We are launching a new program in January called Total Online Presence and piloted the program this fall with some of our Select Business Team members. Several of the participants were real estate agents and it was an eye opening experience for them to realize that their website hosted as part of their brokers’ platform is not helping them in terms of their online presence.
From the realtor’s perspective, they think they are getting a good value because now they have a web presence; it didn’t cost them a lot of money to establish a website and they are told it has a lot of features! All of this is true, but what the realtors don’t realize is the platform doesn’t allow them to:
- Have a blog attached to their website – which is important for SEO and for driving traffic to the website.
- Provide a place to sign up for their email newsletter.
- Put any type of trial offer (other than real estate searches) on their website as a way to capture information about guests who visit the site.
- Take advantage of SEO tactics that will help with prospects finding them on the web.
- Customize the site so that it has the same look and feel as their brand.
- Share their story and the story of their Team.
- Have a clean page – since the website is a pre-determined template, customizing it is difficult.
Until recently, websites were expensive to develop and knowledge of code was necessary. Today there are sites where you can purchase a template, add your content and you are up and running. The most popular version of this today is WordPress, but drupal, joomla are other options to consider.
These website platforms allow the user to change the content often, have a blogging component built in and can help a business improve their SEO organically. If you have a website, make sure you can customize it and maximize your SEO. Otherwise, unless your prospects know your name, it will be difficult for them to find you in an online search.
If you’d like to learn more about improving your Total Online Presence, please contact us.