subject: How You Can Get more leads from Google [print this page] How You Can Get more leads from Google How You Can Get more leads from Google
You Need The Web to Generate New Business for You. Often it Doesn't. Why? How You Can Get more leads from Google?
The current economy has created an urgency like never before: every agent could use a big package of new clients from the Internet, and the time is now. In an economic downturn like today, nothing rescues an agent better than an unexpected sale from an new source. It sure would be super to have an internet surfer find you online and start chatting with you now about a sale, right?
Just as the need for new leads and business to break through for you becomes more and more important, chances are you aren't benefiting from the web. Many agents that try to get their pages ranked on Google realize the competition can be brutal and often throw in the towel. The old methods of seo and website optimization are long outdated and Internet real estate marketing has never been more challenging. If an agent blogged daily and optimized the articles to their best ability, chances are the articles still wouldn't rank well for high traffic keywords unless they were located in a micro marketplace.
Think about it- The expansion of many new sites, blogs, and corporate optimization for real estate locations have subjected the SEO efforts of average Joe agent useless. Professional SEO companies also struggle to get clients into prime web real estate for desired search terms. Yet consider this- there are MANY agents who get new clients from the web daily, and couldn't survive otherwise. How? How are they getting found on the almighty Google yet you can't? And let me just say, I'm not talking about the agents name as the keyword, I'm talking area specific searches, which are MUCH more desired of course due to traffic. If you can't be found for the term for which you are operating, you aren't going to make money, right?
The Winds of Google are blowing harder than ever- and you away from your customers..here's why:
Aside from what's going on behind the magic curtain at Google, it has become ever more difficult to rank for desirable real estate keywords for some reasons you may not be aware.
The Internet is growing faster than ever. In 2004 there were approximately 11 billion webpages. In mid 2010, the internet has ballooned to almost 27 billion pages. More competition for you, my friend. The good news is, searches have ALSO ballooned. More people choose the web when researching real estate than any other source.
The number of internet searches continues to explode. Alongside the growth of new websites, consumers more often use the web to find whatever they are searching for. Think about it: In 2006 Google recorded around 110 BILLION searches, and by 2010, many estimated Google was seeing over 1 Trillion searches annually. That's alot of people looking for alot of stuff.
Corporate America recognized early on the value in ranking well and is optimizing for their lead services.In most major markets, the top ten search results are often corporate sites like Yahoo real estate,Trulia, Zillow, and others. These sites cast a big fishnet trying to get as many leads as they can and then resell again and again to many agents. This is just one reason why the competition for page one is nothing short of fierce. Agents located in small markets may be lucky: they can still rank well on Google because even big money business can't optimize corporate sites for all locations, neighborhoods and communities and solid seo can still can get sites on page one of Google in these situations. Real estate marketing studies have proven that consumers want to deal with an individual agent. The studies have also highlighted the fact that when an Internet client contacts an agent and that agent follows up with them, overwhelmingly the client stays with that agent to the completion of a sale.
There's huge opportunity for those who get found on Google.
The takeaways: There are a boatload more websites today than there were just a few years ago, and there are 12-15 times more searches: there are big corporate companies working the same or similar real estate searches, but in the end they are not giving the individual agent service consumers expect when they search for "Irvine Homes for sale" etc etc: These facts make it harder than ever for a client to connect with an agent. This has created a huge oppotunity in Internet marketing: The Agent Lead Generation site.
What is an Agent Lead Generation site? An Agent Lead Gen site is a website dedicated to a sole purpose: Internet leads. Usually, such a site is created for you by others, using ppc/ paid search on Google etc.
Blog sites seek to educate, whereas a lead site introduces a dialog with an Web buyer; one which the buyer explains exactly what they want so that you can deliver it to them. Currently, there are 3 such businesses who build and manage such sites, each with its own marketing direction to Web Lead Generation and pricing structure: TigerLeads, Market Leader and Superior have jumped out front with this effective Internet marketing process. TigerLeads has an exclusive license for an area; the agent pays a sizeable fee, for say, Orlando Florida (often as much as $50,000 +), and a monthly fee and gets all leads generated for that geographic. Tiger Leads uses Google pay-per-click for their clients. Market Leader is the largest of the three companies. They sell multiple clients in each and every location, and their pricing is based on a monthly fee, along with a monthly PPC budget, and they often resell leads they generate to multiple agents.
Superior-Seoprovides a product that is area specific for the client. This product is by far the least costly to use, and the program includes organic SEO along with Google PPC, a lead generation website with lead conversion form for unique visitors registrations. All leads generated on the corresponding sites are owned by the agent exclusively, and all is included in a low monthly payment. And there are no contracts. Agents can cancel at any time.
Recap
All three of these service do have distinct advantages. One thing is for sure- agents these days cannot survive without the internet, and these services help agents do what they do best- sell homes. Another bonus with all of these services is the online marketing assistance to the agent, which is usually a part of all their services; insider secrets that aide the agent to garner quality leads that convert into sales.
Considering just a few years ago so few agents received little to no income from Internet generated sales, now with the mass exodus of clients moving online for research, it makes sense to align with them sooner than later. 5 years ago, very few agents ever considered an Agent lead site. Now there are many of them are cropping up, assisting agents sell homes to Web buyers. Now is the time to get creative with marketing efforts, otherwise the economic times might be too much to handle.
