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from Results-net.com
By: Doug Towes, Editor
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About the Leaders Post
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The Leaders Post is the newsletter for real estate
professionals committed to Net Success - from Results-net.com, an
online community of real estate professionals dedicated to
providing excellent service to their clients. If you prefer the
online version, the current issue as well as previous issues
can be viewed by clicking Internet Marketing Tips For Real Estate Agents
You may pass this newsletter on to others, as long as it is sent
in it's entirety.
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Contents
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- A Balanced Look At The New Long Domain Names
- Human Click
- New Instant Survey
- Agents, are your kids using your email?
- The Most Popular Real Estate Forums
- Millions of Doorway Pages?!
- Tip Of The Day
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Net Success
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Several domain name registrars are now selling names of up to
63 characters long (67 if you include the .com, .net or .org
portions), which has sparked a wave of speculation that these
longer names pose new opportunities. Many of the online real
estate "gurus" and authors of real estate internet marketing
books are recommending agents grab as many of these domain names
as they can.
The last couple of days I have had several requests from agents
wondering if they should take advantge of of this opportunity
and have also heard from some who have registered many domain
names.
One thing to keep in mind is that the online real estate
marketing "profit system" gurus that are heavily pushing this
are paid $25 US for every domain registered through their links.
But is it worth it to YOU? Here's a brief look at the issues
involved.
The claim is being made that search engines give HIGHER RANK to
URL addresses that continue the keywords people use to conduct
a search. This means if Sam Consumer types in "real estate in
Denver" and your new domain was www.DenverRealEstateAgent.com...
all other things being equal (content, keywords, etc) your
domain would rank higher in rank. Is that true?
That is a very carefully worded statement, but generally false.
Many search engine experts who do not have a financial stake in
seeing domain names registered, including Danny Sullivan of
Search Engine Watch, will tell you that from a search engine
standpoint, the value is negligible.
Danny went right to the major search engines themselves and
posed that very question. The response in all cases was that
having keywords in your domain name will not help very much.
From my experience with the search engines keywords in the URL
are of no help in achieving good search engine ranking.
A suggestion that agents host these domains on free hosting
services and then duplicate your current site using these new
domains is also no guarantee of success. In fact, search
engines consider such a strategy as SPAM and can ban your sites
if discovered. People-powered directories like Yahoo! and Open
Directory (Netscape) will only list your site once so multiple
domain names will not help you there either - and submission
could get you banned.
If there is no advantage as far as search engines are concerned
what other possible advantage are there?
The accepted rules for choosing a domain name are:
1. Short.
2. Memorable.
3. Related to your core business or business name.
4. Hard to misspell.
The difficulty with long domain names is that they are NOT
short, and therefore easy to mis-type when being entered. The
longer the domain name, the more complex the series of embedded
words, the less memorable it becomes, and the more confused
potential customers will be.
About the only advantage of having one of the new, longer
domains is if the long name ties in with other branding that you
do with your conventional, non-internet advertising and a
shorter .com domain that would do the same job is not available.
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One of the newest features available on the internet is the
ability to have visitors to your web site interact in real time
with you or an "operator". At the urging of Jean-Claude Rousseau
of Immobilier Montreal, I am trying
out a new free service called Human Click available at
http://www.humanclick.com .
Human Click allows you to add personal service to your web site
and talk directly to your customers for free. Visitors to your
web site are alerted to the fact that you are online and can
initiate a chat session to ask you questions or give you
feedback. You also have the ability to monitor the visitors
movements in your web site and offer assistance - again, in real
time!
I have the system up and running at Real Estate Web Design
if you would like to check it out. The only
downside so far is that Human Click's servers are slow so if a
visitor is moving quickly though the site the movement, and even
the visit, may not register. It should work well on pages where
visitors tend to linger though.
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Visit The House and Home Milledgeville Real Estate Page
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What percentage of agents in your market area have their own
Visit http://www.results-net.com and give your views! You can
view the results instantly online, and also view the results of
previous surveys by visiting
http://www.results-net.com/surveys.html
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This idea came in from Carolyne Lederer Brampton and Burlington Real Estate
It would make one wonder how some Realtors do business at all.
Their children, adults and otherwise, PLAY on the Realtor's
computer.
Some of them even know how to operate ICQ. Supposedly with
their own friends?
However, it is impacting mom and pop's business when messages
are being deleted by other users. If your children, adults or
otherwise, share your computer - it probably is a good idea for
each user to have their own email address and also their own ICQ
number.
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Once your site is up and running how will it generate business
for you? As many agents have discovered it will not - unless it
is designed to do so right from the start as well!
Remember the "Personal Brochure"? It was all the rage a few
years ago. Even those who promoted the use of Personal Brochures
admitted that it had little value in attracting new business.
The major use of a Personal Brochure is to build and reinforce
your profile to those who have already met or contacted you from
another source.
If your web site is basically a personal brochure - that is, if
it is mostly about you and what you do - you can expect the same
sort of results - very little or no new business.
Most, if not all agents, start with this type of site - and
after a year or so of no results they start the quest for a site
that will actually generate leads.
That search has led many to the Results-net House and Home Real
Estate Page program which has proven to be a successful
generator of new leads for the member agents. You can check it
out at http://www.rncinternet.com/real_estate.html
Just one is produced for each market area, and it is totally
different from any other agent web site. The site comes as a
turnkey package and are continuously updated to conform to the
changing criteria required by search engines - so you can sleep
nights and concentrate on selling real estate!
The House and Home Page Real Estate Sites also rank well within
all of the major search engines! Check it out the Search Engine
Position Report at
http://www.rncinternet.com/searchenginepositions.html
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What works for you? Your suggestions and submissions are
gratefully accepted, and if used you will receive credit along
with a link to your web site or (e mail address if you don't
have a web site yet.)
Send submissions to admin@rncinternet.com -
suggestions may also be left at the Agents Online Real Estate Forum
Idea Center in the Newsletter Suggestions Forum.
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Happenings At Results-net.com
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The Agents Online Real Estate Idea Center at
http://www.agentsonline.net is currently averaging 460 visitors
a day and 750 page views a day. Are they reading your postings?
The most popular forums this month are:
1) Agents and Brokers
2) Buying
3) Net Success
4) Selling
5) Reo/ Foreclosures
Take advantage of this great free promotional tool and
participate today!
A change in the software now allows for more than one moderator
for each forum at the Agents Online Real Estate Idea Center. If
you are interested in moderating a forum send a message to
webmaster@agentsonline.net
Moderators have the ability to post announcements, edit and
remove messages, and are notified by email each time someone
posts to their forum. They are often viewed as a leader and/or
expert in their forum.
As well, the moderators name appears on the topic list page in
their forum. Moderators also receive a FREE listing as the
exclusive agent for their area listed in the pull-down menus at
the top of every page at the Agents Online Real Estate Idea
Center!
There is now a program in place to submit all the messages to
the major search engines on a monthly basis which will increase
traffic - and help promote you!
Moderators may be removed if they don't actively attempt to
encourage discussion. There are no hard and fast rules, but if a
moderator doesn't post a message for two months - they probably
have forgotten they are a moderator and may be removed without
notice.
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The private forum/FAQ for Members of the High Performance Home
Page program has moved! It is no longer at the Agents Online
Real Estate Idea Center and can be found at
http://www.house-and-home.net
Members are reminded to check there for information, search
engine strategies, and add-ons to their site. Members have to
register there in addition to registering at the Agents Online
Real Estate Idea Center. Once registered send me an email and I
will "authorize" you so you can access the private forum.
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This And That
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The last couple of weeks I have been following a situation
which involves a real estate site that was discovered to have 3
MILLION doorway pages in AltaVista. There was quite an uproar to
say the least! Unfortunately, it made a black mark against real
estate even blacker as our industry is becoming known as an
abuser of the internet.
The site was hoping to entice visitors to fill in a form and
then would pass the leads along to local agents for a referral
fee. Employing such a strategy can be expensive and very short
term. As soon as someone complains the search engines
investigate and the jig is up. So far all but 33 of the pages
appear to have been removed.
Situations such as this are happening more frequently and the
end result is that real estate keywords in search engines are
negatively affected as has been the case in AltaVista for about
a year now off and on.
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Tip Of The Day
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...all men make mistakes. But a good man yields when he knows
his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is
pride.
—Sophocles
Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own
reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
—George Washington
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Results-net.com is an online community of real estate
professionals dedicated to providing excellent service to
their clients.
This newsletter is Copyright (c) RNC Internet Services, 1999
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Copyright © 2002 - 2004 RNCInternet.com