Online Real Estate Technology

Optus brand reputation management non existent

I recently invested in the new iPhone and have really enjoyed exploring the technology, however just recently I’ve noticed a recurring problem and that is my iPhone will drop out during both received and dialed phone calls.  So you can imagine my frustration when on a call and the call drops out, this happens at least 2 out of every 10 calls. So like most people today, I decided to search for the problem or I should say solution on Google, and what did i find? loads of information on the problems the iPhone network, in particular the Optus 3G network is having, and why there are drop outs. This information ironically, being provided by forum sites and other disgruntled consumers experiencing the same problem, nothing from the network that I’m with, which is Optus.

The number one result on my search query on Google is a forum site and contained within this site are numerous complaints about the drop outs, all citing the Optus 3G network not being up to spec as the cause of the problem, there are also complaints about Optus customer service and the lack of responce by Optus to customer complaints, some taking up to 2 weeks just to get a return phone call. But the interesting thing to me is the total lack of input from Optus on this site, now surely you’d think that a service company would be either monitoring this site or at least have a strategy to deal with all this negativity about their product and service, and don’t think that Telstra is any better at dealing with complaints, because they are not.

This brings me to the impact that social media has on brand building, consumers now have the ability to complain publicly about issues they are having with any company, and a simple search on Google will usually brings these forum and blog sites up at the top of the search, making them easily accessible to anyone wanting information or to complain about the service or lack of it from any company.

Business today needs to be very aware of the impact these sites can have on generating business from the web, and an effective web based brand monitoring strategy needs to be implemented and service related industries including real estate offices and agents really need to make sure they have both a monitoring and response strategy in place… Now I don’t know if Optus monitors or is even aware that these sites are on the web, but they should, the comments, complaints and opinions of current customers should be a prime concern, because if I’d read this forum before getting my iPhone, i would never have used Optus, and to allow the comments found on the forum site to continue without company moderation or input is just plain stupid.

So beware, take your on line reputation very seriously, you don’t want your brand or reputation destroyed on the web, imagine if you did a Google search on a prospective employee and found complaints and comments about them, complaints about their lack of service and response or their rudeness in dealing with clients, would you then hire that person? No I didn’t think so, well it works both ways.

You can no longer take your reputation for granted, you need to set up your strategy and a good place to start is by using this 3 phase process:

• Monitor

• Manage

• Repair

Start by monitoring what is being said about you or your brand on line, and you can do this by simply creating a Google alert for your brand name or keyword, if your brand is mentioned on the web then Google will notify you via email once a day of who,what and where you were mentioned.

This is the easiest and cheapest way to keep track of your reputation.

New research out today highlights the growth in local search rates in the Asia Pacific region with Google continuing to dominate as the preferred search engine particularly in Australia with 83% share and New Zealand with 80.5% share.

This really does demonstrate that you need to get your web site up to scratch when it comes to getting a high ranking in the search results, make sure your site ranks highly for those keywords or phrases that your customers use, and if you don”t know what they are then please ask me and I’ll do a free SEO audit on your web site for you.

The study found that 38.6 billion searches were conducted in the region in September 2009, with searchers averaging nearly 88 queries per person during the month. Google Sites ranked as the top search destination in Asia Pacific, commanding more than 44 percent share of searches performed in the region.

Google Sites Captures Largest Share of Search in Asia Pacific

In September 2009, Internet users in Asia Pacific conducted 38.6 billion search queries, an increase of 33 percent from the previous year. Google Sites was the top search destination with nearly 17 billion searches performed on its sites during the month, accounting for 44.1 percent share of all searches in the region. Baidu.com Inc. followed with 8.2 billion searches (21.3 percent share), while Yahoo! Sites grabbed the #3 position with 5.3 billion searches (13.8 percent share).

Searchers in the region averaged nearly 88 searches per person during September. South Korea’s NHN Corporation, which owns search engine Naver.com, saw the most prolific search intensity among the top 10 destinations with an average of 81 searches per searcher. Searchers on Google Sites averaged 59 searches per person, while searchers on Lycos Sites averaged 51 queries.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

Local Players and Global Brands Compete for Searcher Loyalty Across Markets

An analysis of top search destinations across the 10 individual markets in the Asia-Pacific region currently reported by comScore revealed various search brand preferences across markets. Google Sites was the search market share leader in six of the markets including Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore. Yahoo! Sites captured the majority share of searches in Hong Kong (58.9 percent) and Taiwan (65.4 percent).

Although multinational search brands led many of the markets in the region, the popularity of local brands was evident in both China and South Korea. Baidu.com Inc. led as China’s top search destination with 63 percent share of searches performed, while NHN Corporation captured 49.3 percent of queries in Korea, leading the market as the top destination.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

The report is compiled by ComScore,a leader in measuring the digital world

Yes, well here we go again, another one of those, I’ve got  a list of over “9,000″ Twitter followers so I’m a social media expert marketing forms has hit my desk today. Come along it says, “to my affiliate marketing driven roadshow and in 4 hours I’ll make you the expert, but there’s more, if you sign away your hard earned money right now, i have an e-book special for you, yes just for you, an E-Book that I didn’t write by the way,but I’ll pretend its mine, and all it will cost you is $89.00.”

I get emails like this every day, offering free product that I can sell or give away as my own, I get E-Books, money making ideas and lots of materials that I can re-brand, that’s not being an expert, that’s a faker.

These so called experts all have massive numbers of followers on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook and of course Twitter, and they fool you to part with your money.

Well don’t fall for it, because I’m going to tell you how to fake it, and then you too can be the instant social media expert, you know, the one who can’t get a job selling real estate so they opt for this easy money.

Ok this is how you do it, On MySpace and Facebook, you find as many people with similar names or interests as you and then send them friend requests, a lot will decline but you would be surprised at the number that actually come back and accept you, that way you build up your following very quickly, they never do anything with you but hey it builds your numbers. Next Twitter, there are a number of programs that will show you how to build big follower numbers and it’s funny but it’s nearly always around the 9000 mark. You can do the same with Twitter as you do with MySpace and Facebook, that is follow large numbers of people and I’ll guarantee you a fair number will follow you back, and you know the dead giveaway? look at the follower number next to the following number, that they can’t hide.

I know of one expert that actually sends out his flyers with “I have 9000 followers on twitter” so I must be good, well one thing he doesn’t tell you is he follows over 10,500. If you really want to get serious with this, have a look at the Twitter accounts with large followings, 99% of them are well known actors, celebrities or business people, so what does that tell you.

I have always taken the tack that to build a social media following you should earn it, build it on providing good quality information and advice and create the “Expert” tag through experience and generate your followers organically not by underhand means and faking it.

There are so many “snake oil” sales people out there you really need to hang on to your wallet.

So next time you get a flyer or an invite, stop and do some research first, the web and Google are a great place to find out information on your expert. How many articles have they had published?, where do they rank on Google?, What recommendations do they have and what companies have they worked with in designing and integrating a social media strategy. For example, I’ve just done a search on social media experts, and this person I’m telling you about doesn’t even rank on the top 20 pages.

Is this sour grapes? no, I just don’t like rip off artists who pray on people like you.

Get Your Free Web Site SEO Health Check

Last week I wrote an article on this blog about the importance of an SEO strategy for your real estate web site and in talking to a number of agents recently, it is one of the most neglected areas of Internet marketing by real estate offices.

Your web site is your link to the on line property searcher and making that web site not only be found on the web, but making sure it ranks in the top 10 results on Google and Bing for the terms that people search should be high on your agenda.

Some facts that you’re probably not aware of and published by the Commonwealth Bank about searching, reveal the way of the future when it comes to how consumers search on the web. Last year 75% of people did not use Yellow Pages, so where did they go to research business? to the web of course. Over 80% of consumers use the web to research purchase decisions and products, and that is why your web site needs to rank well on Google and other search engines including Yahoo and Bing.

How much do you spend per year on promoting your business on Yellow Pages? why not divert some of that into making sure your web site is performing as well as it should. It is a known fact that Google continually update their search algorithms and your web site needs to be constantly tweaked to make sure it is search engine friendly and searchable by search engines.

Don’t take it for granted that your web master will have set it up correctly, in my experience most of them don’t, so make sure it performs for you, their were over 16.6 million searches last month for the term real estate in Australia and if you don’t rank, you don’t get the business. Don’t think that getting your web site optimised is expensive, because it isn’t, and the return on your investment is worth every penny you’ll spend on SEO.

To help you find out how your site performs I’ve organised for SEOBOSS, an SEO Optimisation company to give your web site a SEO health check for free, they will analyse your site for the most searched industry keywords and then send you a report and a recommendation on how you can improve your site, what’s it cost? Nothing.

If you’d like to get  your web site checked then click on the link and SEOBOSS will do the rest. Give me my SEO Health Check

Over the past few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time visiting small business offices and conducting audits on their SEO optimisation and their internet marketing efforts. The point of the exercise is seeing how vulnerable they are to competitors or where the weakness’s are in their on line strategy, and believe me, there are a lot of them.

One area that comes up more often than any other, is SEO,  or search engine optimisation, and how a business can generate a better page ranking within their local region when searching on Google, Yahoo or Bing. I’m asked this question more often than any other, and I thought I would share some interesting research and information with you on this subject.

Lets look at the US market first, and then come back to how business approach’s this in Australia, PCMS Consulting an SEO company in the US, has released a comprehensive study on the role of SEO as a marketing tool in small business.

It may come as no surpise to find that most business owners surveyed felt that an effective SEO strategy was important to their on line presence, yet could not convince the decision makers within the companies to allocate traditional marketing funds to promote their web sites with new generation SEO optimisation services.

According to the report, companies are overwhelmingly neglecting SEO optimisation and thus missing out on a considerable opportunity to boost their profits and drive traffic in today’s economic conditions.

Most searchers use keywords to conduct a search and not a brand name, therefore, even the most established companies need to optimize their websites to maintain their market position. Establishing the most searched for keywords that relate to your industry is vital to your web site performing well on the web.

Now lets look at the Australian result, in August last year, NSW based SEO company First Rate, released a report on the performance of small business web sites in the country, and the results were almost identical to the US result.

FirstRate found that, individual business web sites are failing to compete in the search engines rankings, they lacked decent natural search rankings,did not partake in paid search engine marketing for the most popular keyword search terms, and did not have good link popularity or page rank scores, as a result their web site traffic is suffering.

When you analyse the search trends or keywords relevant to your business on Google you’ll see the the popularity of each keyword.

There are lot of factors that you need to consider in optimising your web site, and these should  include link building, which is often overlooked by businesses, but is now a vital element in gaining higher search engine rankings.

High quality links need to be formed to benefit the most from linking, and just as important is the creation of  “Deep Linking”, links that point to sub pages within your web site, search engines are likely to rank these pages higher when they have high quality external links pointing to them. Creating good organic search results should be part of your strategy along with using paid SEO.

So how much of this can you control yourself? Write great content, a lot of SEO falls within writing great content and building authoritative back links to that content within your web site.

Sites that are image heavy and text light,don’t have headings and subheadings or site maps that search engines can’t crawl won’t fair well.

If you write frequent relevant content that incorporates keywords and phrases that searchers are looking for, your site will be found. This is where blogging and social media can help in the creation of good keyword rich copy and the building of back links to that content.

SEO of your web site and it’s positioning in search engine results, is vital for you to compete in business today, because more traditional forms of marketing are no longer effective in driving leads, for example, in a recent Commonwealth bank survey, they found that 75% of people did not use Yellow pages in 2008, 58% didn’t use it the year before and 80% of consumers use the Internet to research purchases.

The other consideration is that Generation X&Y do not read newspapers,don’t use Yellow pages and most of their social interactions and shopping research is done on the Internet.

There’s lot to understand about keyword rich copy, back link and reciprocal link building and web site optimisation, so if I can help demystify this for you please ask, just send me a comment on the blog or email me for information on SEO Optimisation for Small Business

One point to remember, is that 99% of your competition don’t know what their doing.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Earlier this week I was a presenter at a training session in Sydney run by one of the major real estate franchise groups, and my topic for the session was “How to Market More Effectively Using On Line Technology” , or in other wards, how to write better copy to be found on the search engines such as Google and Bing.

The first part of the day focused on writing for print, and the presentation really was quite good, it focused on writing clean copy with no clutter and writing catchy headlines and avoiding cliche’s.

A lot of time and effort went in to focusing on the print side, how to submit your editorial, when was the best time to do so, what style of writing does the editor like etc, and then, when looking at the end result, which had been written up on a white board, I thought about how those headlines or keywords would research on the web. A lot of agents simply copy and paste their print copy onto the web, with no consideration of keywords, search phrases etc.

You really have no idea whether your copy or headline will have any impact on the property searcher unless you have a clear understanding of how they search on the web, what phrases do they use, what are the trigger words or keywords they search for, these are all the questions you need to answer before you submit your copy to the web.

It’s even more important today, with Google’s real estate section now publishing listings, because anything that is published on the web, will be indexed by search engines, so make sure you start to optimise your copy with keywords or phrases that target your market, if you don’t, you’ll end up not showing on the search results, or being missed by your buyers, and whilst those headlines look OK in print, they may not work on the web.

With 9 out of 10 property searchers starting their property search on the web, how much time are you going to spend on your research to get it right. So lets give you a few ideas on where to start: A really good place to start your research is in your own office and for a refresher please read my earlier post “Choosing the right Keywords for your Content”

The post I’ve highlighted will give you some really good ideas on keyword research, so next time you sit down and start brainstorming ideas for your headlines and listing copy, give some thought on how your buyer searches on the web and what phrases or words they use, if you do that you’ll have a head start on getting your property found on the web.

For some time now I’ve been using my social media network as my on line CV, suggesting to prospective clients and others I work with “to check me out on line and Google me” if they’d like to know more about what I do and a number of times this has been very effective for me and has led to new clients and speaking engagements on using social media to drive new business .

By using this method I’ve found it really gives them a good understanding of what I do, and of course, when it comes to working with them on a web campaign or social media strategy they have a clear understanding of what can be achieved. I’ve effectively replaced the old style paper resume with a new generation concept, and once they do a search on me they see all the web sites I own, articles I’ve written and those that have been syndicated and can see my area of expertise far better than I could explain or show on paper.

There is however a down side to all of this, and that’s why your on line presence or social network needs to managed very carefully and you need to be really aware of what information you put on line on your Facebook or Myspace page, as those photos, words or comments can really come back and bite you big time!!

Job seekers today are being urged to manage their on line footprint very carefully, because a recent report by Viacom in the UK, found that 1 in 5 employers had researched social networking sites and found personal information about prospective employees, and 59% said it had influenced their recruitment decision.

Amongst the reasons given for not employing people they had researched on the net, were and I quote, “His MySpace website showed a negative side to him including excessive alcohol abuse and disrespect for his job’ and ‘We found that the candidate was on the local police wanted list.’ The report also found that we as users of social media sites are leaving significant footprints of personal information on the web, as we use blogging sites, social networking sites etc.

The spread of people posting personal information on the web is not limited to younger generations though, with 31% of all internet users leaving personal information, which is searchable by anyone, on the web. However, the biggest group of information providers are in the age group 18-24, with just under half of those questioned for this survey, posting personal information on Facebook, MySpace and Youtube. The biggest concern to come out of this survey though, is that over 54% of the 18 to 24 year olds questioned during this research,responded that someone other than themselves, had posted photos, information and comments about them without their approval.

So, with the rise of search engines such as Google and Yahoo, be aware that employers are never more than a click away from getting information about you the job seeker, and of course, the same is true for companies, as job seekers are able to research information about prospective employers, so this is really a two way street.

The upshot of all of this is that you really need to think very carefully about the information you put on social network sites and you need to protect your name or brand. Your on line reputation is so vitally important today that you can’t afford to neglect it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this post, or even if you’ve experienced this problem yourself, so please leave me a comment.

How do you choose the right keywords for your piece of copy or blog post to really make sure that you’ll get readers to your blog or that you’ll get a good ranking on Google. It’s hard sometimes when writing, to find the right keywords to use, and even harder to put them into sentences that are optimised for the Internet. So I’ve decided to write a little piece on it for you, and give you a few ideas on how you can choose those keywords and then check to make sure they have enough search volume to rank. Remember my post on Red Widgets and how to include keywords in your article to get a good rank on the search engines, well lets now look choosing the right keywords for your target market.

The first thing to do in your real estate office, and this works really well with any business, is to sit down with all your staff and find out the most commonly used words or phrases your customers use when they contact your office, either by phone or face to face, create a list of these words and then identify the words or phrases most often used.

Develop these into profiles, you could for example have a first home buyer profile, or an investor profile, a green profile, a retiree profile etc.

Determine which one of these groups your article is targeted too and then weave the words that are keywords from each group into your body copy when writing your article.

Technology can be of real benefit to you here, as you can use Google Adwords keyword tool for checking keyword popularity and the tool will give you suggested variations on your chosen keyword.

Another great tool to use to find variations on your keywords is to use Google’s “Wonder Wheel“, now what is this you ask? when you type in a search term on Google you get the results on a web page, on the top left hand corner is a link called “Options”, click on the link and now you have a side bar on the left hand side with a number of options for you to use including one second from the bottom called “Wonder Wheel”.

Click on that and you see the wonder wheel appear in your screen, I’ve included a screen grab below for you which shows a search for Real Estate.

Real Estate Wonder Wheel

By clicking on the Wonder Wheel link, I now have a list of real estate companies, if I click on any of the links surrounding the wheel it gives me variations on my search term

Googles Wonder Wheel

This little tool is really handy for finding matches to your search term or for finding other keyword variations, the best way to understand it is to play around with it for awhile, so go and have some fun.

Red Widget - Is there a question?

Thank you all for the feedback you have given me on what content you would like to see more of in this blog, and with a count of 10 to 1, most of you would like to know more about search engine optimisation, setting up a blog and how to optimise your blog once you have it up and running, rather than more posts about social media. There appears to me to be a bit of burn out around social media, so for awhile, it’s a no go area on this blog.

With that in mind, I thought I’d write a follow up piece to my post last month on Internal Links – Create A Better SEO Result For Your Blog . In that post I mentioned the phrase “ranking for red widgets“, and I said I would qualify my statement in a later post. So, lets look at how to rank for any term you write about when blogging.

Firstly, you need to understand how the search engines work, they will return search results in the order of their perceived relevance to the search phrase requested. The more relevant your site appears to be to the search requested, the higher your site or page will rank.

Lets say you  wanted your page to rank for the term “red widgets”, and this applies to any term that you select that you want to rank for, then you need to think about how you will construct the page. If your page title is about red widgets, your keyword and description tags are about red widgets, your content is unique quality content about red widgets, your page displays images of red widgets and alt text and file names demonstrate that fact, you pick up links from other web sites pointing to yours about red widgets and you include some links to other web sites related to red widgets, does this then make you think that maybe the page or site will be highly relevant to the search phrase red widgets?

Give it a try next time you write a blog post on any subject. Think about how the consumer will search for the phrase or keyword that you use, but be very careful about over using keywords on your page, use them wisely and do  not over saturate the page, otherwise Google will know what you’re trying to do, and she won’t like you at all if you try that little game.

Image via CrunchBase

With the recent addition of real estate to Google maps in Australia a lot of discussion has been generated over its value to the real estate industry.

So far, to my knowledge, of the main portals only myhome and homehound have uploaded listings to Google, although I’m sure that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au internally have been in discussions about the merits of uploading all their listings to Google.

Google will have a full time job controlling the quality of listings available, and making sure that old, outdated or sold stock is removed, just look at the issues that myhome.com.au faced when it first launched in the market with trying to maintain quality with its listings.

During a presentation to one of the major franchises on Tuesday night I was asked my opinion on this very subject and in follow up discussions with a number of people in the industry, this is it seems, more about the potential changing of the guard than anything else.

There is a feeling in the real estate community that Google may just break the monopoly of realestate.com.au.

Well, I thought I’d provide you with a link to an article that Simon Baker, ex CEO of realestate.com.au has written on his blog about this very subject, will it work for Google and what, if any impact will it have on realestate.com.au in the future.

To read the article click here