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!

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.)

(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!

Buying Domain Names

Godaddy is where I buy all my domain names.  It’s easy to search for them, and at around $10 per year per domain name it’s a good deal.  More importantly, they make it easy for you to manage your own domains.

(Yesterday I was calling ValueWeb because we were not able to change the domain settings ourselves, and the request we submitted 4 days previously had not been carried out.  This cost me an additional 45 minutes on the phone.)  If the domain name had been held by GoDaddy I could have done it myself in about 2 minutes.

Tip:  You can often find discount codes for GoDaddy by simply Googling ‘GoDaddy coupon codes’, or if you just click on the graphic above you should get a domain name for $7.49.

Real Estate Website Hosting

I’ve tried a number of different companies, and I really like Hostgator.  They’re big, reliable, they have good pricing, and their technical support has always been able to help me without being snarky.

One of the main reasons I choose them?  They have phone support!  Many hosting companies these days only allow you to submit support tickets by email or online chat.  If you’re shopping around for website hosting as a real estate agent, I HIGHLY recommend you go with a service that allows you to also call in, like Hostgator.  Unless you’re in the top 5% to 7% of techie agents, you’ll end up wanting this option.

(For the record, I have one website hosted with GoDaddy and have never had a problem with them either.)

Tip:  When you’re setting up hosting you’re usually asked if you want Windows or Linux hosting.  Linux is usually a good default choice unless you know for sure your site runs on ASP.

And…  Hostgator often runs a special via a coupon code shown on their home page.

This video shows how one smart agent, Yuno Marioni, is using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Biznik and Active Rain to create a strong online presence.  (Without a fancy website, and virtually for free!)

Important Social Media Links from the Video:

www.Biznik.com

www.LinkedIn.com

www.Twitter.com

www.Facebook.com

www.ActiveRain.com

The number of U.S. Twitter users more than doubled in March 2009, jumping to 9.3 million users.  What’s really interesting is this demographic tidbit reported by the internet measurement firm comScore in the Puget Sound Business Journal:

“…45- to 54-year-olds are the most likely to use the service at 36 percent above the average. They are followed by 25- to 34-year-olds, who are 30 percent more likely.”

In other words, these are your past and current clients, and their first time buyer aged children.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s a micro-blogging service that lets you instantly create a free page and post short blurbs of 140 characters or less.  This makes it easy to quickly share a link or fact, without having to compose an entire article (like this one.)

Check out our Twitter feed here, and be sure follow us too.

Bottom line?  Twitter can work well for business because it’s highly functional.  Don’t  get distracted by the people who feel the need to Tweet every time their dog sneezes, there are plenty of others using it to share useful information about real estate.

Tip:  If you often feel like sharing a quick bit of information with your clients but you’re intimidated by the time and energy it takes to blog,  you might be surprised -- Twitter could be right up your alley.

Here’s a good article about copyright law that explains in detail what you need to watch out for.  I’ll skip right to the part about posting content online, since that’s at the very end.  The author says:

“Generally, you can claim a fair use right for using a very small portion of text for commentary, scholarship or similar purposes.”

Like that quote, for example.

So remember, real estate bloggers, it’s great to spice things up with content from other sources -- just be careful out there!

Do you hate your real estate website?  If you’re like 80% of the real estate agents I talk to the answer is a resounding “Yes!”  Here’s why you should consider making your next website a nice, clean blog-based site.

1.  Your Blog Can Look Just Like a Website

A blog is really any website designed on a blog platform.  By ‘platform’ I mean the code behind the pages, the stuff you don’t see. Did you know that you can have a blog-based site that looks like a normal website, with a non-changing home page and a separate ‘Blog’ page for the blog posts? 

For an example, check out this nice site we did for Jeanne Gorder.

2.  Search Engines Love Blogs

Google and other search engines crawl through the code of your website to find relevant content.  The easier it is to crawl your website, the more ‘search engine-friendly’ it is.  Blogs are very easy to crawl through and the result is that your content is more likely to show up in the results of online searches.

3.  You Can Create and Edit Your Own Pages

Blogs are set up so that creating and editing your own website pages is pretty much as easy as creating a Microsoft Word document.  You don’t have to know a thing about html, coding or web design.  Talk about power!

How to get started:

If you currently have your own site or plan to have one, getting a blog-based site is as simple as telling your designer that you want a new site based on WordPress, the gold standard for blogging platforms.

We’ll be offering options for agents soon, but in the meantime check out the blog design guys at Men With Pens.

Want to get started for free?

Here are some places that are designed for you to be able to do everything yourself, so they’re free or nearly free:

WordPress.com
Typepad
Active Rain

The best way to get the hang of how these work is to just go there and play around a bit.

The report is called “Online Engagement Affects Agent Selection Process”  and it’s here, on the Broker page -- it’s the second report in the list at the bottom of the page.

Here are a few facts I picked up from the report:

• Most people (74%) rely on word of mouth to initially choose an agent for consideration, then they follow it up with research for confirmation.

 

• People use an average of five sources to research agents.  (See the graph on pg. 9 of the report, which breaks the five sources down further.)  Seventy-seven percent use the Internet.

 

• Of people who use the internet, 50% spent 4 to 20 hours researching agent information online (pg. 10.)  Hey, that’s a lot of time!  (How did your website fare?)

 

Page 19 starts off a really interesting quadrant analysis using this format:

Keep in mind that while topics in ’3′ are less influential in selection, they are still highly researched, so having information about them on your website or other marketing increases your chances of people finding you in the first place.

There’s a good section about how people use real estate agent websites in hiring an agent.  I just want to point out, regarding page 24 where it says that 31% of people used the agent website only to get the agent’s contact information:  I think in a lot of cases that’s because the agent uses a generic company site and the only pertinent information on there is the contact information. 

(In other words, the 31% is not a reflection of the fact that websites are unimportant.)

There’s more interesting stuff on there and it’s definitely worth your time to look over.  (Plus, lots of graphs -- it’s a quick read.)  Another good one on that page is “Embracing the Online Real Estate Market.”

Here’s a link to the Yahoo Broker page with the reports again.

Here’s a sample, using a video that I just love.  (If an ad comes up in the bottom you can just click the ‘x’ button to close out the ad.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWUrj22pRD0

Another nice thing about the Smart Youtube plugin is that you can choose to not show related videos at the end, which is often a good idea for a business blog that needs to be appropriate for all audiences -- just to be on the safe side.

Here’s the link to the Smart Youtube plugin download at WordPress.

By the way, plugins are just add-ons that you download and install in your WordPress blog to be able to do all kinds of cool things in addition to what the blog normally lets you do.  Amazingly, plugins are generally free, although you can often donate to the developer (and we do when we use a plugin a lot.)