Real Estate Web Design

FarmingtonMoHouses.com is a sample real estate web design that we are using for our customers that are looking for ways to gather targeted visitors to their real estate website from Google.

Today the majority of people looking for homes or other types of real estate start in the search box on Google, Bing, or Yahoo searching for the properties that fit their needs. An example of this would be “Farmington Mo Houses”.

It is important that not only do you have a great looking website but also that it has been through the local SEO process to make sure you rank on that all important first page of the search engines. Over 95 percent of all search engine users never go past the first page. If you are not on the first page then there is work to do.

Contact Localtek  today  by calling 800 647 2909 or use the contact form to find out how to get your website found online.

We caution strongly against any company with a promise for these top spots.  This being said LocalTek has approximately a 99% success ratio when it comes to local search engine optimization. This means our customers get found when people search their mobile phone or computer for local businesses.

For successful companies in search engine optimization it is not just a one time effort to optimize a website to be found online. A page can be ranked in the top spots as little as hours or as long as months to years depending on the competition for the keywords desired.

The science behind why this happens is based on Google. The Google search engine  has approximately 200 different factors in their algorithm on which a page earns its rank, the algorithm can change daily which means NO web or SEO company can guarantee how a website can rank months out or even day to day depending on the topic. But they can work to do things in a way that has shown consistent results for their customers, with over 350 customers Localtek has that data to show what works for our customers over the long term.

Once a page is ranked for the desired terms it is critical the customer understands that SEO is not a one- time fix but an ongoing process.  An important note to customers is that the possibility of losing top rankings after time is not usually a blunder made by the SEO company.

Updating the website regularly with new and relevant content  and tweaking keywords are all an ongoing process to maintain rankings.  If these things are going to be either a time, interest, or knowledge challenge to the customer LocalTek has a package which includes a regular SEO maintenance review of the customers’ website varying from monthly to yearly depending on the customer’s goals.

There is one for sure fact to keep in mind if you are considering building your online presence for your business.  If you don’t have a web presence it is certain your competitors will be showing up in the top rankings without you. So your first step is to either start your plan to be found online or plan to update your web presence that may be out of date if it was built several years back.

Do you want the people looking for your business online to find you WITH your competition..or not at all? If they have their online marketing already in progress now is the time step up your campaign or you will be missing out on hundreds or thousands of people they are currently reaching in your same target market.

Having a local search engine optimized website is not something to wait on, chances are if you had a website built by a typical web development or marketing company they did not focus on what really matters, getting business to your door. If it seems overwhelming let us help with the maintenance and the development to make sure your customers find your business online.

Here is a quick testimonial about local search and social media from the customer:

After a Localtek Account Manager met with the customer they decided it was time to move based on the continued growth of people searching locally for businesses in Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Also, with over 500 million users on Facebook it was clear there would be a way to tap into the social networking world to promote their products and specials directly to those who were interested.

The preliminary results have been very exciting for the customer and proves that people are looking for your business and the longer you wait to do local search engine optimization on your web presence the more customers that will be missed.

The customer has received calls from customers who have searched and now found their website searching for the town and products the customer offers. Along with this daily there are several visitors who specifically searched for the business name. The question is before the website was there where did they go? Likely to a directory that provided little to no information on the businesses services and products.

Also, after less than 3 days they have 70+ Facebook fans with that growing everyday. With continued marketing of their website and Facebook page they will continue to grow this very targeted base of customers and interested readers.

People are searching on mobile phones, laptops, and social media sites for your business. Are you being found for all the search keywords your business needs?

This letter is being written to help you understand the changes that are occurring that will have an effect on how you run your business and specifically on how you promote your business. The Internet is here to stay; historically small business has relied on legacy media such as newspapers and radio to promote their business as well as advertising only mediums such as billboards.  These media types focus on one thing and one thing only, eyeballs. The question you have to ask yourself now is this: Are there better ways to promote my business on the Internet? Is there something other than eyeballs me, as a business owner, needs to think about?

You are likely very comfortable advertising with your local newspaper, Yellow pages, and radio station, the same salesperson has been visiting you for many years and you purchase month after month and they talk about the number of houses delivered too, the number of listeners, etc. Have they mentioned anything about the 92 percent of newspapers that have reported a drop in readership or the major drop in print Yellow page usage?

Now, before you think that you have a business that is immune to the shift or that since you do not sell a product online that promoting your business on the Internet is not for you I would like to give you an example case where a business has grown their business by promoting online effectively.

This specific small business, a 3 person pet grooming salon in rural Missouri, had never had a website because they had never thought that a pet grooming shop would need online promotion, the yellowpages and newspaper seemed the obvious place to advertise, everyone has been doing it for years, right?

After someone came into their shop to discuss a small website and targeted promotion on the web they decided that having a website might be “neat” but the company working with them also explained the concept of building the site to allow for targeted traffic that allows for higher customer conversions. This was a new concept to them; advertising had always been about viewers not necessarily focusing on targeted viewers that convert to customers.

The pet grooming shop decided to move forward and purchased both advertising and a website. The advertising was targeted by community and also very important was the targeting of the website that was developed for them. It was developed specifically to receive traffic for pet grooming customers in their specific rural town.

The results, after just one month of being live the customer contacted their supplier and let them know that they had several new customers that let them know they found them on the web. What does this mean? It means in even small towns people are searching for offline businesses instead of going to the newspaper or flipping through the yellowpages. This is a group of customers that you, the small business owner, are missing.

For many years small businesses have complained about corporate America ruining community businesses. The same thing has the potential to happen on the Internet. How can you tell? First off you have to ask yourself how you use the Internet or think about how your potential customers use the Internet. If the first thing that you thought after reading that was that this does not matter since you do not use the Internet, the thing you actually need to think about is the second part of the sentence, “think about how your customers use the Internet”. One of the major mistakes many long time small business owners make is thinking that since they are not users of the Internet that their customers are not.

Corporate America has had budgets to do marketing online for years, in many cases if you search for a certain type of business online in small and large towns the large corporate companies show up in the search results. Why? Because they know how to use the Internet to extend the reach of their business. They understood that people are using the web for finding services and products locally. As a small business owner you need to think about this as well. The topic that seems so technical is actually your marketing today. No longer can you think about your website as a technical item but it needs to be looked at as a marketing tool. It is about finding customers not just having a website because it is “neat”.

The next thought many small business owners will have is my town is too small no one is searching for services here. That is also not true and will be changing rapidly. The US government has approved a 7.2 billion stimulus package to drive broadband Internet access into rural America. This means the way people access and use the Internet in these areas will change drastically and if your business is not prepared those “corporate guys” will take business away because they show up in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Being small and rural does not matter anymore. Whether you are in New York City or Kearney, Nebraska the Internet is the Internet and people can find your competitors without having to drive to their doorstep.

So, if you have read this far I want to give you items to think about as you realize that maybe having a presence online that actually draws targeted viewers looking for your service or product is important:

Here is the best analogy to explain this: Shotgun vs. Rifle. Think of newspapers and radio as the shotgun approach and targeted web traffic as a rifle. How you get that targeted traffic is the more complicated part. But it has been proven many times that targeted traffic converts at a much higher rate than traffic received from the shotgun approach

SEO is the typical way this is said. SEO is the process of building your website in a way that draws the targeted visitors to your business presence online. Think about this, if the front door to your business is locked no one can get in. If your site is not optimized the front door might as well be locked.

This is VERY important, it is not as simple as just going to Godaddy.com and picking a name. It is important to select something that describes your business and if possible be rich in words that describe what you are doing. This helps gain the targeted traffic that is discussed above. In many cases it is worth the effort and money to acquire this domain name from a third party who may own the name currently. You selected your physical office location based on location; shouldn’t you also choose the best possible location for your online presence?

Once they get to your website you need to make sure they take action to contact or buy your product. Your site needs to be developed in a way that urges them to do this. This is most often the piece that is overlooked when developing a site along with SEO.

After spending time with small business owners in both large and small towns and cities I have found it very common to hear the comment “My (insert family member here) is building my website.” In almost all cases the site has been done in a way that is not optimized and will never have a visitor because the site was not used as a marketing tool but simply as an item that was “neat”. It is important that you understand that your website is as important to your business presence as the sales people you have working with customers or the office space you have. It is your face to the public, but if no one ever sees it because it is hidden in a crowd and is never seen then it does not matter if it is “pretty and nice looking”. You must optimize your web presence starting at the selection of your domain name and ending at the call to action to act once they get there.

For more information feel free contact me and ask how you can help prepare your business to gain customers from targeted, effective, online marketing solutions from Localtek, LLC.

Bruce Marler and Joe Caldwell

Co-Founders

Localtek, LLC

Office: 800-647-2909

Email: info@localtek.com

Whether you are looking for ways to promote a new small business website or a major web development project it is important to find ways to promote the site, although search engines and targeted PPC advertising help drive traffic it is very important, especially for local small businesses to promote their sites on a  day to day basis as their storefront on the Internet.

Too many times I have met with a business owner and they talk about having  a website but then talk about how it has never had any traffic. In other words it was a  neat thing to have but they never thought of it as a way to connect with customers or promote their business.

Here are a few ways to promote your online presence with offline methods:

Business Cards – Plain and simple, the standard business card is a standard in business. If you do not have your website listed on the business card you are missing one of the most effective ways to promote your site. I have seen this too many times, someone has a website but you look at their card and sure enough it is not there. Having your domain name in your email address is not enough, make it clear where to go to find your business online.

Take Out Menus - If you are a restaurant do not miss the chance to promote your website on your take home menus or even on your table menus. If you are a business in the area of a restaurant that has take home menus ask if you can buy space on their take home menus for your logo and website. It works, people take these home and stick them on their fridge and see it everyday.

T-Shirts - If you happen to have a business where a uniform is used or have had T-shirts printed up for various reasons make sure you stick your website on it, I have seen people have their phone numbers, addresses, hours, basically everything you can think of on it except for their domain name. A large portion of people focus on remembering the website name these days not the phone number. They can get the contact info from the website.

Billboards – Same as above, more people are looking for the website to go to more so than a phone number these days. A person I spoke to just tonight who is a very non-tech person said he even realized today that he realized it is now the FIRST thing he looks for and never pays attention to a phone number any more on a billboard. If you have a website and have bought billboard advertising do not miss the chance to promote your online billboard (website).

Newspaper and Radio Ads – Lets face it print media is dying a slow (but quickly turning to fast) death so why miss the chance to promote your online presence if you are still advertising in print media. You know people are heading online, make sure they know where to find you there. If you are advertising on radio same thing goes, people are tuning out ads more and more on radio, make sure you get in your website name so they know where to find your online presence, they are more likely to remember that than just about anything else that you may say.

Magnets – Want to keep your logo and site name in front of people hand out refrigerator magnets in your place of business. People use these to hold up pictures, menus, etc so it is a constant reminder when they go to the fridge.

Letterhead – Many small businesses still use letterhead to send business letters or promotional letters on a daily basis. Take advantage of this to get your website in front of the customers or partners you are promoting your message to with your offline paper mailings.

Car Stickers -Window stickers are a great way to get a site and logo in front of people, I see these daily and they are very cost effective to get printed up. Why not get your site name in front of everyone while you are running to get groceries are heading out on a sales call.

Banners – This is something I have used personally, I see many small businesses on a day to day basis that have banners in front of their place of business or in targeted highly visible locations in their area. Most are missing this chance to promote the place people can go to find out more about them, their website.

Team Sponsorships – For years one of the ways local businesses have shown their support for a community has been to sponsor a little league team or maybe the all star soccer team in their area. Think of the value you can get if you give more than just your business name on the jersey and instead put your site name. People are watching their children run around the field for hours at a time, why not keep your site name in front of them.

Need help getting your website found? Call Localtek at 800 647 2909

We are long past the days when just having a website that is pretty and just on-line is effective. As owners we need to understand just how the world has changed. Local Search Engine Optimization is the first area we need to grasp an understanding of. People use the Internet much differently now than they did even a few short years ago. Customers are searching for your goods and services locally, many times using the Smartphone that is in their pocket. Is your business ready for this paradigm shift?

Statistics show us that 80% of consumers now search locally and then come to your store to make their purchases off-line. If you can’t be found on-line this is a loss of sale for your business. If your website is not optimized for local search then you are going to be missing out on that business since 96% of users will not go past the first page of Google when they are searching.

At LocalTek one of our clients called in the other day to inquire about their website as they expected to be receiving orders online.  After researching data we had on hand for the customer it was determined that the customer was in fact receiving targeted, high conversion customers, everyday specifically looking for their business or type of business in their area.

In a little less than a year this store has received almost 12,000 visitors to the website including days close to 300 visitors. This site also ranks number one on Google for specific terms the customer requires for the success of their business. This is a tremendous accomplishment for a small niche shop in a small city in southeast Missouri.

What this shows though is people are indeed finding local businesses but the large majority still visitor the local business to complete the transaction.

When you couple a quality website with a social media campaign using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. you are putting your business right where your consumers are. Social Media is the new “Word of Mouth” for your business and it is remarkably easy to control your message. The average Facebook user spends 50 minutes per day on the site. That amount of time jumps if it is on their mobile device. If your target audience is spending that amount of time using social media shouldn’t your business have a presence there also?

Combining local SEO with Social Media is the best solution to acquiring and then keeping customers. Keep your message in front of those people that have already enjoyed doing business with you and you are more likely to have repeat customers.

Call us now to let us help your business be found online.

With the growth in local search and the need for local search optimization Tim understood the importance of making sure his business was found online when people did a local search for his business and talks here of the results:

By using a combination of HTML and Blog Style technology, we were able to build a site almost identical to their previous site, but one which will now rank better for local search traffic and be easier for them to alter.  We also tied this site to the customers Facebook “Like” Page and their twitter account.  Now with simple point and click processes, this site can be updated in minutes and all of their new information added is directly sent to notify all of their followers and fans.