Search engines are the  key to generating significant traffic on the internet. It can certainly be supplemented and enhanced by social networking like Facebook, Blogs and the Twitter but search engines are King. In other places around the world a number of search engines are very popular but in Australia, there is only one serious contender for the crown and thats Google.

Even well known brands in our industry like realestate.com.au have over 30% of their traffic delivered every single day by Google. Many of the returning vistors would be returning visitors have already arrived from the search engines in the past.

What this Article Series is.. and what it isnt

This article is going to be one in a series covering the topic of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short as it applies to the Australian Real Estate Industry. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of getting your site ranked higher in the search engines and thus generating more traffic.

This article is going to cover the basics of Search Engine Optimisation and how to get more visitors to your website. We are not going to be covering any advanced topics and everything discussed should be able to be completed by the average Australian Real Estate Agent with minimal technical skill. Each step is fairly easy but if you need help just ask for help in the comments section.

The restrictions of some content management systems will mean a few of you may not be able to do specific things but if thats the case, just skip that section and move on. You will probably have have to pay for some things to be done on your website but it should be very minimal as most things you will be able to do yourself.

Please understand that I am not going to provide a step be step guide of every single mouse click or form you have to fill in.  That would require something about 10 times the size. Each step is very easy to do and millions of people from a range of skill levels have already been there before you. If you dont understand anything or want some help, just ask.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Now before we get too heavily into the subject I must point out a few things. SEO is considered a black art because there is no rule book or documented procedures to follow. Search engines use proprietary algorithms to rank all the websites in the world and they don’t share how that algorithm works for obvious reasons. This means that SEO experts around the world analyse in every fine detail the websites that do rank at the top and they attempt to reverse engineer just what makes a site rank well.

The very basics that form the core are universally agreed by most SEO experts but other than those you will always find someone somewhere who will disagree on any specific tactic or point. Also many experts who agree on a specific SEO strategy might still disagree on the importance that specific issue means in the calculating of web ranking. The important thing to remember is that it is the overall effect of everything that will deliver you results.

What Sort of Results Can You Expect?
SEO cannot work miracles! If your agency is in some small little town about 800km west of civilisation then the worlds best SEO is not going to create more people looking to buy real estate in your area. Better SEO than your competitors will get you more share of the existing searches but it cannot create more searches out of thin air.  It also takes time for everything to work, a lot less than it use to, but it does not not happen overnight. You may first notice changes to how you rank in a few weeks after we finish but the full effect of what you do wont be felt for a few months at least.

In each article I am going to try and give you additional resources for further reading and if anybody at all has anything to add or share to the articles feel free to comment away.

I am aiming to have each article in the series require about 2 hours work and the target is for 6 articles. There is a specific logic to the order of these articles because some things either have to be done before others or they take longer to start acting.

Lets Get Started!

To measure the success of what you are going to undertake we need to record exactly where you are now. This will set a baseline that you have to work from. During this article there is going to be things you have to send your web provider. Obviously sending them each item in one email to be all done together will be the cheapest way to get this added to your site.

Website Grader Report

Website Grader produces a report on your website and gives you an overall grade out of 100. This is not perfect by any means but it is the best overall ranking of a website currently available and is perfect to compare how you score today and how you score after a few months. It takes a lot of factors into consideration when ranking a website. Request a report on your website. A good number would be between 80-100.Any score under that and you really need to do some work on your site to start getting results. Read the report it gives you as it will explain what you are doing right, and what still needs work.

Web Analytics

To understand just what is happening on your site including how many visitors you get and what pages they visit you need some sort of web analytics reporting. A visitor count or hit counters just don’t cut it anymore. If you don’t have detailed statistics on your web visitors you need to install one.

I strongly suggest Google Analytics which is totally free although you may be charged by your web provider to install it. Hubonline recently announced a special for June for nearly $600 which also includes short property urls. For my mind this is highway robbery.  In contrast I believe Portplus will install Google Analytics on your website for under $100 and I think they do short urls as standard.

If you have a Google account such as a gmail account you can use it to log into Google Analytics and create a profile for your website otherwise just create an account now. Google Analytics will provide you with some code that you need to send your web provider to get them to inject it into every page on your site. If you don’t want to use Google Analytics then see if your web provider has another detailed statistics package they can offer but dont just rely on property views.

Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster is a suite of tools for managing how your site integrates with Google Search. We will cover some of those tools in future articles but for now just setup the account and get the verification process underway.

Create an account at Google Webmaster using your Google Account login details you just used for Google Analytics. Add a profile for your website and it will ask you to verify in one of two different ways. Select the meta tag option and send that to your web provider to add to the code of your homepage.

Microsoft Bing Webmaster and Yahoo Site Explorer

The other major search providers, Microsoft and Yahoo also have their own versions of Google Webmaster. Create accounts with Microsoft Bing Webmasters and Yahoo Site Explorer and you should setup accounts with both of them and add your website profile. Select the meta tag verification option for both and send these meta tags through to your web provider.

Sitemaps

A modern website should have a sitemap which provides instructions to search engines on exactly what pages you have, when they were last updated and how important are they. To find out if you have a sitemap on your site already you need to add the word sitemap.xml to your web address in a web browser. For our agency site the web address is http://www.nfn.com.au so we enter http://www.nfn.com.au/sitemap.xml and we find that we have a sitemap on our website.

If you don’t have a sitemap don’t panic you need to contact your web provider and ask them to create a sitemap for your site and ask them to place a reference to that sitemap in your robots.txt file. Dont worry what all that means just tell them and only get concerned if their techs don’t understand it.

You will not be able to add your website’s sitemap to Google Webmaster, Microsoft Bing Webmaster and Yahoo Sitexplorer until you have verified all of your accounts. I will remind you again in the next article but don’t forget to send your web provider the verification instructions and get them to setup a Sitemap for you if you don’t already have one.

Save Your Searches

Identify the three or four suburbs that make up your core trade area and use them to search google printing out the first two pages of results each time. Add the words “real estate”, “property”, “real estate agent”, “rentals” and “property for sale” and do a search on each.

So just for the suburb of Nerang I would conduct the following searches on Google and print out the first two pages of results for each.

1. Nerang
2. Nerang real estate
3. Nerang Property
4. Nerang real estate agent
5. Nerang rentals
6. Nerang property for sale

Repeat for each of your core suburbs and identify just where your site returns for each of those results. In the future you are going to run the same searches and if everything has worked out well you will be ranking higher. Ideally you want to be coming in the top three for every search on every one of your core suburbs. Ideally you want to be number 1 for each search but top 3 will still be pretty good.

Next Article

We have now set a baseline to work from so you can see just what your work results in and started some prep work we will follow up in in future articles. The next article in the series will cover link building and getting your site listed in a range of online real estate and general business directories.

Further Reading

Read up on the Real Estate SEO Study as it shows you how important your pages look on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP’s)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has scrapped the broadband tender process in favour of forming a public/private company to build and operate a massive broadband fibre to the home network which will cost over AU 40 billion dollars. And I love it! As long as Telstra has absolutely no control over it!

Ivor Ries, an analyst with EL and C Baillieu Stockbroking thinks that few will pay the premium price for this service and that we do not need the kind of speeds (100 megabytes a second) that this proposal provides. He is not alone, many analysts feel the same way. Currently the average Australian home pays around $40 per month for broadband (add line rental etc) with very limited download caps. The new broadband offering will more than likely come in at around $70 per month.

Most of these analysts do not really understand the way these things work. Yes on the surface $70 per month is too way much, but think of no line rental – as this proposal is fibre to the home and business not node. Also think of additional services, no download caps, local and national calls included and you start to see things differently. Many companies will also create their own long range wireless networks (WIMAX) allowing them to offer broadband within a 20km radius of their business to their staff and executives.

The private sector will come to the party with additional offerings and we will no longer be held to ransom by Telstra which costs Australian billions of dollars a year in additional unnecessary charges, just because they can.

Think about a broadband telco and the future offerings – we will call our new company Onetel. Onetel will offer:

• 100 Megabytes per second download speeds
• Unlimited Downloads
• Unlimited Local and National Calls
• No Line Rental
• 50 TV Channels + ability for users to create and share their own local and community TV channels

All of the sudden the price sounds a lot more attractive. The dumping of line rental fees will save Australians billions of dollars per year and innovation will allow us to do so much more at 100 megabytes per second speeds.

Think of real estate video, IPTV (Internet TV) and video streaming becoming common place and portals becoming conduits for a wide range of data and services.

History also tells us that download speeds will continue to rise as innovation squeezes more and more out of fibre broadband, current ADSL2 comes in at 24 megabytes a second, from a start of around 256k.

If the 100 megabytes comes in at a maximum over the same period we could expect at least 1 gigabyte a second out of this fibre within 10 years. It also means companies such as Fairfax, News Ltd, for that matter any company can also get involved.

Dave followed up with “The Rise of the Virtual Real Estate Agent” and then again with ”Inside of the Mind of a Road Warrior a Real Estate Agent Who Replace Her Office With Technology”

During all the discussion Dave came up with a good definition of a Virtual Agency :-  ”Agency whose principal storefront is a website, that acquires and serves customers principally online, that serves either or both buyers and sellers. May also be a discount agent.”

Many agents have a great virtual presence but nobody for mind could be considered as a true Virtual Agent. Teena Andrews from Dave’s third post was really more of a remote worker to a bricks and mortar agency and Dave called her a “Road Warrior”.

The other day I had call from Dave Paddington, a friend who had left the real estate industry in July last year selling his rent roll and equipment, or so I thought. The call was over another matter but the conversation quickly turned to his new business. It turns out he had not left the industry at all but had been busy developing a Virtual Real Estate Group called Uhoo –  www.uhoo.com.au. A franchise that if Dave has his way will place a virtual agency right in the backyard of many traditional agencies.

I fired off some questions to Dave that you might find interesting.

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When did you launch?

We started building the business model and our software platform about 12 months ago and got off the ground in September 2008. We haven’t officially launched yet and our growth so far has been through word of mouth.

What is your background in real estate?

I started as a sales agent in 1995 in a traditional franchised office and then in early 1998 looking for a better opportunity I opened my own independent office. I have a diploma in Real Estate Management and during the time I owned my own office, won a couple of awards for innovation.

Are your business partners from a real estate background or any associated or complimentary fields?

Troy was a part owner of one of PRD’s highest profile offices. He has spent 20 years in Franchise consulting and Marketing.

James was Raine & Hornes Trainer and Auctioneer for many years. He also set up the Realway franchise which he built up to 60 offices before selling out to his business partner.

Why did you leave a traditional real estate agency model?

A blow out in overheads prompted me in late 2007  to sell my business. My first attempt was to sell it as a going concern but quickly found that nobody wanted to pay the large rent and other fixed costs we were paying. My next option was to sell off my rent roll. I did this, then negotiated the termination of my lease and sold off the equipment.

Where did the idea of a Virtual Real Estate Franchise come from? Have you modelled it from an operation in the states?

The idea came from personal experience of running an office in the industry and the successful uptake of the internet for marketing property in Australia. History has shown that the next progressive step to improve their financial / lifestyle situation for most great sales people is to own their own agency. After they have made the step they find they are deficient in one or all of the following three areas. Property Management (rentals) , People Management or Business Management. The idea behind franchising Uhoo was to offer a business opportunity for great sales to operate their own business without the distractions and high risks associated with running a traditional office.

When I first put the idea together I had no idea that other similar models existed. I still had clients wanting me to sell their properties after I closed the office. I couldn’t believe how easy it was and loved the fact that I didn’t have to fork out the majority of it to cover overheads.

Are you just based in Brisbane, Queensland or do you want to operate nationally?

Are initial focus is South East QLD with plans to operate nationally.

Are you a full fee real estate service or do you offer a discounted commission rate?

This question has been asked of us many times and our rate is the standard fee that most agents offer. Without the distractions of the day to day operation of a business our Franchisees can deliver the good old fashioned service that some agents still neglected to deliver. You are also dealing in most cases with the business owner who can negotiate and make decisions for their clients on the spot rather than seeking permission from the boss.

Do you receive pressure from sellers on discounting commission because you do not operate a bricks and mortar store?

We haven’t yet received pressure from sellers wanting a discounted commission. Our strength is our ability to deliver speed to market of our listings through our software and exceptional personalised service with exceptional local area knowledge.

Do you handle primarily residential sales or are you after other markets as well?

Our franchisees are “Sales only” agents who work in the residential market. We only take on the best experienced agents with a proven track record in the area they wish to operate in.

Whats been the response to your model from buyers since you launched? Do many of them even know that you are a virtual agency?”

They love the name and the branding. Buyers don’t really mind who has the property for sale. If it’s the property they want, they will buy it. With the rapid successful growth of online property marketing, statistics show most buyers do their property hunting on line rather than a shop window.

Do you think Australia is ready for the virtual real estate agent?

Absolutely ! For years the Finance and Insurance industries have been working a virtual model and it’s working for them. We do more on-line marketing than most other business however we seem to have stuck to a traditional shop front model to do business.

Do you believe this is the way the industry will gravitate and your an early pioneer or are you providing a niche service suited to real estate salespeople who want to work for themselves without the overheads of a traditional office?

I predict that with in the next 5 years, at least 70% of agents will be working under a virtual model of some form. It will appeal to sales agents wanting to make more than they currently are but aren’t ready to make the commitment to open their own shop front office. It will appeal to the Agency owners who are tired of issues with staffing, business management, large overheads and want to get back to what they enjoyed most in their previous life – Selling property.

What resources, systems and procedures do you have in place for your agents?

All of our Franchisees receive a Virtual business pack which includes all the tools required like Laptops, printers etc to operate remotely.

We also have systems manuals – Operations, Local area Marketing, Recruitment and other resources.

Our software enables them to manage contacts and properties, upload property listings to 3rd party websites, print brochures, email buyers, Trust accounting and it integrates with other industry products like ADL, Realworks etc. It has some other pretty cool bells and whistles too.

We have some really fresh and cutting edge marketing available for all franchisees to use and order on-line.

Your franchise fee appears to be 14% of the commission.  Do you believe these resources, systems and procedures support this level of fee.

Yes, two of my business partners have both consulted to some of the larger Real Estate franchises in Australia and they have commented on the two areas most lack support. National marketing /Branding & IT Development /Support. These are both covered in our 14% Business development and support fee.

Being a “virtual” real estate group are you biased towards internet  marketing or are you still embracing traditional media?

If the trend toward online marketing keeps heading in the direction it has, I can see print media being a thing of the past. We operate exactly the same way as a traditional Real Estate office other than having a window display. We still use signboards outside our properties, we still advertise in newspapers and magazines and still do open homes.

We are however engaging smarter ways to improve our web presence so I guess my answer is yes.

Does your model operate on a singular level with individual agents taking out a franchise or can one of your franchisees operate their own team of salespeople?

A Franchisee can operate as a sole operator or have a team of Sales people working with them. The advantage for the salespeople is the Franchisee has very little overheads and can offer the salesperson a higher than industry average commission to work for them. We suggest for ease of people management that they only take on a maximum team of 4 salespeople. Our software has a function within it to help manage staff on a daily basis, all remotely.

What does a typical day for one of your agents consist of?

Shane rises around 8.00am and has breakfast with his wife and daughter.  From 8.30 to 9am he checks his emails and messages and plans his day. After that he drops his daughter off at school and then spends a hour at the gym.

The rest of the morning is taken up with following up clients, conducting appraisals and inspections. He takes an hour or so for lunch with his wife and then spends the afternoon prospecting and marketing. 3.30pm he picks his daughter up from school and spends an hour  playing with her. After that he is either conducting inspections or working on admin tasks like changing script and photos on the net, registering feedback to his clients etc. Dinner at 6.30pm and if there is still work to finish off he will attend to it.

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Now I can’t say that I agree with Dave regarding Virtual agents being responsible for 70% of the industry in just 5 years. Virtual agents will no doubt be more common place but I believe that they will still be relatively small percentage of the industry in 5 years.  Maybe 10 or 15% but even at those levels that is a damn lot of real estate sold through a virtual agency.

Personally I think it is more about a niche solution to provide those salespeople who want to be their own boss, but just don’t know how to go about it. Not everybody can work remotely without oversight and direction driving them on a daily basis. But for those that can its going to be an interesting option as their only competition in that space would have to be Remax.

What do you think?

We now have 3 major portals, 4 major franchises and 5 Multi Uploaders supporting this initiative, and are looking for more involvement from other parties. I will publish a list of supporting companies as soon as I am happy with the involvement.For those waiting to see who else is involved, I suggest not waiting and just get involved!

To all the major portals, franchises, institutions, independents, web designers, data feeders and consumers.

It is now time for us to come together and form an XML initiative for the whole real estate industry. It is my belief that by providing a standards based XML initiative open to all real estate web developers and portals we can move this industry forward.

I want to get as many people involved in this as possible, so I am inviting any person who would like to be involved to write to me at peter at agentpoint dot com dot au (you know what to do with that) and we will try to form a committee to talk about how we can move this forward.

I would also like the XML initiative to be open to everyone and not simply a protectionist initiative, however I do understand that we must protect the rights of all stake holders in this initiative, including portals, agents and consumers.

This cannot move forward without the major real estate portal and franchises being involved so I look forward to hearing from all of you.

I will post a list of organisations/individuals that agree to this in principal before we set any timetables for meetings.

Kind Regards

Peter Ricci
Agentpoint
0438 391 397

I will be adding MyHome soon as I do think it has great potential that will not be realised for some time. You will see the free offer extended for at least another six months (I suggest at least a year) because once payment time comes agents will desert the site if it is not giving them any return. I doubt many agents will fund a site for the long term, it is up to MyHome to provide this return and I am sure agents would be only to happy to pay a reasonable fee once this occurs.

Update your Terms
So this leads me to scraping. It is wrong – however it is not illegal (to an extent) but agents have to update their Terms of Use and make sure that they make it clear that permission must be obtained in writing if any of the data on their site is to be used on any other site. Then join a group of agents and take legal action against any site that does not conform.

Get you data in XML
By creating a XML data specification for all the industry is important and REA cannot do this alone, they may want to but they will only cover data they accept. For this to work and for a person like me to even begin to accept this they have to get together with all of the major portals and other players in the industry and fund the development of an industry accepted data specification for identifying property information. This specification has to be 100% open so that when Joe Blow Real Estate wants to get their website developed by Cousin Michael/Micheala he/her can get access to this specification and develop away. I would never accept a specification that was closed and REA, Domain have to show some good faith here. I would understand commercially why they would do it, but morally it will be wrong to close it off to only the big boys.

Access to this Data
What they should be done is a way we can all protect this data from scrapers. Just because it is wrong to do it, does not mean that they will not do it. The first thing I noticed about the REA Council was that they were going to explore this avenue and I absolutely applaud this endeavour. But open it up, closing it off will be going down the lines of the music industry, so make sure it is open, I will be the first to volunteer my time to make sure this is done correctly and if it means at my own cost flying interstate I will do it, because I think it is an important step forward.

Updating
I think also this should be a specification that should be developed for the world and we could be a leader in this. We should also have 3 monthly reviews where this is updated to accept any new technologies that become available. We have specifications for site maps, web standards so why not real estate property listings?

You thoughts….

In the Internet economy many things have changed and one of them is the benefits franchise groups have had over independents in relation to buying power!

The current thinking is that if you want to start up a large real estate portal just get all the major franchise groups on board and independents will follow.

But what if the tables were turned? What if the thousands of independent agents across Australia got together and created a board and management team. What if they went to realestate.com.au or domain (both) and negotiated terms for all members.! What if we went to newspapers and told them, this is the linage charges we will pay or we will all walk to your competitor? Ahhh how the tides would turn.

You see…..the success of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au is built upon many things, but the major factor is property listings. For without these they would not get the numbers and without the numbers they would not get the visitors and they would not be able to make their millions from associated advertisers.

So how could it be done? For one I would not include real estate institutes for they have shown their complete lack of understanding in this area for too long now.

But it can be done, it is all about a common goal. It also must be about equal rights for all independent agents.

Some thoughts…………

1. A Board of Management equally represented by each state and territory. This would be a no cost voluntary role. Meetings would be held each month in a different state, of course expenses would be paid, but it cannot be viewed as a cash cow.

2. Each agency has voting rights, so if you have 5 offices you get 5 votes.

3. Each office would pay an annual fee of $495.00 including GST and this would give the organisation enough money to hire a full time consultant and to develop an independent agents real estate portal and systems to export to all major portals. 4000 independents = $1.98 Million Per Annum, but it would take a long time to get to that kind of revenue.

4. Each office would be given 1 share in the new enterprise. Each year any new members would be allocated shares.

5. The role of the consultant would be to negotiate deals with a variety of websites and other common suppliers. It would be a streamlined role.

6. Release a National Real Estate Portal and Systems (simple clean effective) and market this site heavily online. The cost of running a national portal developed well would be around $100,000 per annum, but you would only do this once you had enough members to justify it.

7. Hire a national sales manager to negotiate advertising rates on the portal for banks etc.

8. Deliver a prospectus to all independent agents with an aim to float on the stockmarket.

This is just a idea, but if you could pull it off, I am sure the savings made each year would more than pay for membership.

It would have to be pushed by all independent agents across Australia, it would involve competing agencies getting together for a common goal, but it is very achievable.

And it would be owned by the agents with a charter that basically controlled its future!

Over to you guys?

It costs less to advertise all of your vendor’s properties on a great website such as Domain.com.au for a whole year than it does to take a full page ad in a local real estate guide or newspaper for just one day!

So as Vendors appreciate and accept the Internet more and more (as they are doing) you will be competing with agents that pretty much do as you do (online I mean). One of the differences will be the quality of the content, both Sarah Lorden and McGrath in Sydney Australia do a fantastic job of providing quality information on their respective websites. This comes with both their text content and also their photography/VR Tours which in both companies sets them apart from their competitors.

Scanners not readers
You have to remember that web users scan for information on websites, they do not read everything. So keep the information simple and informative. Superlatives and great big long dialogues are useless and waste both your and your site users time.

Quality Images
So often I go to websites and the agent takes too many photos. Photos of toilets and washing machines (what is that?)

When doing a photo shoot think about what the user wants to see. Every property has features that the user will want to know information about and the best way to provide that information is through photography. The old saying a picture paints a thousand words!

Take at least three digital snaps of each photo (set your camera to 800 x 600 mode) and only use the best one for each feature.

As an example a property with 3 bedrooms, on suite, bathroom, big backyard, views and renovated kitchen should contain quality photos of all of these features.

Your photographer
If your sales people take photography invest in some basic training, it will make a huge difference. A one day course will cost a couple of hundred dollars and will be a sound investment. You can also save some money by getting training for all of your staff in one day and there are many companies that provide this type of training.

Your Camera
If possible try to get one type of camera for all of your staff, this makes sense because some will be better at it than others and as their experience grows they can show others how to maximise results. Make sure you get a good strong Camera like the Canon Digital IXUS. These take great photos and because they are so strong and compact they should last a long time.