Lots of people ask me about the difference between what I do — custom real estate website design — and search engine optimization. It’s actually quite simple: search engine optimization (SEO) is about getting people to your site, while design is about keeping them there and converting them to leads. It should be obvious that the most gorgeous website in the world isn’t going to generate leads if no one sees it, right?

If you’re setting up a new site or having an existing low-traffic site redesigned, it’s important to understand that a simple redesign will do nothing to attract additional traffic to your site. A new design might make your site more visually appealing and professional looking to a site visitor, but it won’t get more visitors to your site. Without search engine optimization and SEO’d text content, your beautiful new design will not yield a good ROI.

Through many years of designing real estate websites, I’ve learned that most Realtors® don’t understand the difference between SEO and design, or the importance of SEO towards the success of a website. Consequently they may feel that they wasted money having a custom site designed.

I’ve also observed that most Realtors® don’t want to do much — if any — work on their sites themselves. I can count on one hand my clients who have continued to add content to their sites or blogs. Usually by the time a Realtor® can afford to contract out design, he or she is too busy to have any hands-on involvement with the website. The exceptions are often teams in which one member of the team assumes responsibility for online marketing while the other focuses on selling real estate.

Because I’m emotionally invested in creating real estate websites that generate leads, I include a lot more site set-up, content creation and on-page SEO work in my design package than another designer might include. I don’t include any off-page SEO work, such as creating links from other sites to my client’s sites, because this time-consuming and important work needs a dedicated professional’s touch.

I do, however, understand how all the different aspects of design, content creation and SEO work to make a website successful. And I fully understand the pros and cons of integrated IDX vs iframed IDX vs IDX plug-ins for Wordpress sites. of I am happy to share that information with my clients and direct them to vendors who can provide the off-page SEO services they may also need.

In fact, according to what one of my associates  tells his hosting clients, my ability to explain how all the different pieces fit together is one of the most valuable aspects of working with me.

So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the bits of information you’ve heard, get in touch. I can help sort it all out for you.

If I had a dollar for every comment I’ve read by a Realtor® saying something along the lines of “I had a  _________ website and never got any leads from it,” I would be one wealthy website designer.

Let me tell you a dirty little secret: regardless of what brand name real estate site vendor you get a site from — whether Point2Agent, Advanced Access, Z57, Number1Expert or most any other well known real estate site developer —  the chances of your getting any leads from it without you or someone else doing a hell of a lot of work on it are slim to none.

When you buy a “canned” site like those provided by these companies, you are basically getting an empty shell with nothing that will help your site get found in the search engines. There’s also likely to be a lot of boilerplate text that may actually HURT your chances of being found. Unless you either do some hard work on it yourself and/or or pay someone else to do the work, you’re S.O.L. Two or three years from now, you’ll probably look back upon your web marketing experience and have little to show for it besides a big hole in your pocket and thousands of dollars in lost income.

Don’t rely on any of the large “template real estate” site companies for SEO service or advice. One of my clients paid her former template site company $ thousands to optimize her site. Much later, she asked them why her traffic hadn’t improved and why her site didn’t look like any SEO work had been done, her customer service person said, “Oh… ha ha… You’re the first person who has ever noticed that.”

Also, most of the big template site providers were developed back in the early ’90s, when meta description tags and meta keyword tags used to be important. They are not anymore, and haven’t been since 2001. But most of the people who work at these companies  haven’t kept up with changes by the search engines, so they’re still stuck in early ’90s SEO techniques. I only know of one large, well-known real estate site developer who does good SEO work, but they charge $3000/month for search engine optimization.

What’s more, people — including so-called SEO “experts” — frequently make the broad generalization that template real estate sites can’t be optimized. That’s absolutely untrue. Some of them can be optimized. For example, I’ve had clients whose Point2Agent template sites ranked #1 in Google for highly competitive search terms, but they didn’t get there on luck alone.

Search engine optimization isn’t rocket science, but it does take time to learn and implement. You can learn to do it yourself, or you can hire an SEO expert. The important point I’m trying to make is that without this work, your brand-name real estate is will be a waste of your money and will cost you in lost income.

You may be surprised to learn how few Realtors® know the answer to my question. Out of the last 13 people who submitted the “contact me” form from my website, only 2 were able to provide this vital information.

To generate sufficient leads to support a Realtor’s® business, a site needs to get upwards of 75 to 100 visitors per day. If you don’t know how many visitors it’s getting now, then surely you don’t know what will be required to attract the requisite number of visitors.

So, the answer to my question is simple: the number of daily visitors to your site.

I know this from having worked on hundreds of real estate websites; the people who complain about not getting leads are the same people whose sites get little traffic. In my contact form, I ask for that information so that when I talk to a prospective client, I will be able to advise him or her on concerning exactly what needs to be done to create a successful website — and how much it will cost.

No real estate site will reach that desired traffic level without a concentrated effort and regular traffic monitoring by the people who are responsible for the site. The process of building traffic is called “search engine optimization” or SEO.

SEO isn’t rocket science. I’ve seen a few agents do a “bang up” job of search engine optimization on their sites. One client — Mike Valdes — is in that category. When he brought his Point2agent site to me for a redesign, it was already getting 250 visitors per day. Since moving Mike’s Tampa FL real estate site to Myrsol last November, Myrsol’s integrated MLS listings have boosted Mike’s site traffic to 850-950 visitors per day.

Unfortunately, Realtors® who have taken the time to learn SEO are a rare breed. It’s much more common for an agent to try to save money by not hiring an SEO expert and to shoot himself  or herself in the foot with inept do-it-yourself SEO work.

Amateurish SEO work doesn’t save money; it COSTS money. Every year that goes by during which your site is only getting a few visitors per day, it is costing you new business and lost income.

If you have not had professional calibre SEO work done on your site, it’s probably a safe bet that your site gets fewer than 20 visitors per day. Web hosts like Point2agent,  Advanced Access or A La Mode  do little to drive  traffic to your site, so simply changing web hosting services isn’t the answer. Good SEO work is the answer, and that’s not your web hosting company’s responsibility.

Realtors® who, like Mike Valdes, learn and do competent SEO, or like Mobile AL real estate agent Barbara Reeves, who hires professional SEO people, prosper and thrive, even in a bad economy. That’s because the Internet drives business to them: over 90% of Barbara’s business comes directly from website leads. (Does Barbara cold call? Heck no!)

If you don’t have any way to track traffic to your site,  you should install an analytics program ASAP. Google Analytics is a great free program. And there are several good stats programs for Wordpress sites. If you have a Professional or Premium Point2Agent, you already have Ultrastats, the company’s own branded version of Google Analytics accessible from your online office.

Realtor® Barbara Reeves has always done what it takes to get her Mobile AL real estate site to rank well for hundreds of high-value real estate keyphrases. Google “Mobile AL real estate” and you’re likely to see Barbara’s site in that coveted #1 position in organic (non-pay-per-click) search results.

What’s more, it’s likely to appear in the top three listings — where some 90% of click-throughs occur in Google — if you search hundreds of other real estate keyphrase for her area. (Once I even saw it come up #1 for “Mobile County garbage collection,” though she has since lost that not-so-coveted position.)

With a site that’s already performing so well, you might be tempted to think that there’s little room for improvement. And you would be wrong.

Barbara and I recently moved her site from Point2agent, where it was getting around 85-95 visitors per day,  to a hosting platform featuring true integrated IDX/MLS listings. Her new site went live on June 14, 2011. By June 28, her traffic had climbed to a new high of 199 visitors/day. Since June 14, 106 users have registered to use her MLS search.

I’ll go out on a limb and hazard a guess that within 5-6 months, her site will be getting as many as 500 visitors a day.

Charlie Gerken's new website

First  Charlie hired me to redesign his Branson real estate site at CharlieGerken.com, then he bravely trusted  my recommendation to move his site to a hosting company that offers true integrated IDX listings, very affordably.

Charlie’s old Point2Agent site had i-framed IDX listings — invisible to the search engines — as well as a few other areas where I felt there was room for improved search engine optimization. It was getting around 20 visitors per day, primarily from listings syndicated on other sites and from searches for his name or for the name of his brokerage. One positive factor  the site had going for it was a nice number of external links, around 925 by Yahoo Site Explorer’s measure.

Normally I recommend that my clients have search engine optimized text pages written for their sites and that they hire Domain Drivers to create backlinks to their sites. However, since Charlie had so many backlinks, I thought it would be interesting to see how the site benefited from  true integrated MLS listings without having that other SEO work done.

I’m pleased to report that the gamble seems to have paid off. Charlie’s new site went live May 26, 2011. His site is already getting as many as 153 visitors per day and as many as 4-5 registered users per day.

Since his site still ranks low in Google for his most important keyphrase — Branson real estate — there’s still lots of room for improvement. But I’m still really happy to see so much improvement in so little time.

Charlie, thanks for putting your faith in me and the magic of integrated IDX!

For several years, I’ve waited patiently in hopes that Point2Agent would finally begin implementing some of the features for which Point2Agent members have been asking. The most important features lacking in Point2agent sites are, in my opinion, an easy to edit dropdown menu system, customizable forms and Wordpress blogs. People at Point2Agent have been saying that big changes are coming “soon,” but they won’t say what the changes are or when to expect them.

Meanwhile, there have been several disturbing developments:

First, Point2Agent appears to be focusing its energy on providing syndication services to MLS boards. This denies Point2Agent’s best competitive advantage to its members and instead, gives this advantage to all the members of the agent’s board.

Next, last Spring Point2Agent rolled out its highly touted “integrated IDX”. Big deal! All it did was make it easier for members to i-frame IDX listings. This is NOT true integrated IDX. True integrated IDX can create thousands of pages of search engine optimized listings content, a huge advantage for attracting search traffic.

Tech savvy agents throughout the U.S. are becoming aware of the importance of true integrated listings. Furthermore, they are realizing that they can get a form of integrated listings by using various IDX plug-ins for Wordpress.

I requested, was given, and then was later denied permission from Point2Agent to offer Wordpress design to my clients. At that time, I decided it was time to withdraw from Point2Agent’s approved vendor program since it didn’t appear that the company has its members’ best interest at heart.

Finally, Point2Agent was recently sold to another company. Who knows what will happen now?

Recently, I’ve shifted my focus to designing sites to be hosted by a small real estate site development company that offers an affordable,  state-of-the-art real estate CMS system with true, fully integrated IDX. It is much less expensive than comparable services such as Real Estate Webmasters and offers a wealth of great features: a dropdown menu  system, customizable forms, built-in blog, an innovative system to auto-post new listings to a blog and more.

I’ve been delighted with my new direction and my decision to leave Point2Agent’s vendor program. No regrets whatsoever!

What are the main differences between Wordpress blogs and the blogs built into Point2Agent Premium and Professional sites?

For real estate agents, the most important difference is that a self-hosted Wordpress blog can be used with thousands of Wordpress plug-ins and widgets.

That functionality is especially important if you want to take advantage of new plug-ins such as dsIDXpress that enable search engine-friendly listings to be integrated with your blog. With the dsIDXpress plug-in, you can also have widgets such as a search widget, a “newest listings” widget and a featured listings widget. For search engine optimization reasons, this technology is light years beyond the i-framed MLS/IDX search pages typically used on Point2Agent sites.

None of the IDX plug-ins that I’ve researched display the entire MLS database and instead display only a few hundred listings for a search. This limitation may give visitors the wrong perception — that you only have access to this limited array of properties — but having some indexable listings in your site is probably better than having none.

There are also thousands of other widgets and plug-ins that can be used to add additional bells ‘n whistles to a Wordpress blog. What’s more, there are thousands of both free and paid “premium” templates available for Wordpress that make a Wordpress site’s appearance infinitely customizable. (This site is built on the premium Thesis theme.) Point2Agent’s templates are somewhat customizable, at least for those of us who know CSS and HTML.

However, the Big Kahuna – the really important difference for you real estate agents – is those searchable MLS listings. Once you get them, you’ll be amazed at how many people search for homes using MLS numbers or street addresses as search keyphrases.

The short answer is “no”. The long answer is, “well, sort of.”
Point2Agent site subscriptions come with a built-in blog based on the Community Server blog platform, which isn’t Wordpress. Not by a long shot.

The good news about Point2Agent blogs is that they are on your own domain name, so posts to and visits to your blog count for “Google brownie points”.

The bad news about Point2Agent blogs? They’re not Wordpress blogs.

Can a Point2Agent site have a Wordpress blog? Yes. There’s a little extra expense involved, and a lot of work, but it can be done.

Since the recent release of Diverse Solutions’ dsIDXpress plug-in, I have been scrambling to learn to customize Wordpress sites. This site is the “sandbox” where I’m learning, and that’s why it may look a little odd. But Diverse Solutions’ new technology is too important for me to not be able to offer it to my design clients.

I’ll be rolling out my first two custom Wordpress sites for my Point2Agent design clients here soon. Watch this space…