Image by Getty Images
via Daylife

Back when the market was smoking hot, sellers wanted their agents to hold open houses to bring in the buyers.

Well now the market is smoking hot again, but for different people. With the flood of foreclosures on the market, the banks are the sellers and they are looking for buyers. We may not have the pressure from them to hold open houses, but to gain prospects, open houses are a great tool.

Even if you don’t have a listing to show as an open house, ask another agent if you can hold their listing open.

You’ll have a flood of potential buyers at your fingertips that you can match with other properties and prospect.

Have a simple information card that they fill out so that you can contact them later.

Try it a few times. You’ll be surprised at how many prospects you can gain.

One man thinks so, and a lot of other real estate professionals might agree. Especially tech savvy ones.

Galen Ward posted a blog entry regarding Trulia’s so-called “underhanded” SEO (search engine optimization practices). In most geographic areas a search for “san francisco real estate” for example will pull up Trulia’s website as the first result, burrying other relevant local real estate companies websites. Ward believes this to be unfair.

One of his very valid beefs is that Trulia makes links to your website on their website, no-follow links. This means that search engines like Google and Yahoo will ignore linking to your website, losing out on precious SEO ranking.

While it is more than likely not the case that Trulia wants to destroy your website ranking, they definitely do want to rank number one. Are you getting what you expected from your relationship with Trulia?

Also, take a look at how they optimize their website. Talk to your IT administrator to see if you can do the same. A couple things that I have noticed that would really make a difference in a real estate websites rankings is having a landing page for each city that you do business in. Also make the URL for that city search engine friendly, ie: http://www.pmz.com/modesto/ca/real-estate/ or http://www.pmz.com/stockton/ca/real-estate/. For each of those landing pages, in the title and metadescription, include something like, “Modesto Real Estate & Modesto Homes for Sale” to make it more relevant to your geographical area. That’s really just the beginning.

Agents, I know many of you have your own websites that you promote.  It might have happened to you already too; you get that call from an unknown number that is trying to sell you an Search Engine Optimization(SEO) package.  Claiming they can get you onto the first page of Google within a week.

Be wary. Many of these SEO experts don’t help optimize your website for search engines, but instead want you to spend money on Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising.  This is the type of advertising you see on the right side of Google when you do a search for real estate or any other hot keyword(s).  While effective, this type of advertising could end up costing you a good chunk of change and might not give you the long term results you are looking for. Actual SEO is the optimizing of your website and it’s structure so that search engines can crawl it easily and the process of adding unique content, to name a few tactics.
The best thing to do is ask questions.  Ask your technology experts at your real estate firm about the credibility of the companies calling you.  It’s likely that they will either know right away, or with a little research will be able to tell you whether or not that SEO company is not only reliable, but delivers results.

Also, ask the SEO experts about your website.  Have they actually been to your website? Do they know how old your website is? Do they know where it currently ranks?

Asking questions and staying informed will help keep you a leader in your industry and also save you from being taken advantage of.

Kelly just posted an article regarding the sale of virtual real estate on SecondLife (the online, virtual reality world).

I just found another article on MediaPost’s Marketing Daily that announced the first broker to market an ACTUAL home through virtual reality. The broker, located in Washington, hired an outside company to build a duplicate of the real house into the virtual realty world.

Prospective buyers, or just the curious, can go to the virtual home on SecondLife and “walk” through the 5,702 square-foot house to get a 3D view of every room in the house.

Read the full article here.

It seems as though this website, Agentopolis.com, is cataloging all the agents in the country, including each agent’s business and contact information.

If I were you, I would go update my information. The webmaster of the site boasted an estimated 100,000 page views in January and it looks as if your agent profile will be crawlable (searchable) through Google and Yahoo, so you would want the most up-to-date and accurate information showing in case people visit.

Internet marketing is fun! Haha.

More proof from one of the world’s most successful businessman that traditional advertising is out, and that the Internet is where it’s at. Microsoft Chairman and Founder, Bill Gates, spoke to an audience of Microsoft’s top advertisers this Tuesday about the future of advertising and why traditional models of advertising such as Newspapers, Yellowpages and TV Commercials no longer make sense.

• Newspapers - Who doesn’t hop online these days to find out the latest news in their city or the Nation? Real estate, classifieds, news, opinions. You can find better content in personal blogs than your local newspaper most of the time.
• Yellowpages - Please! We have Google Local Search, Yahoo Local Search, MSN Local Search. These sites get updated ALL the time. Your regional Yellowpages get updated, what, every 6 months? Come on.
• TV Commercials - Did someone say TIVO?! Everyone who is anyone either has or is thinking about buying a DVR (Digital Video Recording device) for their TV so they can not only watch TV on their schedule, but fast-forward through commercials during the next episode of (insert favorite TV show here).

To read Bill Gates’ take on the future, click here.