When planning their web presence, many agents who are
relatively new to the internet seek solutions for the wrong
problems - they put the cart before the horse.

Many may still suffer the delusion that because the internet is
used by millions of people that their web site will be heavily
trafficked and the first priority is to find ways to deal with
the "boatloads" of prospects their site will attract.

So, many agents tend to put their highest priority on finding a
system that will handle all these expected leads for them while
paying little heed to the elements necessary to get the targeted
traffic and leads in the first place.

Believe me, unless you make targeted traffic generation your
highest priority, handling "boatloads" of prospects will not be
a problem at all. In fact, you may never do a deal as a result
of your web site.

Agents tend to gush when talking about all of the gizmos,
autoresponders, and follow up systems they have in place and
readily recommend the web site providers who supply their
systems but most are completely silent when asked about the
results they are having - how many deals they do as a result of
having their web site.

That is because the real problem is getting targeted traffic,
prospects interested in buying or selling, to visit your web
site in the first place and this is largely ignored as a result
of the "build it and they will come" mentality that still exists.

Newsletters, mailing lists, and automatic followup systems are
for generating repeat visits - you can't use your automatic
systems if you can't get new visitors to your site!

Putting up a web site is not like listing a house and putting
it on MLS - it is not automatically available to all interested
parties. Having a web site is more like FSBO - without the
signage or extensive advertising there is no hope getting a
prospect in the door.

For real estate web sites, the primary signage and advertising
is good search engine positioning which does not happen by
merely having meta tags on your site and submitting as many
purport.

Unfortunately for agents, many of the more popular web site
solutions make very inadequate provisions for search engine
positioning although their powerful marketing language leads one
to overlook this fact.

Once the site is up and running, the ongoing search engine
positioning is usually left up to the agents who have little or
no experience in such matters. If they did, they would realize
that the site is not designed to place well in search engines in
the first place so they are fighting a battle they cannot win.

Recently many agents have turned to "Pay Per Click" search
engines such as Goto.com where they can buy good search engine
positioning for the most targeted keywords regardless of how
optimized their site is. This is an excellent way of generating
extra traffic and something I do myself.

However, relying on paid placement alone is not a satisfactory
solution with the cost per visitor approaching $2.00 each for
the most clicked on targeted keywords in many market areas. The
costs add up real fast!

I have not found a real estate agent yet who has enjoyed much
success on the internet without having good search engine
positioning for targeted keywords in the major search engines.

So, when planning your internet presence, make sure you have
your priorities right and put search engine optimization and
placement at the top of the list. Since it takes about 10,000
hours to become an expert at anything this is not something you
really want to take the time to do yourself. Your time is better
spent selling real estate!

Make sure your web designer has a proven track record with
placing sites well in the major search engines for the targeted
keywords actually used by buyers and sellers in your market area.

If you are building your own web site it will be well worth
your while to pay someone with search engine optimization
experience to assist you in your search engine positioning
efforts.

---------------

The Results-net House and Home Real Estate Page for your area
is a proven effective web presence system and comes as a fully
customizable package and is continuously updated to conform to
the changing criteria required by search engines - so you can
sleep nights and concentrate on selling real estate! Check it
out at http://www.results-net.com/rnc/real_estate.html


[This message has been edited by doug (edited 08-02-2003).]