Ubertor Real Estate Blog

Trish Anderson has been a client of ours for a few years now. But she was only using the old version of our listings engine within a website that was not build or maintained by us. A few months ago, Trish decided to take advantage of all of the new features of our Ubertor software and move to our Ubertor Realtor website system completely. Here is an email that I received from Trish about her experiences and fear of making changes to her site:

Hi Stephen

This is just a little note to let you know how pleased I am that I made the move to Ubertor. As you know I had a website designed, built and marketed professionally some years ago. This site was and is a great source of business for me so I was really nervous about changing anything. I wondered, why mess with something that is working? However the site was hard to work with and I had to pay people to do changes to the site, upload photos, etc. etc. I was not skilled enough to do my own work on it. My new Ubertor site is great! It doesn’t take much training to be really good at managing my own site! I am really happy with it.
I still stay up were I was in the search engines too.

Thanks

Trish Anderson

Well, if your a Realtor in Calgary, I found some keyword search phrases that are very highly searched, but with very few sites competing to come up under those terms. What to know how to come up under these terms? Feel free to email me directly

“nelson homes in calgary”
There were approximately 46 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“jagger homes calgary”
There were approximately 46 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“calgary manufactured home builders”
There were approximately 46 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“realstate sale calgary”
There were approximately 46 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 1 website targeting this term.

“real estates listing in calgary”
There were approximately 46 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“msl listings in calgary”
There were approximately 45 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“homes for rent in southeast calgary”
There were approximately 45 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“houses sale calgary mls”
There were approximately 44 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“calgary-retirement homes listing”
There were approximately 44 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“Calgary MLS Acreages listings”
There were approximately 44 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“carolina homes calgary alberta”
There were approximately 44 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 0 website targeting this term.

“foreclosed homes for sale calgary alberta”
There were approximately 47 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 2 website targeting this term.

Again, to show the flip side of this, here are the results for the search term “Calgary Real Estate”:

“Calgary Real Estate”
There were approximately 88 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 162000 website targeting this term.

Greg over at BloodHoundRealty.com has posted this weeks Carnival of Real Estate and he has included my blog about Search Engine Keyword Tips. Check it out, as there are some great posts included.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a single keyword phrase that had a very high search rate, but very few websites competing for that term. The term was “realestate agent in memphis tenn” and now if you Google that term, you will see that my blog is number 1 and 2 and my Squdioo lens is number 4.

I have done some more research and found some interesting keyword phrases that are highly searched, but not highly competitive for getting your website to be found under those terms. Here are some examples:

“homes sold in new orleans”
There were approximately 44 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There is approximately 1 website targeting this term.

“property listings parry sound”
There were approximately 168 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 2 websites targeting this term.

“affordable cottage property for sale in parry sound ontario”
There were approximately 205 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 5 websites targeting this term.

“new homes for sale in memphis area”
There were approximately 472 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 100 websites targeting this term.

“sell san antonio home”
There were approximately 81 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 2 websites targeting this term.

“sell house fast dallas”
There were approximately 52 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 3 websites targeting this term.

“hillsborough fast home sell”
There were approximately 51 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 3 websites targeting this term.

“vancouver canada real estate listing”
There were approximately 10 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 0 websites targeting this term.

Want to see an example of a popular keyword phrase that almost all Realtors want to be found under but that is not worth worrying about? Everyone wants to be found under “your city real estate”. Here is an example of why it is better to concentrate your efforts on the low hanging fruit rather than the highly competitive terms:

“vancouver real estate”
There were approximately 62 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 263000 websites targeting this term!

There were approximately 464 searches of this particular keyword phrase in Google within the last 24 hours.
There are approximately 32 websites targeting this term.

That’s a lot of people looking for real estate agents in Memphis but not many websites jockeying for that term.

Similar to the very popular digg.com, RealEstateVoices.com is a real estate social news site designed to help you discover the most interesting real estate related articles of the day, as voted and suggested by your fellow users. Niki Scevak, the founder sent me an email this morning about the new site. I have just started playing with it, but it looks interesting.

RealEstateVoices.com is a side project for Niki as their main site is HomeThinking.com which helps users find real estate agents by showing them what each real estate agent has done in the past and what customers have said about the job they did. Both sites are interesting and worth checking out.

I receive quite a few questions in my email inbox most of which I answer quickly back to the person that asked. Sometimes, I post that response here in my blog but not often enough. Adam Smith, a Realtor in White Rock commented in another post about my blog and what he likes about it. Here is what he had to say:

“I thought this was probably the most useful blog I have seen published in some time. Thank
you. I have already added the google analytics feature and signed up with activerain.com .
I look forward to more useful information like this to come. Adam.” - www.adamdsmith.ca

I emailed Adam back thanking him for his comments and asked if he had any specific questions. Well, as you can see, he did, and this post is about one of them. Adam emailed back asking “what is squidoo…?” and suggested an “Ask Ubertor” section might be a good way to communicate these types of questions.

So, here we go:

What is Squidoo.com?
Squidoo.com is an online software platform that allows you to create a simple blog type web page that focuses on a specific topic. It is a single page that you can dedicate to anything and setup is easy and free. The best part of having a Squidoo page (or lens as they call it) is that you can earn royalties from the traffic that the lens generates. If you choose to, you can forfeit your royalties to a charity of your choice. Squidoo claims that “Lenses have huge credibility with search engines, so your lens can help your other sites rise to the top of Google searches.” So far for us, it has brought some traffic, mostly from Yahoo, but we will see how it progresses. Its free to setup and very easy.

Squidoo.com is the creation of Seth Godin, a master marketer who has written many books, all of which are worth picking up as there is so much good information in them.

Related Sites:
Squidoo.com FAQ
About Squidoo.com from their site
Seth Godin’s Blog
Seth’s Books

I hope this helps…. if you have questions that you want answered, email me as I would be pleased to help.

UPDATE - - Seth Godin adds his thoughts in the comments

Greg Swann over at Blood Hound Realty in Phoenix writes about his experiences blogging and if he thinks his blog is a lead generator. He also mentions that he and his son are working to “build content that will look like an Ubertor site“. His opinion of blogging sounds like it is what we preach in our training and coaching sessions. Blog, blog, blog, but write the blog for your readers and the search engines will come. It is ok to do a mild “touch up” for the search engines but it should be written for your readers. I think the true importance of having a blog is to add a human side to your website. Your average real estate site is pretty basic, listings, biography and contact information. Having a blog allows you to personalize your website. Have a look at Greg’s blog… without knowing him or having ever met him you get a great idea of who he is, what he thinks and why he does what he does.

Kris and Steve Berg, new clients of ours in San Diego have a great picture of a moving truck getting a little carried away. Imagine coming home to that.

Stacy over at vOpenHouse.ca mentions our training sessions in his blog as well as his experience when he attended one a few months back.

Jim Duncan, a client of ours and fellow blogger from Charlottesville talks about being “on call” as a real estate agent. I think all entrepreneurs are always “on call” as I know that myself and my business partner defiantly are.

Interested in the mystery feature that we have coming out next week? Watch this Vancouver Realtor’s website next week.

Greg over at Blood Hound Realty has been discussing the way he creates a unique web page for each of his listings so that he can promote a specific URL for the home that he is selling. He and the FreetheDrones blog talk about the reasons he does this as well as the costs involved. FreetheDrones talks about it as “only $10 to do it” but I would suggest that it is significantly more than that. The time required to build the site, even quickly, is also part of the costs of doing this. I applaud Greg for doing this.

I do want to take this opportunity to point out how our Ubertor software does something similar and helps real estate agents with no design/html/seo knowledge achieve similar goals.

For starters:
1. Every listing added into the Ubertor system automatically assigns a number to that listing. So when you want to promote a listing you don’t have to put this ( http://www.andrewhasman.com/Properties.php/Details/115/ ) on your signs, flyers, etc you can just put this - www.andrewhasman.com/115 . We did this so that agents have a quick, short, simple address to promote their listings. This unique web address will take the users/potential buyer directly to that listing within the real estate agents website. Thus getting the user right to the information that they are looking for.

2. The other thing that our system does well (in my biased opinion) is automatically incorporate some search engine optimization techniques within ever listings page. Here are a few of them:

a. The Ubertor software automatically creates the title tag based on the listings details. Here is a screen shot of what I mean:

b. Plus, the real estate agent can quickly update the title tags further by clicking the box next to the available features within the home. Here is an example of that:

c. Above the photos for each listing we place the most important content about the home for sale. Things like area, building name, etc are right above the photos. Example:

d. Normally at the top of a single listing you have buttons that allow you to click to see the next listing or click to see the previous listing. We have made these buttons dynamic. What I mean is, if the next property for sale is a condo the button won’t say “Next Property” it will say “Next Condo” or “Next Single Family Property”. We try to utilize as much good quality content as possible within the page.

3. When the Realtor moves the listing from Active to Sold the unique URL stays with the listing so it will always work.

** Watch this blog for more features coming soon to the listings portion of of our software… there are some great new tools coming soon.

Are you interested in trying out our website software? Drop me an email or give me a call and I would be please to setup a site with you and waive the setup fee. Remember, we have no contract and no obligation. The monthly cost is $57.00/month. Here are a few links to new sites on our system - Ottawa, San Diego, Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto and Long Island.

Google is making some changes to how its system “can” work so that the searches you do give you more accurate results. From their site:

Personalized Search orders your search results based on what you’ve searched for in the past.

Now, the reason I say “can” is because every time I talk about this with anyone their first though is that Google is watching what they do. To use the Personalized Search function of their system you must have a Google account. Thus agreeing to them tracking your searches so that they can provide you with more accurate results to your personal taste. From their site:

Early on, you may not notice a huge impact on your search results, but they will continue to improve over time as you use Google.

The best way to really explain what this means to your average user is to pass on a simple example that someone told me:

Lets say Steve likes fishing and Mike likes music.
If they both search for “bass” in Google

Steve will see fishing results
Mike will see music results

In the non stop effort to provide more accurate results to search engine users this looks to be a step in the right direction. The only downside I can see is that people will not want Google tracking their searches.

For more information check out Google Personal Search - http://www.google.com/psearch