Real Estate Blog

It’s a large real estate agency, and the company depends on a steady stream of leads. The website is classy, with delightful graphic elements and layout. There is well-written copy, designed to both entice the reader and search engine spiders. The website was obviously done by a professional and probably cost a bit of money.

Only the website missing something — an easily found address and phone number!

While researching realtor websites a few months, we came across a suprisingly large number of real estate websites where the contact information was buried. Some websites put their contact information on a Contact or About Us page. Even worse, a few had their contact information enbedded in an image. Search engines don’t read text in images. Users can’t copy and paste from an image if they want to copy your address to, say, a mapping program.

It’s like putting a sign above your office building and forgetting to unlock the door.

Don’t bury your most important information. Contact information should be in the footer of every page and preferably higher on the website’s home page. Each individual listing should have associated contact information. Real estate is one of the few types of websites where an interested customer is actually likely to pick up a phone and call rather than email you.

Sometimes, with everything that goes into creating and marketing a website, the simplest things are left behind. Don’t let it happen to you!

Brought to you by RealEstateAgentProfiles.com and RealtyFeedSearch.com - helping real estate agents improve their search engine marketing.

This article may be republished without changing the content and the bio box.

More:
Realtors: Forget Your Address?

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Looking to gain another edge on its rivals, Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. on Wednesday will begin testing a new e-mail folder designed to make it easier for people to track the latest information posted on their favorite Web sites.

The free feature relies on Really Simple Syndication, an increasingly popular technology that can compile content from a wide array of Web sites catering to a user’s personal tastes.



More …

Read the rest here:
Yahoo Unveils RSS E-Mail Folder

‘Add to Google’ has been added to the quickSub RSS button functionality, which provides a list of newsreaders to which users can add RSS feeds.



Now, when people choose the ‘Add to Google’ option on the subscribe list, they are directed to add your feed to either their personalized edition of the Google homepage or Google Reader.

Credit:
Add To Google button added to subscription button functionality

Web feeds, or RSS, has exploded in popularity over the last few years. It’s a powerful marketing tool that will have a major affect on real estate marketing. Millions of people use web feeds every day. Most users view feeds through Newsreaders, but many web browsers and future operating systems are incorporating this technology.

If you are looking for a house or a place to rent, use web feeds to keep up with the latest listings. You can use feeds to easily keep track of properties from a wide variety of sources. As new properties are added to the feeds, you are notified almost immediately. If you see something you like, you can go directly to that property’s web page. This saves time over continually checking individual web sites for updates.

Many real estate websites offer the ability to subscribe to email updates. Unlike e-mail, web feeds have a 100% delivery rate and there is no risk of spam problems.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult these days to find real estate professionals offering web feeds, let alone feeds that are purely property-driven or contain news specific to a certain geographic area. A majority of feeds are offered through ‘blogs’ of various qualities. More savvy professionals break their web feeds into categories, such as commercial, rentals and residential properties. Even mortgage finance professionals can use web feeds to keep customers and potential customers aware of market changes.

As web feeds become more popular with the average user, expect more real estate professionals offering their listings via web feeds. If you aren’t finding the feeds you want, ask for them!



S.R. Daley is the web developer for http://www.myrealtyfeed.com, a service that allows real estate professionals to maintain multiple RSS feeds with a simple web interface. Those who have real estate feeds can submit them to http://realtyfeedsearch.com — a free real estate feed directory.

Original post:
Using Real Estate Web Feeds For House-Hunting