Google places is a fantastic feature where an agency can dominate the local real estate market in Google with their office details and description being displayed in the search results and on a map for the local community based searches. But how can an individual agent whose office is not based in his or her farming area use this feature?

It’s really quite easy once you have a Google Account set up.

First navigate to the Google Places page and click get started now where you need to start follow the process and completing relevant details including your address and phone number. You can use your personal address here or your office address which ever you prefer.

Once you have completed your details you will be asked “Does your business provide services, such as delivery or home repair, to locations in a certain area?” If you answer “Yes” here you will see a tick box for “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing”

Once you have ticked that you can proceed to select the “List of areas served” complete this with the suburb name and state which you service as a real estate agents. You can enter multiple suburbs as well.

Complete the remaining details including a Youtube link to a profile video if you have one and click “Submit”

Because Google Places requires verification, you will be sent a postcard containing a PIN. Once this arrives you must enter it into your Google Places entry to activate it.

Marketing is an indispensable part of conducting business. Organizations with a large sum of money allocated to marketing can afford to use different kinds of media. For a self employed professional in the real estate business, considering the immense competition one is up against, real estate blogs come across as an effective and affordable marketing tool. Blogs have a wide reach and only ask for your time and creativity. It is the best place to use your sales and marketing skills. After all, if you are in the real estate business you better be good at it. Let us dig deep into the process you need to undertake in order to improve your business prospects.

1. Post about real estate in different regions
A real estate professional quite obviously needs to keep abreast with every piece of information that has the potential to impact the real estate prices in the region. Let your posts speak your mind on such issues. Talk about property in different regions and the factors that may give the prices a push in the near term. Carve out a space for yourself in the niche real estate blog segment. This will help you immensely in getting more business.

2. Promote your blog
The same strategy works here as in case of blogs in other domains. Place your comments on popular real estate blogs. Be one of the first few people to comment. Make sure that the comment takes the story forward. Build interest around yourself for people to access your blog and turn regular readers. Place the link to your blogs on all your social networking profiles.

3. Project yourself as client friendly
Tough competition in any domain implies that clients are spoilt for choice. Differentiate yourself as a premium service provider with emphasis on getting the best deals for the client. You do get your commission for the purpose but business is all about highlighting what you can do for your clients. People like to employ the services of professionals who present themselves as the ones who have the clients’ best interest on their mind.

4. Display your business acumen
We all like to work with people who come across as experts in their domain. Interesting anecdotes can do the trick for you. Let your success stories be an appropriate representation of the quality of your work. Do not exaggerate so as to avoid making all appear fraud.

5. Give snippets of information on profitable deals
You need not blow your trumpet with exact details as clients seek privacy too but you can still talk about how you clinched a deal for your client. When you specify a geographical location and drop hints on profits made by your clients, others in the region are bound to get interested in seeking your services. Make yourself easily accessible for clients to reach you as and when they want to. Once the clients make the first move, do not allow the opportunity to slip out of your hands.

Good business skills call for conversion of sales leads but before you go about doing that you need to get those leads. Use your real estate blog as a tool to assure people that you can get them the best deals in the shortest duration of time while sparing them any hassles in the process. This will act as a driving factor for your business. Do follow up on your word though.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger who also happens to be a tech buff. She is always on a lookout for latest tech stuff and recently purchased a cool ipad docking station. She is also a big fan of the concept of 3d laptop.

If you have used Google at all over the past 12 months, you will have noticed a new map appearing in the search results. The reason for this is that Google’s aim is to bring you the most relevant results for what you are searching for, right down to a local, geographic level.

The Google Map, or Google Places results, within Google Search Results are triggered when a user searches using a geographic identifier such as “Melbourne Real Estate Agent” or “Gold Coast Estate Agent”. Google takes that search, and scours it’s Google Places listings for the most relevant and geographically close result.

So now you know how and why it works, but how do you get your Real Estate company at the top of the list, and start getting more phone calls, enquiries and website traffic for these hyper-local consumers?

Now is the time to learn 7 quick tips on how you can use Google Places to attract new local clients to your business:

Use your REAL Business Name

It can be tempting to make strategic adjustments to your business name to include extra keywords. In recent months, Google has really clamped down on this, so ensure you list your real business name, with minimal additional keywords.

• Real business name – “Ray White Real Estate Adelaide”
• Google Places listing name – “Ray White Real Estate Adelaide”
• Don’t use “Ray White Home & Commercial Real Estate Adelaide, SA”

Ensure your business information is spot on

In it’s effort to present the most relevant information to users of it’s search engine, Google is obsessed with accuracy. Within your Google Places listing, ensure the following business information is filled out completely; business  address, Email, fax number, telephone number and website.

Some other things to note:

• Always use a local phone number, and never your 1300 or 1800 number

• Never use a PO Box address or you will have your listing removed

• For your website URL, point this to your contact page which already contains all of the corresponding details in your listing.

Get your business categories right

Google allows you to select up to 5 categories that your business falls under. You can either select the Google suggested categories, or if none are appropriate, you can list your own.

The best strategy here is to choose two of the Google suggested options, even if not exactly right, and then choose the remaining 3 of your own.

The most important thing is to ensure you list all 5.

Make your business description stand out form the crowd

Google gives you 200 characters to explain exactly what your business does. Make sure you include the top relevant keywords and business terms.

Highlighting achievements such as ‘Award Winning’, ‘Top Salesman’, ‘Best Clearance Rate 2010’, will work perfectly.

Use Photos and Videos

With your local listing, Google allows you to add photos and videos to your listing. Insert images such as your logo, a photo of your real estate office, photos of agency partners and awards.

For video, some great options include customer testimonials, or a company promotional video.

By using great imagery and video, you are putting your listing one step ahead of the competition by creating a more interesting listing.

Service area of retail location?

When you are specifying the locations you service, Google allows you to select either an area within a certain distance, or simply outline that your customers need to come to your location.

The one flaw in the Google system is that businesses that select a specific location rather than an area, tend to rank better.

So, choose a specific location.

Get more reviews

Reviews and testimonials are always important both online and offline. Google Places is no different. Google uses reviews of your business as a factor in determining how trustworthy your business is, and where it will rank you in the Google Places listings.

Encourage your previous clients to spend a few minutes leaving a review for your services on your Google Places page, it will help your ranking, and help you convert more of your potential customers online.

Google Places is a great tool for getting more targeted local customers. Typically as they are highly geographically targeted, they tend to also be more relevant users and convert at a much higher rate.

The above points are a great start for your Real Estate business, or any business for that matter, but like anything, it just takes time!

This article was submitted by our guest blogger – James Richardson

James Richardson is director of Optimising an SEO, PPC, Web Development agency based in Melbourne. He has worked in the Online Marketing industry for the past 7 years, and has helped over 500 businesses achieve more success with Google”

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website and/or a webpage in search engines via the natural or un-paid (organic) search results. There are 100’s if not 1000’s of factors that the search engine considers to be relevant data to increase the ranking of a website but above all….Content is King.

Many agents today use Social Media Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to share content. So how can those agents now make the next step and actually generate the content not only to improve their own online profile but also to increase their visibility in the search engines.

One strategy to consider is creating a blog  and using this to post regular and relevent content in the form of articles. Creating a blog is fairly simple. See our recent article, Tools and costs to set up your own real estate blog.

Once your blog has been set up it’s time to start producing some articles here are some ideas that I suggested in a previous article I have created my blog, Now what? – Article Suggestions

• Real Estate in your area – Basic statistics and facts about real estate in your local community.
• General Real Estate – Trends, Markets, Your perception and prediction of the future.
• Your Listings – Let’s face it, you can never give your listings enough publicity. Just make sure that your blog does not become a portal for your listings, readers will lose interest very quickly.
• Local Area – Climate, Lifestyle, Recreation. Let readers know that you are familiar with your community.
• Places of interest – Tourist Attractions, Markets, Historic monuments.
• Local Schools – How many? Primary schools, high schools, colleges, universities.
• Community centres – Churches, Scouting, Day care centres.
• Local Shops – Major stores, specialty stores, restaurants, fast food outlets.
• Local Sporting Clubs – Publish results, fixtures, stories.

So in real estate it’s important to be different, to offer something unique….A purple Cow. So here is something to try. Why not ask your vendor to write a guest article.

Your sellers can provide first hand what it’s like to live in the neighbourhood, their experiences, their favorite places and things to do.  Within no time you can add genuine relevent content to your blog, share it accross your social profiles and include them in your local marketing.

Whether your strategy is Blogging, Social media, Real Estate Video or everything and anything online, Content will always be of paramount importance to the success of your online strategy. Web users do not consume platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. They consume the content that is presented to them via those platforms.
Good luck and please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below

Many agents I speak to are a little hesitant to go down the path of producing Real Estate Videos, Their hesitation, and righfully so is that they have no idea about what to do once it has been produced. My advice to any agent wanting to use online video marketing is “Investigate your options” It probably isn’t your best option if you only want to play it over and over on your laptop.

A succesfull campaign means broadcasting it to the largest audience you can reach. So here are a few ideas to certainly get you on your way.

Youtube – any digital format video should be uploaded here, it’s free and optimized correctly will rank very competitively in the Google Search results. This is free

Email – Inlcude a link to your video in your email marketing This is free

Real Estate Portals – Nearly all portals allow for a video link to be embedded into the listing.  This won’t cost you anymore then what you are already paying.

Your own website – A no brainer and an extra benefit to the SEO of your own real estate site. You may need to check with your web developer to see if video can be incorporated into your site. If it can’t, then it’s time to upgrade

Print Media using QR Code – This is the link between your printed marketing and your online marketing. QR readers are available for most smartphones and users only need to scan the code to link them directly to the video on youtube. To download the QR reader for your iPhone click this link. Here is a link to the QR App for your Android Phone. Another QR Reader for Blackberry.  And offcourse we can not forget the QR Reader for Windows Phone 7. Once installed you can use the image below to test it out. Just scan it using your smartphone camera straight of the screen or print it and scan it of the paper. There are alos many sites where you can produce QR Codes for free. I use bit.ly.

Real Estate Video QR Code

Social Media – Broadcast to your fans and followers using facebook, twitter, linked in, Google+ Anywhere really where you can place a link or a video.

Window Display TV or in house video – It’s a nice touch to have a screen set up in your reception area or window display which can loop through current listings.

So there are a few ideas to get you started, if anyone has any more great ideas then please share them by placing a comment in this blog post.

Who will be the new star of online real estate video marketing?

How much time and money do you want to spend on optimizing your real estate site for the search engines? If your answer is “not much”. then you should at least review the 5 tips below for every page of your website and give them all an opportunity to reach a respectable rank on the search engines.

Yes, I said every page. Optimizing only your home page would be a little like the tourism council of NSW only promoting the Sydney harbor bridge, bringing visitors to it direct from the airport and after a quick visit and a photo taking them straight back so they can catch the next flight home.

Every page of your real estate site has unique content and must be optimized accordingly. Take a little time and make some notes on every page to establish what the theme is. The theme will become the unique title for that page.

So here are 5 tips to optimizing every page of your real estate site.

1. Page Title - Create a unique page title for your webpage incorporating the pages theme and other relevant keywords. Ensure that every page has a unique page title.

This is the page title of a web page

1. Title Tags – Every page should include a visual title (different to page title). This title can be a duplicate of your page title and must be visual. This title should be wrapped in <h1>Title</h1> tags to let search engine spiders know that this title displays the relevance of the page.
2. Descriptive text – Every page must include at least a brief description of its content. I would never publish a page that has images only. Search engines love text and this is what’s used to determine relevance and rank.
3. Internal Links –  Ensure that every page inlcudes links to other prominant pages of your site. If you use a CMS like wordpress there are many “breadcrumb” style plugins that you can use too. These are great for internal linking and allow search engines to review your site with ease.
4. External Links – Use keywords, relevant to the theme of each page as anchor text to link back from other websites.

By following the above tips for each page you will give them all a chance to increase their rank in search engines like Google and Bing. This will obviously see more visitors to your site.

What do you need? and what does it cost to set up your own real estate blog. Well it’s probaly simpler then you think. For those of you who have been thinking about it but have always put it in the too hard basket. You may want to read on. It really isn’t that hard. So here’s what you need to set up a real estate blog:

1. A Domain Name – Also known as a URL, your domain name is the address of your real estate blog. When choosing a name try and use words that are descriptive of your product. Using words like real estate, property, your local suburb or region will increase your chances of being ranked higher in search engines like Google. There are plenty of Australia sites where you can check domain name availability. I personally use Crazy Domains as they are cheap (Approx $30.00 for 24 months) and easy to use.
2. A Hosting Service – This is where your website lives. Basically a hosting provider will offer you space on their massive computer systems which stay online all the time. This blog is hosted on IX Webhosting. At about USD $4.00 per month they don’t dig too deep into your marketing budget. Regardless of which service you choose to host your website just make sure they offer the basics like PHP and MYsql which in basic english are technologies required to display your content on visitors computer screens.
3. Content Management System (CMS) – There’s a few you can choose from but in my opinion I wouldn’t look further than WordPress it’s free and has nearly everything in it to deliver optimized content to your potential readers. Once downloaded you need to edit a file with your hosting service login details and a few other pieces of data all clearly outlined in the wordpress installation manual.
4. Real Estate Theme – WordPress blogs can take many shapes however for the ultimate real estate experience you will need a real estate theme which incoprorates all the elements required to post listings and display them on Google maps and offer photo galleries etc. Most wordpress themes are free however for a real estate theme you may consider making a small investment as this is ultimately the finishing touches on your real estate blog. One such theme is Smooth Real Estate, Cost is USD $39.95 and definitely worth every penny

So there you have the basics you need to set up your own real estate blog. All you need to do now is bring them all together. You will need to make sure that your domain names point to your hosting service and that you install the wordpress CMS on your hosting service, once that is done you will need to install the real estate them and start adding content.

Cost Summary:

• Domain Name –  +/- $30 for 2 years
• Hosting Service –  +/- $100.00 for 2 years
• WordPress CMS – FREE
• Real Estate Theme – +/- $40.00
• Total Cost (Excluding Time) $170.00 with annual recurring charges of between $80.00 and $100.00.

Do you have a real estate blog? Why not post a link to it on this blog, just go to our real estate links page and add your link.

Happy Blogging

Let’s start this article with some impresive stats, courtesy of Mobile Future and an even more impresive video about how mobile devices and apps grew in 2010:

• Five billion apps were downloaded in 2010, up from 300 million in 2009
• Five million people joined Foursquare, up from 200,000 last year
• Twitter mobile usage experienced a year-to-year increase of 347%
• Facebook recorded 200 million mobile users in 2010.
• The number of YouTube videos played on mobile devices was 100 million… each day!
• And our favorite: the average US teenager knocked out 3,339 text messages a month. Yow.

So where to now in 2011?

We can quite safely assume that mobile devices will very soon become the number 1 device for viewing online content, so is your website mobile ready? Speak to your developers and ask the question. Yes you may be able to view your site on a mobile or smart phone but is it optimized for these devices?

Take this blog for example. If you were viewing this from a mobile device a few weeks ago you would have left the site as quick as you found it because letter fonts are too small and the layout with the 2 sidebars take up a lot of the valuable screen real estate. To fix this I deployed a wordpress plugin called WP Mobile Detector. Now my blog will recognize what type of device is viewing my pages and change it’s format accordingly. Give it a try using your iPhone or other mobile/smart device. The layout, font size is automatically adapted to suit the device and the visitor will stay to read on.

So for a blog it’s as easy as installing a plugin. For your site it may be a little more complex and you will need to speak to your developer, however, failure to do so can lead to visitors skipping the content on your site and moving on to that of your competitors.

My apologies in advance for getting a little geeky in this post. Page speed is however, a vital factor in why your real estate website does or does not rank in search engines like Google.

Page load time is the time that it takes for every component of a particular webpage to be displayed. This is not just the Titles, Text and Images but also hidden code like css, javascript, html & flash all of which are required to display the end product to your visitor.

When google spiders crawl through your website they don’t want to be slowed down by fancy code, they (Google Spiders) believe that if they are slowed down, the visitors to your site will also be slowed down. This is why slow sites are penalized with lower rankings, because Google always wants their users to have a positive and fast experience.

What Will Slow Down Your Site?

Any items like frames and automated scripts are the usual suspects. They will all slow down the load time of your site. However, one of the most common culprits are images. So often website owners will load images to their website which are not optimized for the web, meaning they have not reduced the file size and there for drastically increase the time it takes for a page to load.

I found a great free tool on www.pingdom.com which will run a test on your site and let you know what it is that is slowing your page load time. By using this tool I my self found that my pageload time for this blog was 6.7 seconds which is far too slow. A few tweaks later and singling out 1 particualr image which wasn’t optimized I reduced it to 3.26 seconds. My blog now loads twice as fasta and will hopefully be rewarded as such with higher rankings in Google. here are the results of my blog;

Results for www.realestatemarketing-blog.com

Try this tool your self, just enter your web address and hit enter. You may not understand everything that the report returns, however, you can forward it to your web developer and discuss ways to reduce the load time of your pages. Good Luck!

Relevant content on your real estate blog is essential for SEO. This is why comments to your articles are fantastic as they provide more content to the conversation. Blogging is essentially asking for interaction and Google definitely ranks pages higher in their index if they have created interaction and conversation.

These days it’s becoming more apparent that the consumers of content are more likely to comment on a facebook post than an article written on a blog so some clever people have built a wordpress plugin to import facebook comments to your blog.

How Does It Work?

1. Download or install via your WordPress admin page the Facebook Comments Importer plugin.
2. Activate the plugin and navigate to the FB Comments Importer Settings page
3. Enter your facebook page id number. If your not sure what this is or where to find it, just hover your mouse over your facebook pages profile picture and the id will appear on the URL at the bottom of your browsers page. You can also right click your profile picture and select properties.
4. Add a post to your facebook page and include the full link to your blog post. Now every time someone comments on that article it will also display as a comment on your blog. **BE PATIENT** it can take an hour or 2 for the comments to appear after it as added to facebook. but it does work.

Feel free to test the plug in out. Just go to my Online Agents Facebook Page and comment on any post which includes a link to an article on my blog.