Below are some great vidoes I have found that explain various different websites and internet terms that have helped me a long the way. These are all, "In Plain English" videos.
I use Youtube alot to find guides for learning. A lot easier watching someone do it then read about it.
More of these videos are available on Youtube here.
Social Networking
Blogging
I find that tracking stats for my websites (analytics) to be addictive. It’s almost like a video game for me. The stats show a complete analysis of who, when, and how visitors find the site. In fact I was spending so much time reviewing stats that I had to set up a schedule where I only review stats that I have to set up a schedule where I only review the stats once a week.
I usually use Google Analytics (free) to analyse my site traffic. It requires placing at tracking code in the html of your website.
NO WEBSITE STATS AVAILABLE!It was to my dismay that until recently I was unable to access statistics for three of my clients. They are all under the Century 21 Canadian platform, which gives every office and agent their own website. The issue was that I couldn’t get Google Analytics to work on these sites. They told me they were tracking the data themselves and would later make this option available at a later release. This release occurred the other day when they released the traffic analysis system to the companies and agents. So after many months of work, I can finally see the stats to back it up.
It was interesting for me to finally see what was working and what was not for these clients. For perspective two of these clients are real estate companies and another real estate team, all from Century 21 Canada.
Below are some of the observations that I made from the statistics without giving away too much specific info:
REAL ESTATE ANALYTICS REVIEWVisits – No matter what kind of website you have, you always want to take note of how many people are visiting your site. A huge number of visitors is obviously not worth the same as highly targeted and convertible visitors. This is hard to determine but this can be aided by other stat categories, such as the ones below. It was interesting that my long time PEI real estate client has been getting double the amount of traffic as my newer Vancouver real estate client despite the substantially larger market in Vancouver.
Referring Sites – This is usually the next set of stats that gets my attention. This is where your website traffic is coming from. What sites and search engines are sending traffic your direction. You always find something interesting in your referral traffic. Some sites you never thought of may be sending you large amounts of traffic. Because of my company’s concentration on search engines, I usually concentrate on how much traffic Google is bringing in. My Vancouver client is relying on 50% of its traffic from Google which is a pretty high percentage of leads.
Search Phrases - Finally, I check the search phrases that users keyed into a search engine to find the site. This shows you if your search engine optimization efforts are working but could also point out search phrases that you may have overlooked. A lot of the search phrases for my clients had a variation of Century 21 and then the region. This tells me that the C21 Brand is being searched for people looking to buy in the region. It’s also interesting for individual agents or in this case the PEI Gold team to see users are finding them by simply Googling their name.
Another stats category that I usually view but which was not available through the Century 21 system is the location of the visitors. For example, if potential buyers are out of province or out of country. This is good information to know so you can further targeting certain geographic areas with Google Adwords or online classifieds.
How much emphasis to you put into reviewing your web statistics and what stats do you concentrate on?
I recently sat in on a meeting the other day between one of my real estate clients and a local ad representative for a national news organization. Since their national website divides news in the different provinces, they were looking for local advertising to go a long with the content. My client had just recently agreed to a similar deal to do some online advertising for another local online news site. The real estate client was definitely willing to experiment with some more banner advertising. So I was pretty sure he was going to buy the ads and try them out.
The thing is though, a lot of these older traditional print marketing companies are not training these sales reps on the basics of online marketing. Granted the rep had a lot of stats, but couldn’t really explain them. Since the proposed banner ad was going to be run on impressions, we wanted to know what the average “Click Thru Ratio”(CTR) was. AKA if the ad is shown 100 times and one person clicks it, the ad would have a CTR of 1%. The CTR is very important because the ad could potentially be shown millions of times and would have no clicks. A waste of money in my opinion.
Well the rep didn’t know what CTR meant and to be honest most people don’t unless they have had experience in the marketing practice. Also they had yet to make any sales for these online advertisements so hopefully the learn from their mistakes. We explained as much as we could to the rep on how online marketing worked including some stuff about Google. Anyways this rep wanted $25 for 1000 impressions whereas we had been getting 1000 impressions for $1 with another very similar company. That meant this rep was 25 times more expensive.
The two news sites would be as close as you could possibly get to being the same thing. We decided to pass on the offer although we were asked to try it out for a month and buy $1000 worth. We mentioned that was at least double what we had been paying for Google ads and they are more targeted than banner ads. We have been managing to get 34 to 20 cents per click for banner ads which is comparable to Google. Anyways this just another example of how important it is to know what you’re selling and also what you are buying.
Some important terminology for online advertising:
CTR – Click Thru Ratio – How many times your ad was clicked given how many times it was shown.
Unique Visitors – How many unique people visit the site. More accurate indication of visitors than other stats that measure visits because they can be strewed by multiple page visits by the same user.
CPC - Your calculated cost per click. Impressions – How many times the ad would be shown.
Impressions - How many time the ad would be shown.
Having a great website that people will keep coming back to requires fresh content. Having a website that search engines keep coming back to requires fresh content. So guess what...you need fresh content! Read the rest at my Real Estate and SEO blog,
Top Search Result.
I received an email today from a real estate broker informing me of a free internet marketing webinar. It is put on by Inman News which has done some great real estate content to date. I have no affiliation with the company but thought it might be of interest ot some of you. I will be checking it out for sure.
Intelligent Internet Marketing! 25 Simple, Low-Cost Strategies to Ramp Up Your Online Marketing in a Down Turn
Online Marketing Webinar Details
"On October 29, 2008 at 11am PST Inman News presents a one-hour Webinar packed full of practical tips and takeaways that will help you ramp up your online marketing to respond to this tough market. Join Joel Burslem, Inman News VP of Content and founder of the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog in this fast-moving presentation, where he will cover all the web marketing basics; what you must have on your web site to compete for attention, simple successful search engine optimization strategies and ways to extend your online brand through creating and managing your online identity.
Registration for the Intelligent Internet Marketing webinar is on a first-come, first-served basis and attendance is limited. Inman News Premium Members get priority registration to all Inman News Webinars.Secure your seat by joining today.
Schedule of Event
October 29, 2008 11:00-11:05 am -
Introduction 11:05-11:40 am -
Main Presentation 11:40-11:45 am -
Sponsor Message 11:45-12:00 pm - Q&A Session"
I was sent this link from a real estate broker http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF
Interesting video on the world and stats on population and technology. It takes a few minutes but has a very powerful message.
Could not find this exact one on Youtube if anyone could send me the link. Thanks.
Share your comments below.
I’ve just been asked to set up a pilot project for a local Century 21 brokerage. It involves setting up a domain for the listing as well as Google marketing for the individual property. This will be my first experience setting up a website address for an individual property as well as trying to use a “Google This” property marketing technique. 60 Battery Point, Prince Edward Island will be the test listing with the domain 60batterypoint.com being used.
It is important to do a pilot project because the brokerage has 400 plus listings and they want to make sure it works before they invest in all those domains. I’m hoping the property domain will be indexed organically (not paid for) but I’m also setting up Google Adword campaign on the property to see if it gets any clicks. The only issue with the century21.ca site is there is no tracking system available (analytics) yet so it will be hard to see if it is getting any traffic..
Only real way to tell if anybody is searching for 60 Battery Point will be the Google Adwords data. Stickers have been made with the web address indicated as well as a Google prompt for the sign on the property. There will also probably be a mention of it in print adversting. Worst case scenario is that the property owner will be happy we’re leveraging the internet to increase the chance of selling the property.
Hopefully it works...
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