Finding a place to host your real estate website or blog is one of the first things you’re confronted with as a new agent, or at least as soon as you’ve decided to get a serious online presence (for many agents that second part comes later on, but it shouldn’t).   After trying three other web hosting providers, here’s why we recommend Hostgator for real estate agents:

Good uptime and industry leader:  Hostgator has been around since 2002 and has a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

24/7 customer support, including by phone:  The phone support option is huge for real estate agents -- I just don’t recommend using a web hosting provider that relies only on email or chat.  I know that might sound funny from someone who runs an online-based marketing service, but even being more techie than the average real estate professional, if one of my sites is down I want to hear the warm breath of an actual mammal on the other end of the phone as soon as possible.

Hostgator has good phone support etiquette:  Twice in the past two weeks I’ve had long calls with support as they investigated an issue (this is not typical, by the way, and one of these issues was due to a mistake on my part).  Both times I noticed that when you’re on hold they check back with you every couple of minutes, without fail.  There must be some kind of timer that notifies them to check in after a set period of time so that you never feel abandoned.

The support techs are helpful and don’t make you feel stupid:  Even though I’m pretty techie and can hold my own with some of the web-spiel, there have been times with other companies when I felt like the support department was sure I was a doofus.  (Numerous studies have concluded that this is not the case, I am happy to report.)  The Hostgator reps have always been polite and dedicated to resolving the issue I was calling about.

Hostgator has reasonable pricing:  This is not the most important criterion, since we all know that cheaper is not always better, but it’s nice that their pricing is very reasonable.

If you have any questions about real estate website hosting, drop us a line or leave a comment below.  And here’s the standard affiliate link disclosure:

Just so you know, the link(s) to any companies on this page may be our affiliate link, meaning we get a small share of any purchase price if you buy from them.  We think of it as a way for people to say “thank you” for our resources and the time we’ve spent with our toes curled into fists of frustration with the wrong providers, but if you prefer to not use our affiliate link you can always Google the company name and go directly to their site.  It’s all good!

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I always advise agents to use more than one marketing mode in order to reach all of their clients, and those different tools can build upon each other as well.  Here at Tools For Real Estate we find that the agents using our real estate email newsletter service who have the best email open rates are often the ones who touch base with their clients in other ways as well, whether it’s through an occasional phone call or by supplementing with a gift like the magnets we’re mentioning here.

By the way, we’re not an affiliate of House of Magnets, just a fan based on what we know about them so far.  We’d love to hear your feedback if you end up using them.

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Conventional wisdom has it that in December people are busy with holiday preparations and travel plans, and therefore probably aren’t likely to turn their minds to real estate until well into the New Year.  But check out today’s graph (12/3/11) from Google Trends:

From Dec. 3, 2011. Click image for current search results on Google Trends.

This shows the search activity in North America on Google for specific search terms related to home buying.  As you can see from previous years, there’s always a dramatic jump in activity late in the year, but look at the volume so far this December!  It’s interesting that the term “home buying” hasn’t followed the trend (yet, anyway).

So, should you concentrate on marketing to home buyers late in the year?  In my opinion the answer is “yes,” since ultimately as real estate agents the goal is to provide people with useful information that will help them accomplish what they’re trying to do, and the graph tells us that right now there’s a surge of people thinking about buying homes.  As always, just keep things in perspective, and remember that you’re marketing during a season that is focused on something far more important.

(Either way, the current graph implies that early January would be a great time to go all-out.)

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They also have a tool for determining the number of days between two dates -- click here for that calculator, or on the image above for the future date calculator.

(Of course, keep in mind that ultimately you’re responsible for determining timelines correctly, regardless of what the calculator comes up with. )

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Do you sometimes lose track of when the various housing and economic reports are coming out?  It’s easy to do, but since newspapers start buzzing as soon as the Case-Shiller housing numbers or new unemployment figures are released, it’s good to know in advance what’s coming up.  That’s where MarketWatch.com’s economic calendar page comes in handy.  It shows you the time and date of  each upcoming economic report release, and provides the previous report’s data for comparison.  For example, coming up this week are the Cash-Shiller home price report for January, pending home sales data, and the unemployment rate for March 2011 -- all numbers that are likely to affect the real estate market.

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In the course of researching this month’s real estate email newsletter article I stumbled upon Diana Olick’s Realty Check column on the CNBC site, and I have to say I wish I’d found it long ago.  Each weekday she posts a short, well-researched blurb about some current real estate topic, from recently released housing reports to new legislation, and I found it to be an excellent source of up-to-the-minute real estate information.

One of the things I like about her writing is that she appears to have good insight into the issues and I think she tries to take a fair approach -- she’s not out to spin the pros of real estate and at the same time she’s not someone who despises agents either -- refreshing.   (I get so annoyed with people who act like they’re breaking barriers in the field of honesty, but if you read their stuff it turns out they’re as hopelessly biased as some of the industry ‘shills’ that they can’t stand.)

Anyway, are you tuning into something daily that keeps you on the frontlines of information that your clients may need you to know?  I understand that checking a bunch of blogs every morning can become onerous, but this is one little column that will take you about 90 seconds to read and will almost always impart something worth knowing.  I highly recommend that you give it a whirl.

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The rule does not apply to homeowners doing work themselves on their own homes, but anyone hiring a contractor needs to be aware of the new requirements.  In addition, property owners doing work on their own pre-1978 rental properties or any pre-1978 space occupied by a child care facility are subject to the new law.

This is an important change to make sure your real estate clients and any contractors you work with are aware of.  Here are some links to more information:

The EPA’s ‘Renovate Right: Important Lead Hazard Information for Families, Child Care Providers, and Schools’ pamphlet (pdf).

The main EPA page about the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule.

Here’s a link to the entire RRP rule, but it’s hefty; you might find the National Association of Home Builder’s summary of the new legislation a more helpful read.  (Note that they state that the regulation applies to pre-1978 homes inhabited or frequented by pregnant women or children under the age of six, but this is because there is currently a waiver that homeowners can sign to opt out of the contractor requirements if neither of those two conditions apply.  Effective July 6, 2010, the opt-out waiver option goes away.)

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The problem is that 90% of agents who want to gear up on the social media scale end up never getting around to it.  If that sounds like you, I recommend checking out Mike Mueller’s AreWeConnected site and possibly hiring him to set up your Facebook business page for you.  I haven’ t used this service myself, but I’m a fan of his own Facebook business page and I can tell he’s really active on there and on Active Rain; overall, he seems to really know his stuff.

Here’s the link:  http://areweconnected.com/facebook/ - if you scroll down the page you’ll see samples of Facebook business fan pages he has created.

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Click the graphic on the left to see his profile on Eyejot, and I highly recommend checking out this video about the Home Buyer Tax Credit deadline that he is sending out to his real estate clients today for an idea of the type of useful videos you could create.

Eyejot has a free option, and their premium option that allows longer videos and more branding is around $99 per year.  Check out Eyejot’s membership options here.

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(After all, our real estate prospects don’t always think like we do!)

Well, Google Trends is a great free tool that helps you quickly choose the best keywords and keyword phrases.  Here’s an example, using a screenshot I took when I was deciding on the title for this post:

By typing these keywords into Google Trends I can quickly see that ‘online traffic’ is searched for on Google more frequently than ‘web traffic’ or ‘website traffic’, so ‘online traffic’ is the term I should prioritize in my title and text.

You can do the same thing when preparing your real estate website, blog and social media pages.  For example, if you’re writing tips for home buyers, check to see if more people search for ‘home buying’ or ‘buying a home’ so that you can prioritize either the term ’home buying tips’ or ‘tips on buying a home’.

(Bonus!  Click here to see those two keyword phrases compared for you on Google Trends.)

(A slight caveat:  If you really delved into research, you might find that while the general public uses one term most frequently, your prospective clients use another.  However, this would take a ton of time, and if you just start thinking more about optimizing your website text and page titles with keywords using Google Trends you’ll be miles ahead of where you were.  Plus, it takes just a few seconds!)

To see how easy it is, check out our video showing how you can boost your real estate marketing using Google Trends:

Like this video? Subscribe to the Tools For Real Estate YouTube Channel!

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