecessary stuff on that sidebar. And limit yourself to one call to action per page. In fact, think of each page as a landing page, what do you want visitors to do while they’re there? Everything else, doesn’t matter.

2. Build content rich community landing pages.

A great, content rich community landing page should consist of the following:

• A snapshot of the neighborhood. Give me a short history of the neighborhood and an over-view of the makeup of the neighborhood. Things to do, places to visit, what are the best schools in the area, etc.
• Show me the latest listings. What’s for sale in the neighborhood? Using tools like our WordPress IDX plugin, this should be easy. You can display the latest listings simply by using the shortcode.
• Show me the market statistics. What’s the total inventory of homes for sale in that particular area? What’s the average days on market? What’s the average price? Tools like Altos Research makes it easy to display local market statistics.

Here’s a great example of a community landing page from real estate agent Heather Elias: http://www.locomusings.com/areas/sterling.

At a glance, you have a quick description of the community with additional photos listed below. The tabbed structure lets you access additional relevant data easily. And if you want to search other neighborhood ares, no problem, just use the drop-down form on the upper right side of the page.

Lastly, there’s a contact form embedded on every community page so that if a consumer has a question, they can quickly and easily ask it. Perfect!

The whole purpose behind building content rich community landing pages that offer everything a consumer could possibly want to learn about he community, is to keep them on your site longer as they read and consumer your content. The more time they spend on your site, the more time they have to consider your service offering — hiring you as their real estate agent. 

3. Organize your content categories properly.

WordPress makes it easy to add new content regularly. And of course the more content you create, the better. But what happens as your site matures and you’ve added dozens if not hundreds of posts? Well, it becomes a little more difficult to navigate of course…

You want site visitors to be able to access relevant content easily. Luckily, WordPress makes it really simple for you to organize all of that content through the use of categories.

Here are some basic (non-official) rules to keep in mind:

• One category per post. In other words, every time you write a blog post, you should add it to one category and one category only. Otherwise, it’s just too repetitive to have the same content in every category.
• Try to keep your categories to a minimum (say 7-10). Here’s what you do, make a list of everything you could potentially talk about on your site. Here’s what your categories might look like: Financing Tips, Market Reports, For Buyers, For Sellers, Communities, et cetera. Try to develop 7-10 general categories where your content might fall under. This will help you better organize your content over the long-term.
• Make sure you update your categories regularly. As a rule of thumb, once you’ve gone through and created your categories, you want to make sure you have somewhere between 2-4 posts per category. This way, when a site visitor clicks on a category, they have some content to dig through. This also means that you should update your categories with new content regularly so that you’re content doesn’t look stale.

The better you keep your content organized. The easier it’s going to be for site visitors to discover and engage with your content over the long-term.

Recommended reading: How To Use Categories Effectively On Your Real Estate Blog.

4. Use captivating images to complement your blog posts.

As a rule of thumb, include an image for every blog post that you write. Do this for a couple of reasons:

• It helps break up the text. It’s a little less daunting to read a long-winded blog post when you have some good imagery to go with it. 
• It helps suck the reader in. Think of it this way, say you have a sheet of paper. You have a headline written on one side of the paper, and the post written on the other. Your first goal, is to interest people enough with the headline to get them to turn over that sheet of paper. But then, once they turn over that sheet of paper, your goal is to capture their attention long enough to keep reading. A strong image does a wonderful job of capturing one’s attention.

The great thing is we’re talking real estate here. Really, you should be able to take a lot of your photos. Don’t have a camera? Don’t worry, most smart phones come equip with a camera that could render a high enough resolution photo for a blog post.

So the next time you’re writing a market report about a community, things to do around town, or even a restaurant review, snap a photo and include it in that post!

5. Create themes for your content.

Creating themes for your content helps establish a little bit of consistency. Not just for you, but for your readers. This way, they know what to expect.

For example, Ines Hegedus-Garcia has her Miamism Friday’s series. Ever Friday, she takes a photo that helps paint a picture of the lifestyle that is Miami and she tells the story behind it. It’s really a fun series and here’s the great thing about it…she gets her community of readers involved by inviting them to contribute the photo content!

How might you do something similar to get your readers involved? But also, what other types of posts can you write about to add some consistency to your content? Maybe each week, you hi-light a new neighborhood, or you write a market report on that neighborhood? Maybe, once a week, you write about activities and events coming up for the weekend?

The goal is to establish some consistency so readers know what to expect next. And so that they continue to come back.

Getting Site Visitors To Stay Longer

A lot of it has to do with how you structure and organize your content. The easier your website is to navigate, the better. You want it to be simple for site visitors to navigate and discover new content. But you also want to have enough content there for them to consumer. Because if they don’t find what they’re looking for on your website, they’re going to find it somewhere else.

Hopefully, this post gives you some ideas of the things you need to look over. How can you better structure your website to make visitors stay longer? 

You want site visitors to be able to easily navigate your website, find what they’re looking for (IDX listings), and contact you should they have any questions about buying or selling a home.

Otherwise, if your site is difficult to navigate, you make it hard for consumers to access current listings, and you make it difficult to get a hold of you to answer a simple question, well, you’re losing business to your competition.

To avoid that, here’s 5 essential elements of a lead converting real estate website that you should take into consideration…

1. You need a great, professional looking design. 

Consumers are making a decision as to whether they like you or not…whether they trust you or not, within a few seconds of landing on your website.

Does this site look trustworthy? Is the information reliable and up to date? Can I easily contact this agent if I have a quick question?

Those are all questions racing through the consumers mind. They’ll either land on your website and stick around long enough to consider what you have to offer, or they’ll leave and find what their looking for elsewhere.

The decision they make all boils down to whether you have a professional looking web design to begin with. If you have the technical skill-sets to do it yourself, more power to you. If you don’t, sometimes it’s best to hire someone to do it for you.

A real estate agent building their own website is like a homeowner doing a FSBO. The job can get done, but the end result isn’t nearly the same.

A professional web designer brings the same knowledge and experience to a website project that a real estate agent brings to a home sale.

Quality website planning, designing and coding is a service that will pay for itself through more Internet leads. – Chad Johnson, President & COO of Agent Evolution

2. You need a solid IDX system to capture leads. 

One of the primary reasons consumers are coming to your real estate website is to search for homes, so you need to make it easy for them to do so.

In this example, I love that you can easily access the site’s content, but also, search for homes using the prominently displayed “quick search” at the top of the page. That takes you to the IDX map search page where consumers are prompted to register in order to receive new listings by email.

Here are Diverse Solutions, there’s two ways you can quickly and easily integrate IDX listings onto your website:

dsIDXpress (our WordPress plugin) – this is a WordPress plugin that will take every single listing as it hits the MLS, and create an indexable page on your domain for that listing. You can download a test version of this plugin for free here.

dsSearchAgent (our full-fledged mapping IDX w/mobile) – this is our full-fledged map-based property search full with built-in lead capture tools, a Google Maps interface, and the advanced settings of a custom IDX website full with a mobile version of the product. You can test-drive a free version of this product here.

3. You should display client testimonials at every opportunity.

While not mandatory, it’s a good idea to display client testimonials on your website at every opportunity. Think about it, consumers are going online to gather information about their buying/selling process. As they begin and continue to search, the content on your website is helping shape the opinion that they have of you — do you know what you’re talking about, are you reliable, etc.

Testimonials are the ultimate influencing factor. Because it doesn’t matter what you say about how good you are as a real estate agent. What matters more is what other people say about you as a real estate agent. By showcasing client testimonials, you’re showing people that you know what you’re talking about and you’re helping influence their decision to want to work with you.

Here’s a great testimonials page from Thompson’s Realty: http://www.reviewouragents.com/existing-reviews.

4. You should have a solid About page.

Let’s say a random site visitor lands on one of your community posts/pages after doing a Google search for best schools in the area, or best places to live in the area. They land on your site, so they stick around and keep reading through some of your content. Here’s what happens next…

Before they decide to contact you, they want to read and learn more about you. So what do they do? They navigate to your About page of course. They want to get to know you before moving forward.

Here’s a great example of a solid About page: http://coloradospringsrealestateconnection.com/about.

They do a great job of hi-lighting their real estate stats and achievements for the previous year. Then, they explain how and why they embrace technology for the benefit of the home buyer and seller. And finally, they dig in to give you a bit of background as to who’s behind the team.

Take a look at it, it really is a thorough About page.

Then ask yourself, how can you improve your own?

5. Prominently displayed contact information.

Simply put, your contact information should be prominently displayed at all times — whether a site visitor is reading a blog post, they’re on your home page, or they’re on a listing details page.

You need to make it easy for a consumer to contact you about a property listing at all times.

Here’s a great example from real estate agent Bill McCue:

First, he has a prominently displayed contact form on the sidebar of his site to allow consumers to quickly and easily contact him should they have a question on a property listing. Then, he has an image just below that to allow the consumer to put a face to his name but also, additional contact details should they wish to call him about the property instead.

Take a look at your own website. Click around through some of your posts and pages. Then ask yourself, how easy are you making it for consumers to get in touch?

Of course, there are several elements that you need to take into consideration when designing a professional looking, lead generating real estate website. These are just a few critical elements to take into consideration. If you take the time to include them, you’ll likely experience better conversion.

The easier you make it for consumers to be able to search for homes on your website, the longer they’ll stay and the more likely they’ll be to convert.

So today, we’re happy to share some new (Free) icon sets to display those Call To Actions to search for homes a little bit better.

 Download the Free Home Search Buttons (351 KB)

How To Use These Buttons On Your Website:

The easiest way to use these icons on your website is to install them as a simple text widget on your site. For example:

Step #1: Add the icon you want to use to your media library.

Step #2: Add the dsSearchAgent script to a page on your website (for example: yourdomain.com/home-search).

Step #3: Add a text widget with the image, hyperlinked to your IDX search page.

 Download the Free Home Search Buttons (351 KB)

Hope you find these useful!

I’d love to see them in action, so if you install them, drop a link to your website in the comments so we can have a look.

Well, this month’s client spotlight feature, does things a little bit different. Rather than using the home page to display the most recent blog content, they use a static home page instead. When I asked the designer - Inna Hardison, owner of Ha Media Group – why they chose to do things this way, here’s what she had to say:

We tend not to use blog layout for the home page of any of our sites. Static home pages allow us to point people to specific content and to control what new visitors see at any given moment.

The assumption being that for a real estate site, the majority of the visitors will want to do a search for properties or browse local community areas. The static home page design makes that easy for anyone who was either pointed to the site directly via advertising or was using a somewhat generic search for “Central Austin Homes.”

How To Make a Static Home Page for Your Real Estate Blog:

WordPress makes it easy to create a static home page for your blog. To do so, simply perform the following steps:

1. Create a new page within WordPress that you’ll want to set up as your new home page.
2. Then, scroll down to “Settings” within your WordPress dashboard and click on “Reading.”

Under that menu, you’ll want to select the option to set your front page as a “static page” and select the page that you created from the drop-down menu. It should look something like this:

There are a couple of benefits to creating a static home page for your real estate site…

First off, you can effectively communicate what your site is about to first time site visitors and you can control what content people have access to (as Inna described above).

And second, you alleviate some of the pressure of having to post frequently. When your blog content sits on the home page, it’s easy for your content to look outdated if you don’t have anything new published. By housing your blog content on a different tab in your navigation, rather than the home page, you put greater emphasis on more important things like the home search and other local community information.

Content Rich Neighborhood Landing Pages:

On the home page, you’ll notice some neighborhood thumbnails with some bullet points on each neighborhood. When you click through, you get a content rich neighborhood landing page that contains the following:

• A brief description of the community.
• A short, 2-3 minute video of the community.
• A quick link to real estate listings in that community.
• A list of Pro’s and Con’s to living in that community.
• A gallery of photos for the community. And,
• The latest market statistics (powered by Altos Research).

Simply put… Well done!

On the neighborhood pages layout, our rationale was that once someone lands on a page for a specific area, all the info in that visual space needs to pertain to that neighborhood, including a breakdown of results by price in that neighborhood, recent posts that are neighborhood specific, etc.

Mobile Friendly:

I like how Central Austin Homes handles the mobile integration here. If you’re visiting the website from a desktop, you can simply preview what the mobile version of the home search looks like by clicking on the mobile icon to the left of the page.

On mobile however, they’ve used WP Touch to create a mobile app that matches the design of their website.

You’ll see a header that matches the design of their site and that contains the agents contact information, and you’ll find that the site is easy to navigate.

You’ll find that they integrated the home search (powered by dsSearchAgent Mobile) into their navigation. Just click on the “Mobile Austin Home Search” icon/link and it’ll serve the dsSearchAgent mobile IDX search in a separate window.

This way, you can access content on the site via mobile, but also perform IDX searches easily.

We split the site into search only and the rest of the site for mobile devices, so that the site functions like a mobile app on any device and allows user to access any information or search for homes easily.

While the site (including the mobile version) is still relatively new, 18% of all visitors to the site were accessing it via mobile devices for the month of April and those statistics are steadily trending upwards.

***

With a great design, easy to navigate both on desktop and mobile, Central Austin Homes was an easy pick for our client spotlight this month.

I’d love to see more real estate agents putting careful thought and consideration into mobile!

This site design, including mobile and IDX integration was done my Ha Media Group. 

It’s a critical part of your writing and one that most agents skip.

A great post is not only properly structured and formatted, it’s written with search engine friendly copy, and the appropriate title tags and keywords so that you increase the chances of getting discovered in search results.

So here’s your checklist…

Whether you have a multi-author blog or a single-author blog, or you have an assistant helping you write your blog posts, this checklist will help you stay on track with optimizing your posts.

It’s a simple list of reminders that you can set for yourself before going live with your next post.

Admittedly, it sounds a little silly, but until you make it a habit, it’s a nice set of reminders to have in place.

Yes, you can print a simple checklist and place it on your desk within eye-view, or you can use the following plugin to include the checklist on every post/page.

Blogging Checklist Plugin for WordPress:

Log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate over to your “Plugins” menu. Search for “Blogging Checklist” and click “Install” then “Activate.”

Then, navigate over to the plugin settings page (it’s under “Settings”). There, you’ll find fairly straightforward instructions for adding a checklist. You can copy-paste the sample text they provided then edit it to include your own checklist of items.

I went ahead and added my own checklist for reviewing and publishing my posts for optimum SEO value. The checklist will appear below each new post/page you create like this:

The downside of the plugin is that it doesn’t store any of the data so it’ll reset whenever you refresh the page. It would also be pretty cool if you could make it so that you can’t publish the post until each item in the checklist is complete. But for now, it’ll do.

Really, like I said, it’s a simple guide to help you stay on top of all of the important steps you need to be completing for maximum impact rather than just throwing a post out there just to get it out there.

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve finally found a suitable office space here in Irvine, CA. The new office will be located at 2600 Michelson and will open later this summer.

Finally when Spencer and the team come to visit, they’ll no longer have to cramp inside the conference room. They’ll have a space all of their own and they can “officially” say they have an office in the OC!

Of course that also means…we’re hiring!

Yep, that’s right. our goal is to staff up to 100 employees in Irvine, primarily by growing the Zillow Premier Agent sales force. Here’s what Zillow CFO Greg Schwartz has to say about it:

As Zillow continues to expand the breadth of services and develop new tools to help real estate professionals grow their business, it made perfect sense to also expand our sales force to Southern Calfornia.

Orange County is part of America’s largest real estate market and has created a deep pool of talented sales people with expertise in internet marketing and software from which to recruit.

So, if you’re a highly driven Sales professional and see yourself growing your career with a winning sales team, this might be the right opportunity for you!

Great benefits, sponsored lunches on Friday’s, paid time off, and heck, we even do fun stuff like ski days.

Click here for details on the job description.

The URL structure always starts with /idx.

So if you’re domain name is johndoerealestate.com, the dsIDXpress “virtual” pages would always start with johndoerealestate.com/idx.

From there, it’s up to you to determine what listings you want to pull up, and in what area. You can pull up listings by city, community, tract and zip code. So each of those URL structures would look like this:

johndoerealestate.com/idx/city/irvine

johndoerealestate.com/idx/community/irvine

johndoerealestate.com/idx/tract/irvine

johndoerealestate.com/idx/zip/92222

…of course, you’ll want to replace “Irvine” with whatever area name you’re trying to pull up.

Once you’ve decided what area you want to pull listings from, you can then start to add additional parameters to that URL structure to produce a more narrowly defined search results.

To use parameters, you need to follow the following format:

johndoerealestate.com/idx/city/irvine/?parameter&parameter&parameter

First: You want to define your are type and area name. In my example, I did: /idx/city/irvine.

Second: To insert your first parameter, you want to add a “?” before inserting your initial parameter.

Third: To separate from one parameter and the next one, you’ll separate them using the “&” symbol.

So let’s say that we want to pull up listings in the city of Irvine between $300,000 and $400,000. First, we’ll need to find the parameters for defining a minimum price range and a maximum price range.

If we look at the list of parameters in our Help Desk, you’ll see that those parameters are:

idx-q-PriceMin=

idx-q-PriceMax=

So, our entire URL structure would look like:

johndoerealestate.com/idx/city/irvine/?idx-q-PriceMin=300000&idx-q-PriceMax=400000

Benefits of Using Link-Structure: 

Once you’ve determined the link-structure for a certain set of search results, you can link to that content in your sidebar or in the body of your content.

Using Link-Structure In Your Sidebar

Here’s an example from MattPernice.com for how to use the custom link-structure in the sidebar of your website:

The great thing about this is that you can have a tremendous amount of links within a very compact space.

Using Link-Structure In the Body of Your Content

Here’s an example of how to use the custom link-structure on a post or page: 

The benefits here are that in addition to displaying the short-code on a page, you’re also linking to additional listings within the body of the content so you’re giving your site visitors an easier way to search listings by price range, and you’re making it easier for search engines to crawl and index the additional links on that page.

How are you using filtered URL’s with dsIDXpress? 

Are you using the custom link-structure to pull up listings in specific areas? If you’re still stuck on how to use the filtered URL’s to pull up a specific set of listings, let me know what you want to pull up and I’ll point you in the right direction…

404 errors are just a standard error used across the web to indicate that a page no longer exists.

Our WordPress IDX plugin for example, displays listings that are on the real estate market and available for purchase. It does not display listings that have sold, or changed status to “pending.” So when those listings are sold or go off the market, they return 404 errors.

Most pages simply say something like, “Whoops! Page not found.” And prompt you to dig through the blog’s archive of content.

Nothing special.

But, what if a home buyer was looking for a specific listing on your website? Brushing them off with a simple, cold message saying “sorry, we don’t have that listing” is a pretty quick and easy way to lose them to a competitor. Don’t you think?

So today, I thought I’d show you a few creative examples of strategic 404 pages used on other real estate websites to give you some ideas on how to create your own…

7 Strategic Examples of 404 Error Pages:

1. miamism.com.

Simple, fun error page.

Your error page doesn’t have to be long and fancy. Just give users a few options on what to do next, including the option to perform a new home search.

2. ocrealestatevoice.com.

This one’s simple. Say a site visitor performed a search for a listing, but that listing is no longer available. So your error page serves up two quick and simple options:

• Click here to search homes for lease, or
• Click here to search hoems for sale.

3. phoenixrealestateguy.com.

Don’t you hate when you search for something, and the top search results produces an error. What gives?

Well here, Jay offers a great and simple explanation to calm the site visitor and offer an explanation as to what might of happen. So rather than click off the site and leaving, they might stick around and try a new search.

4. intownelite.com.

Again, what if someone was searching for a home but that property is no longer on the market? Well here, they make it easy for you to perform a whole new search by dropping the map search right on the page.

5. Zillow.com.

Talk about simple (but in a good way of course).

“Sorry, this page it no longer available” but, click here to search for homes, or click here to check mortgage rates.

Instead of, “sorry, the page is no longer available” and leaving it at that. Instead, you’re giving your site visitor a few simple options.

6. mynapervillehomesblog.com. 

(Custom site by TriPress - this is the 404 page they use on every site they create).

Again, this site is a great example of how to casually explain what might have happened to generate this error page. It’s a great, simple way to explain to site visitors what might have gone wrong – such as a home coming off the market. And offering them some options as to what to do next.

7. hendersonpropertymanagement.com.

This page not only has a prominent Call To Action to call with additional questions, it also embeds a list of other properties right on the page.

How Can You Apply This To Your Own Blog?

Each of these pages have the same basic elements.

• A short message apologizing for the inconvenience. Something like, “Sorry, it looks like the property you were looking for is no longer available but here’s what you can do…”
• Then, it gives the site visitor options for what to do next. You can conduct a new home search by clicking here, you can access the blog here, or you can go back to the home page by clicking here. It doesn’t just leave your site visitor feeling stranded.

The goal is to give a short explanation to the site visitor as to what might have happened in case they were searching for a specific property and arrived at your error page. Then, by serving up options for what to do next, you increase the likelihood of them sticking around rather than clicking off your site to conduct a new search elsewhere.

How To Create Your Own, Custom 404 Error Page:

For those that don’t know how to custom code their own error page template, here are two plugins that make it really simple for you to create and customize your 404 page.

First, Genesis 404 Page. 

This plugin by Bill Erickson is designed for the Genesis Framework and is very easy to use.  Simply perform the following steps…

1. Log into your WordPress dashboard,
2. Scroll down to “Plugins” > Click on “Add New” and search for “Genesis 404 Page” then install and activate the plugin.
3. This will create a menu option for “404 Page” under the “Genesis” menu option. Click on it.

That will take you to a simple post editor where you can customize the contents of your new 404 page. It looks like this:

Second, 404-To-Start. 

The second option is a WordPress plugin called 404-to-start which works in a similar fashion. Once you’ve downloaded and activated the plugin, you’ll want to create a page within your WordPress dashboard that will essentially serve as your new 404 page.

Then, access the 404-to-start settings and configure your settings to redirect to your new custom page. Like this:

What are you waiting for? Start designing your custom 404 page!

It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be long. But offer something more than “Whoops! This page is no longer available.”

I’d love to see some examples of what you come up with. So once you’re done customizing your 404 page, link to it in the comments…

The easier you make it to do just that, the better.

You want to publish IDX listings on your website to make it easy for consumers to find homes for sale, but also, to make it easier for Google to crawl and index your listings.

So here’s 5 strategic areas to publish IDX listings on your domain…

#1 First and foremost, make it easy to search for property listings. 

IDX search tools like our WordPress IDX plugin for example, do a great job of taking MLS listings, and automatically generating pages to display those listings on your domain.

With our WordPress plugin, it’s taking every single listing as it hits the MLS and creating a page on your domain for that specific listing. It also generates pages for results by four different area types: cities, communities, tracks and zip codes.

But just because those pages are being generated automatically, doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything to promote them. In fact, you still need to work on making it ridiculously simple for site visitors to search for homes. It needs to be the first thing people see when they land your site – the homes search!

Here’s a great example from Jeff Riber at 904 Living who prominently displays his home search above the fold, on the home page of his site:

#2 On the sidebar of your website. 

Another great place to prominently display your IDX listings is on the sidebar of your website. Not only are you making it easier for consumers to search for homes on your domain, you’re also making it easier for Google to index your listings.

Then, if you really want to take it a step further, you can use something like custom sidebars to add specific IDX listings on your sidebar for a community page that matches the rest of the content on the page.

The idea is, each community landing page would have it’s own custom sidebar with unique listing content that matches the rest of the content on the page. (More details on how to do that, in this post).

Here’s an example of what your community page would look like with IDX listings on your sidebar:

#3 On the footer of your website.

Website footers have evolved from a simple place to host a website’s copyright information to a section where you can host an extended set of navigation items. Which of course makes it a great area to display IDX listings in addition to your contact information.

Here’s a great example from the Phoenix Real Estate Guy that consists of a short bio, disclosures and then of course, IDX listings:

#4 On your community landing pages.

Consumers are coming to your site because their interested in learning about the community.

What are the best neighborhoods to live in?

Best places to eat at?

What is there to do?

What are the best schools in the area?

But also, what can I buy for $350,000 in this area?

When you’re building your community pages, you should include as much information as possible for consumers to be able to get a true sense of what the community is like. But you should also include local listing data.

Here’s a great example from Robin Benjamin from Living in Millburn-Short Hills NJ:

#5 Within your blog posts. 

People always want to know how to rank better (or faster) in search engines. And well, what Google wants to see is unique content being posted on your domain.

It doesn’t have to be a long 1,000 word post. It can be a short, simple market update.

• Here’s what’s going on in the Irvine real estate market for the month of March. Tell me what the average Days on Market is, what the average sales price is and any other relevant data.
• Then, just show me the latest listings in the area.

It’s short, it’s simple, and it’s highly relevant to me if I’m a home buyer!

Here’s an example of how I would format that post:

If you’ve got all of these areas covered, you’re good to go. If you don’t, looks like you might have some work to do to better promote your listings!

Any other creative ways your publishing listing data on your domain?

The benefit of having an email autoresponder for your real estate blog is that it provides you a quick and easy way to follow up with your prospects – automatically.

When someone registers to use your IDX map search, they’ve essentially expressed interest in buying a home.

You might follow up with them right away, you might not. But by having an email autoresponder in place, you can guarantee that a series of follow-up messages are properly sent out to them over a pre-determined period of time.

This makes it easy for you to go about your day-to-day tasks, and still, market to new leads.

The trick is, providing a ton of useful information to pique their interest and develop trust. Otherwise, if you’re too self-promotional, you’ll lose their attention right away.

Here are some ideas for autoresponders that you can create for your real estate blog.

4 Content Ideas for An Effective Real Estate Email Autoresponder:

Idea: Create a first-time home buyer tutorial series.

Some people are buying a home for the very first time. They’re not very familiar with the buying process, so they’re nervous. They’re looking to consume as much information about the buying process as possible.

Why this is effective:  The more information you present them with, the more they’ll trust you and the closer they’ll get to hiring you as their “Go To” real estate agent.

How to use this idea: Start with an outline. What are the 3, 5, or 7 things people need to know about the buying process. Take each of those steps and turn them into a series of blog posts. Then, set up your drip-campaign to deliver each post over a course of 7 days. Basically, your subscriber should receive one new post in their series every day.

Example: Understanding the Buying Process (part of a 7-day email tutorial series)

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Idea: Create a seller series. 

Some people might be interested in selling their home but they’re just not quite sure how to go about it. They’re not sure what they’re home is currently worth, they don’t know what other similar homes are selling for, and they wouldn’t know how to prepare their home for sale.

Why this is effective: Use a captivating headline to capture the readers attention. Something like: How To Sell for Top Dollar In Today’s Market. Truth is, who doesn’t want to sell their home for as much money as possible? In order for this to work and convert properly, you need to pack as much information into these emails as possible.

How to use this idea: Start with an outline of everything that sellers need to know to effectively sell their home for sale for top dollar in today’s current market. Once you have your outline, you can start writing blog posts for each talking point in your outline.

Example: Selling for Top Dollar In Today’s Market (part of a 7-day email tutorial series)

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Idea: Follow-up with past clients.

When’s the last time you followed up with a past client? How many months has it been?

Some clients will never hear from their real estate agent for months after a transaction. Some clients, will never hear from a real estate agent at all.

What this is, is a missed opportunity. To follow up and keep a close relationship with your client. And to follow up at the opportunity of generating some referrals.

Why this idea is effective: Sometimes, too much time goes by before you effectively follow up with your past clients. If you put that follow up process on an auto-drip, it would be a lot easier to do though. By setting up a drip-campaign, you’re consistently following up automatically. Even if it’s just a short email to say “hello,” and find out how it’s going. Your clients might now always reply, but at least you followed up!

How to use this idea: Schedule a short follow up email, just to say “hello” to be sent a few months from now. From there, you can follow up with a series of short emails with home improvement tips. Something, to keep them engaged with things to do around the home. This way, it’s useful, relevant and helpful to them.

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Idea: Teach people about the mortgage application process. 

Just like some people are learning about the buying process for the first time, some people need to learn about the mortgage application process for the first time.

How much can they afford?

Should they work with a broker or banker? What’s the difference?

What do current mortgage rates look like? So what would my loan payment be?

Why this idea is effective: If I’m thinking of buying a house, I want to know how much house I can afford and I want to know what my monthly payment would look like. So yeah, I want to learn more about the mortgage application process. Not only do I want to know what’s needed, I want to know what pitfalls to avoid. If you teach me everything there is to know, I might just trust you enough to want to work with you.

How to use this idea: Just as we did in the examples above, make a list of everything there is to know about the mortgage application process. What paperwork do you need, what’s the difference between working with a broker versus a banker, etc. Once you have that list, write your series of posts and follow up emails for each talking point.

Any other ideas?

Can you think of any other content ideas for an effective email autoresponder? Are you currently using an autoresponder series? What works well for you?

Will you be implementing any of the content ideas here?