The Internet has facilitated business transactions in every field, and real estate marketing is no exception. In fact, recent surveys indicate that a majority of people interested in purchasing property begin their search online, have increased knowledge of real estate as a result of using the internet, and save time while actually researching more properties than people who do not use the internet. There are many advantages for the purchaser, the seller, and the real estate agent for increasing your web presence. These benefits apply for properties for sale, lease, rent, or vacation rentals.

Advantages to the purchaser or renter of real estate internet marketing include:

• Ability to search nationwide, even worldwide, in minutes. By searching any one of several listing sites, a purchaser can compare properties of interest by a customized list of criteria varying from site to site. This is a good way to get a general idea or property types and values in an area.
• Ability to search for additional information about a community. Purchasers can identify a particular community of interest and then find our information about the local schools, government, climate, support services, etc. without having to make multiple trips or subscribe to local papers.
• Ability to contact local realtors who work in a particular area. It is simple for a purchaser to contact listing agents directly from a property listing to get instant information, and then to retain a log of these contacts if so desired.

Sellers are increasingly using real estate internet marketing techniques to promote their own properties and increase the visibility of their properties. Some of these methods include:

• Sellers can upload information on property for sale or rent to real estate listing services.
• Sellers can create a dedicated web page or blog to profile their own properties. This method is increasingly being used for vacation rental properties or home swap opportunities.
• Sellers can participate in real estate discussion groups that may help them better position their property for sale or find leads for rentals or sales.
• Sellers can submit articles or listings to real estate online magazines or article services.
• Sellers can easily and for free distribute email notices of properties for sale or rent.

Real estate agents may reap the most benefits from utilizing real estate internet marketing. Abundant services exist to help agents create customized sites, manage email lists, create newsletters, etc. While most of these services charge a fee, these services will likely pay for themselves through increased accessibility to a pool of potential clients. Buyers and sellers alike are using the Internet more often and expect to be able to find a realtor through an individual site or at least listing services. Some of the same rules that apply in general to websites apply for realtors in real estate internet marketing:

• Create a functional, appealing, easy to use site. This includes prominent contact information, easy to use searching, quick loading of pages. Options for accessing different areas of the site should be easy to identify. Choosing a color scheme and layout that are appropriate to your area of expertise (luxury property, affordable housing, commercial property) and geographic region (beach front vacation rentals, luxury ski-in ski-out homes, etc.) will help attract customers to the site.
• Employ Search Engine Optimization techniques to attract the most visitors. While there are many methods to increase SEO, some generally agreed upon rules include using relevant text and keywords, acquiring related inbound links, writing unique content articles on industry topics, and avoiding the use of frames or unrelated content.
• Capture every visitor's email address. Or try to at least. Provide an incentive for users to join your list ? a monthly newsletter, periodic information available only to members, additional user site areas for those who join.
• Start a Blog. This give you an extra opportunity to provide relevant, updated information without having to change your main site often.
• Contact your users regularly to encourage them to visit your website often.
• Write articles that you publish online. This increases the number of avenues for visitors to access your site, and allows you to demonstrate to web searches that you have expertise in your area of real estate.

An excellent article by Michael Antoniak in Realtor Magazine Online (11/2006) summarizes the need for real estate agents to participate in real estate internet marketing (http://www.realtor.org/rmoprint.nsf/pages/buyersguidenov06 ):

?Build it and they will come.? That's true only in the movies. Building a Web site is merely a start; just as crucial is a strategy for driving traffic to it. That's what makes search engine optimization so critical.

SEO vendors enthusiastically promise their respective solutions will push your site to the top of the list. Popular approaches include software that evaluates your site's HTML and content, then fine-tunes it for better placement; pay-per-click programs that charge for a good ranking in a sponsored link position; and turnkey services that optimize the site and generate external links to your site, something search engines like.

Because the rankings are so competitive and the search engines change their criteria continually, Web-savvy real estate professionals should use all the methods, says Mike Robinson, ABR®, broker-owner of Exit Realty Northwest (www.exitnorthwest.com) in Bentonville, Ark. The starting points for appealing to search engines: good content, keywords that appear in both your page content and HTML coding, and informative picture captions.?

So whether you are a buyer, seller or agent, don't delay in establishing a web presence to take full advantage of all of the benefits of real estate internet marketing.

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