real/diaBlog - because real estate needs to change

Internet Marketing for Real Estate - Start Here

This is the official roll out of our Success Seminar - Page 1 of Google in 90 Days or Less.  The live seminar that we have been running is 90 minutes long and includes all 11 Steps of the Program described in detail.  But it doesn't have everything that this new online seminar does.

We have taken the entire seminar and put it online and included introduction videos to all 11 steps as well as screen capture videos of exactly how to do each step.  There are 32 videos in all.  And there are links to additional resources.  

If you want to capture real estate consumers that are searching for homes in your exact geographical location, than this is the most comprehensive solution available today.  It starts out by identifying your key target market area, walks you through the purchase and building of your site and finishes with action items specifically designed to make your site the best possible site as seen by search engines.  

It is the most powerful and comprehensive solution for internet marketing.  It is free.  It will allow you to personally control your own website traffic and once you have it up and running it will continuously drive traffic to your site.  

Here is a list of the 11 Steps that make up the Success Seminar.

1. Target Market Research
2. URL Selection
3. Purchasing Your Site
4. Content Management Software Install
5. Website Setup
6. Search Engine Basics
7. Business Pages
8. Front Page Design
9. Search Engine Submissions
10. Video Content
11. Link Building

Please take a couple minutes and sign up for access to the seminar.  Also, if you feel the urge, let others know about the site.  Our goal is to get as many agent sites onto page 1 of the search engines as possible and displace all the internet companies that are selling our leads back to us.

Also, there is an Option 4 Success Forum set up for everyone to share ideas and thoughts regarding this program.  Please use it whenever you want.  

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Getting to Page 1 of Google in Less Than 60 Days

Google Juice - The Proof

So I got to the front page of a one word search in google in under 60 days.  Here is the google search page for Broadlands.  And here is the registration page for my url which is broadlands1.com.  I bought the url at the end of November of last year.  I put up a wordpress.org site on December 1st, 2009.  On January 27th the url first hit page 1 of google.  It has since been as high as #9 and currently sits at #10. 

These past 4 months have been spent working on a this project as well as 2 other projects that are focused on getting agents the one thing that they want more than anything else - high quality real estate leads.  Leads that are targeted and qualified.  Our main focus has been creating a program made up of duplicatable online systems that agents can use to generate leads that will drive their business.  Here is a preview of the program.

Option 4 Success - The Program

And we are working on being able to prove that these systems and techniques work and work well.  The first test was the 60 day SEO rule for web site creation.  We wanted to be able to claim that we can get to the first page of search results for a targeted google search.  We wanted the search to be real estate targeted but not so targeted that the traffic would be too low to generate enough leads.  We wanted to do it with a site that needed little input from the agent.  And we wanted to be able to do it multiple times so that we knew it wasn't just a fluke.

More Proof

The Broadlands site was one test of the program.  This search word was highly competitive with over 600,000 sites in direct competition.  It also gets a high amount of traffic.  There are between 200 and 1200 google searches a day for that one word.  And although this search is not real estate specific, it gave us a good idea of our upper limits of the 60 day rule.  

A more real estate focused search that we optimized for was Homes for Sale in Sterling.  This site gets much less traffic but it is highly focused.  Our site is currently #4 on the page and ranks higher than zillow and homes.com sites.  (Beating out these leads generating sites that charge agents for leads is one of our biggest goals).  Getting to page 1 for a search like this can take as little as 30 days.  And getting above the fold and eventually into position #1 can be done a lot quicker as well.  

And as an example of how little an agent needs to do to build a site that gets to the top of a google search here is an example using the search Brambleton Va.  Our site is currently in the #5 position and there is almost no content on the site.  

The Target Agent

The program has been developed with a certain agent in mind.  An agent that has been doing business but wants to have more control over their lead flow.  An agent that does 6-12 deals a year but now wants to step up to the next level and reach the 24-30 deal level.  An agent that knows that online marketing and advertising are the best tools for growing a business but doesn't have the time to write a blog post every day or keep up with the latest SEO techniques. An agent that wants to spend money but needs to know that what they spend money on will come back to them 5, 10, 20 fold.  They don't want to waste time or money but want to put resources toward building their future business.  

It is not for agents that like the technical aspects of internet marketing.  It is not for agents that have more fun with the online aspect of real estate instead of the deal making aspect of real estate.  It is not for agents that are new to the business and are starting from scratch (although it is great for a newbie working with a good mentor that is in the program).  It is not for agents that already have control over their entire lead flow with existing marketing.

This is the very first public description of any part of the Option 4 Success program.  There will be more details to follow about the other parts of the program and how all the parts work together to generate leads.  I will also describe some of the ways the program can be used to improve your current lead conversion and closing rates.  Who wouldn't like to secure 2 or 3 more buyers a year with little or no effort.  If you are interested in the program, drop me a line, and I will go over the details with you one-on-one.  Or you can sign up directly on the site and I will follow up with you.  We are currently looking for agents in certain geographical locations as well as sole-proprietor brokers that meet certain minimum criteria.

Real Estate News and Blog Post Aggregation - Realdiggity

As some of you already know, I have been working on a site that people can use to get all the news about real estate in one place.  I orginally set it up using drupal but it was too cumbersome and bug ridden.  I have found another site called slinkset and now I have it up and running on that platform.  

Here is the new Realdiggity.

I have added a lot of rss feeds from the best of the real estate blogs and websites.  But if there are some that you want me to add let me know. Or you can sign up and add ones that you feel are worthy of inclusion.

Also, there is a widget you can add to your blog or website that will feed the stories directly to your site so your visitors can see the headlines.  I have it in my sidebar so you can check it out.

You can use the site to rank the stories you feel are the best much like social bookmarking sites like digg and reddit.  You can add a story from a non-real estate site that has a real estate specific story by using the submit button.  You can also add a bookmarklet that will automate the submit function and fill in the title and link automatically.

I would like this site to be free of all advertising of homes for sale.  There are many other sites already available for that.

Please use this site as a resource when dealing with topics regarding real estate.  This includes tips on buying, selling, loans, interest rates, foreclosures, short sales, statistics, etc.  You don't have to sign up, but that would be cool too.

The Power of Google Reader - 500+ Articles a Day

During a typical day I will browse the headlines of 500-800 stories in my Google Reader.  I skim the headlines for articles, posts or stories about 4 or 5 different areas of interest:

1. Finance and Economics - I used to be a financial analyst, investment banker and ran a brokerage firm for a number of years.  The stories I usually pick up are about areas of the economy and financial information as it affects real estate.
2. Communication - Lately I have been focusing on stories about Social Media, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook specifically.
3. Real Estate - National stories about builders, trends, brokerages, foreclosures as well as local real estate information here in the Washington DC area.
4. Bicycling - I ride a bike for excercise, to save money and to maybe save a tree or two.

In Google Reader I will share all the stories I feel are important enough that others should read if they are concerned or interested in the same things I am.  Of the 500+ headlines I skim, I read about 20-30 stories a day and share about 3 or 4 on a typical day.  This takes about 2 hours each day.  So if you subscribe to my reader you will in essence have done pretty much the same amount of reading as I have, only it has taken you only a couple minutes to do the same thing. 

If you want to follow along you can bookmark Tony's Google Reader Page.  You can also go to Google Reader and add me to your list of people to follow.  My email address is tonyarko at gmail. 

Realdiablog as Seen by Wordle

FranklyMLS Better than Matrix Wireless

Frank LLosa of Frankly Realty has built a search site that is better than the search site that the MRIS makes agents use to access the MLS.  The reason it is better is very simple - his search site is simple and fast and gives you what you need.  The Matrix Wireless system is complicated, slow, ackward and is less comprehensive than Frank's site.

FranklyMLS.com is the name of the site and it is lightning fast. 

Realtor.com vs Zillow vs Trulia - Back To Real Estate 2.0 Basics

With all the recent talk about subprime mortgages, foreclosures and government bail outs, the days of comparing Zillow with Trulia with Realtor.com seem to be gone. That's why we'd like to revisit those discussions from the angle of "what's been going on with these three since we lasted talked about them?". Well, here are some graphs from Compete.com comparing the three sites in terms of people count, visits and rank.

People Count -the number of people visiting the site:

Since November 2006, Realtor.com has increased their people count by 10.8 percent; Zillow by 17.4 percent; Trulia by 191.3 percent. Though Realtor.com is still the king of the people count with 5.7M people coming through last month, it has lost significant ground in the latter part of 2007. This is not good news for the giant because, while they were losing ground, Zillow was relatively flat overall and Trulia continued to grow.

Pages Per Visit - the number of pages an average person views on a visit to each site:

Since November 2006, Realtor.com has decreased their pages per visit by 22.6 percent; Zillow has increased by 15.5 percent; Trulia by 151.4 percent. Realtor.com currently has the most pages per visit, but lost significant ground between March and November. Realtor.com actually ranked second below Trulia between July and the middle of September. But then Trulia took a nose dive beginning in September, plateauing in the beginning of October allowing Realtor.com to stay at the top spot. Zillow basically went sideways.

Does this mean that people are finding the content on Trulia more valuable and appealing than Realtor.com or Zillow? Does it mean that Trulia offers information that is no found on Realtor.com (e.g. Trulia Voices)? What caused Trulia's nose dive in September? What can Zillow do to increase their pages per visit?

Average Stay - the number of minutes an average visitor spends on each site during each visit

Since November 2006, the average stay on Realtor.com has gone down 17.1 percent; Zillow down 18.6 percent; Trulia's visitors have increased their average stay by 8.6 percent. You'll notice though Trulia nearly quadrupled their pages per visit between November 2006 and August 2007, those same people only increased their average stay by about 25 percent. It seems like the pages seemed interesting to people at first (hence the increased pages per visit), but the pages didn't keep them there very long for whatever reason.

One last statistic that some may find interesting is regarding the overall rank of each of the three sites:

• Realtor.com is still the top ranking site at 181, but is down 34 percent over the last 12 months
• Zillow ranks number 850 and is down 50 percent over the last 12 months
• Trulia is the lowest ranking site at 1,216, but is up 72 percent over the last 12 months

Each of the three graphs and this last statistic above tells a different story and perhaps, they all combine to tell one overall story.

What do you think?

Related Articles:

Warning Zillow Investors - You Should Give Your Money To Trulia

List of Listing Sites

Warning Zillow Investors - You Should Give Your Money to Trulia

It was just announced that Zillow received another $30,000,000 in funding to go along with the $57,000,000 they have already received in two previous rounds of investing.  According to the article, the money will be used to accelerate the offerings from Zillow to homeowners and real estate professionals.

I'm not sure what analysis the investors used to determine Zillow was worthy of additional funding but I can tell you they probably didn't talk to any real estate professionals, they probably didn't do a random check of the zillow zestimate to check for accuracy and they didn't compare site traffic growth of zillow to their main competitor, trulia. 

If they had here is what they would found:

As the marketplace leader here in Loudoun County Virginia, a county with a per capita household income level that is 2nd in the entire United States, I have listed and sold close to 200 properties in the last 4 years.  In that time I have consulted with over 500 homeowners on the value of their houses and have been inside well over 2000 homes in that same time period.  I can tell you that without a doubt, zillow's method for valuing a home is a complete joke.  In fact, I don't think they have even tried to fix the algorithms used to create their zestimates since they rolled them out.  Last November I wrote a post comparing the AVM websites and their results.  Zillow was a featured site and they valued the subject property at $482,684.  At the time their estimate was too high by about $65,000 or 15.5%. 

In the last 10 months, the market has gone nowhere but down.  The last sale in my neighborhood of the exact same model as the subject property, with the exact same features, backing to the exact same trees was $389,000 on July 31st, 2007.  Another home on the next street over, same model, same features, sold for $425,000 in April.  There has been a trend downward in the past year and these two sales illustrate that.

So what does Zillow say the house is now worth?  $528,788!!  What kind of algorithm are they using, or what kind of data are they gathering that could INCREASE the value of a townhome $46,104 when in reality the price of the home went down $15,000+?  How is that possible?  And why would someone give $30 Million to a company that is making these ridiculous calculations and holding them out to the general public as a valuation?  It is obvious that they have given up trying to make their zestimates accurate and are focusing their efforts in other areas.  I say this because there is so much inaccuracy in the data (they change the subject property from a townhouse to a single family home) abondonment could be the only explanation. 

But maybe their new features are generating traffic and page views and keeping people on their site longer and the zestimate is just a tool to get them to the site.  Let's see. 

In this graph, it shows that the overall traffic over the last twelve months has gone up a whopping 1.8%.  Compare this to Trulia's traffic growth rate in the last year of 301.6% and it is just a matter of time before Zillow gets passed.  I'm not sure the Zillow investors saw these numbers before they made their $30,000,000 bet but maybe they are looking at how long visitors are staying on the site.  Maybe Zillow is increasing the length of time and page visits of their visitors through superior features.  Let's take a look.

Once again, this graph shows zillows pages/visit has increased 1.1% in the last year while Trulia's has grown by 334%.  Whooops.  Maybe the investors were looking at length of time per visit.  Maybe the information on each page of zillow is so comprehensive they can only absorb 10 pages of information in the time it takes a Trulia visitor to look at 25 pages.  Let's see.

I almost found a statistic that showed zillow as the better investment.  But it turns out that the average stay of a trulia visitor has been longer since April.

In my previous life I was a financial analyst for a mergers and acquisition firm and an investment banking firm.  I can tell you that this is by no means a comprehensive analysis of zillow and it doesn't take into account factors that outsiders are not privy to.  Maybe they have another killer application in the pipeline.  But as a representative of both of their target audiences, homeowners and real estate professionals, I can tell you that my money is on Trulia.

Update:  Joel over at FoREM just published this post about the same topic.

Further Reading: Trulia Leaps Ahead To Become One of the Top 3 Trafic Drivers To Real Estate Companies Nationwide - AOL Money and Finance

What Happened to Postlets?

My marketing manager just informed me that Postlets.com is not working.  It seems this has happened before back in February.  I don't want to jump to conclusions and say they have gone out of business without knowing.  I did several searches and nothing came up regarding their website being down.

If anyone has an idea of what is going on, could you fill the rest of us in.  Maybe Joel at FoREM knows something or Pat at Transparentre or someone over at Inman.

UPDATE

Postlets is back up this morning.  Guess it was a temporary glitch.

Google Real Estate Beta Site Update

Since posting "Zillow, Trulia and now...Google?", we've run across some more information about Google's secret beta property search project. Avi from Promediacorp and Shimon Sandler ran across the beta site and revealed the info the public. Even though Google has since removed the site from public view, there are some screenshots still floating around.

(For more screenshots, click here)

Look out Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, brokerage firms and the industry in general. Not many companies have more programmers or deeper pockets than Google. Nor do many companies have the guts Google has to challenge the status quo.

Question(s)...Will agents and brokers pull their keyword search dollars out of Google and dump them into Yahoo, MSN and others and how much revenue will Google loose because of it? Where will Google make up the revenue?