If you would like more traffic to your website, it takes more than just launching a website, “and they will come”…

It actually takes a bit of work. I would like to share some of the ways you can drive more traffic to your site. A few may seem obvious and easy, while others are less obvious and may take a moment of your time. But, all will benefit you in the promotion of your website.

a). Make sure that your domain name has been added to the online office agent roster;

b). Include your domain name (and email) on your business cards, brochures, flyers and any other promotional materials that you might produce;

c). Ensure you have incorporated these same items into your email signature and any email-driven newsletters that you might send out;

d). Do you advertise in Homes and Land, the local newspaper, or other types of printed medium…then be sure and include your website domain name here as well;

e). Whenever there is a newsworthy event, submit it to the local newspapers for inclusion. Often it will get printed…especially if it is community-worthy. Don’t forget to include your domain name!

f). Write articles for online newsletters and the like. Show yourself as an authority. Be sure and include your domain name. You can submit to various online entities such as ezinearticles.com and isnare.com;

The ways to promote your site are limited only by your imagination. Just remember, by driving folks to your website will give them most of the information they need. All listings…schools…communities…area links…even what nearby homes have sold for and differing types of featured listings that you might have on your site. And a way to contact you!

Include that domain name on everything!

The term Blog is short for Web log and can be described as an online diary. . . easy to publish to . . . from your home, office or anywhere in the world, for that matter, as long as you have an internet connection and computer. No need to know HTML, web designing, hosting and the like.

Each article that you write, or publish, is called a post, with the most recent appearing at the top and the older posts being archived, but still accessible via links.

A blog can be about you, your favorite passion or hobby, politics, your business . . . or anything you want it to be. The blog you are currently visiting happens to be a real estate web site support blog for GraphicalData websites. It is dedicated to agents and offices using GraphicalData products to help showcase the tools available in developing and maintaining a GraphicalData site.

But, back to the subject at hand . . .

Basic entry-level Blogs can be easy to set-up, can be hosted for free and easy to update with new articles. If you are going to be a blogging machine, then you should consider a more robust solution such as WordPress.

So why would you want one??? A Blog can make you look more sophisticated and knowledgeable. It’s an easy way to have a less formal means of communicating than your business web site. A blog can provide an easy way to provide information to your target audience. You can provide instant “fresh” content in the bat of an eye…as often as you like. It can make you look and sound authoritative in your field of expertise. AND perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY, it can help boost traffic to your web site!

One agent shared with me that his blog often accounts for over half of the traffic to his web site. ALSO, Google especially seems to love the fresh content and can index it quite quickly. I have posted articles and in less than and hour, have Googled for it . . . and there it was! Truly amazing.

Remember, more traffic = more inquiries = more clients = more $ = happier you! Easy to do . . . and no, to very low cost. We can help you set one up if you like.

In conclusion, if you enjoy writing articles, or at least have content you can publish, then you should seriously consider setting up a blog site. Link it to your web site . . . and from your web site link to it…and you are off and running.

One caveat though, if you feel you will not be writing frequently enough, probably better to pass the blog by for now. Stale blogs . . . not a good thing!

There are good ‘bots and bad ‘bots crawling out there…in fact, more malicious than good…scrapping info. In this case, a ”Form Pirate” scraped your form. This happens regularly on the web…on our forms actually not so much, but it still does happen.

We will be installing “Captcha” onto the forms in the very near future to combat this problem. You may have already experienced this technique on other websites when completing and sending a form. The “Captcha” solution involves a security letters graphic, the letters of which need to be replicated and typed into a field before you can send the form. This solves a lot of the problem as a human can do this . . . and machines less so.

Bottom line though, this is not a threat…nothing internal is being compromised…and implementing the Captcha system will help substantially.

“Page Building 101″ - Register for Webinar on Sept. 17, 2009

We will cover how to build a page from the ground up and also show you the different things to put into a page (Map Search, Link List, Photos, etc…).  We’ll also cover different page topics to consider when adding content to your website.

The class will be held on September 17th from 10:00am-12:00pm PDT. You can easily register for this class and receive  instructions how to login, etc. by visiting this registration page.

Part five in a multi-part series on improving your ad-writing skills.

Are you still with me? Great, because we’re in the home stretch! The third part of AIDA: desire, can be tricky, but oh-so-worth-it! You’ve taken the time to create a powerful attention-grabbing headline, and you’ve assembled some great photographs to augment your headline. You’ve let the customer know “what’s in it for me?” by building on your headline with interest. Now’s the time to go deeper and appeal to the basic and fundamental needs and desires your prospective customer already has, by explicitly showing them how your product or service fulfills those desires.

Desire is about appealing to the emotions of your reader. What are some of those desires and basic needs you can appeal to? In real estate you actually have quite a variety of desires to “fulfill” with property. It could almost be said that you, as an agent, have it easy when it comes to desire.

How about the desire for physical safety and security? Gated communities, gated properties, secluded or off-the-beaten path homes, as well as those with pre-installed security systems all answer that desire. How about the desire for respect and admiration? Any luxury home or high-end property is going to easily fulfill that, as well as appealing to the desire for comfort or leisure. A desire for love, family and community can be fostered by any home sweet home. And this is definitely not an exhaustive list!

When working on the desire aspect of AIDA, consider common and prevailing human needs and desires, then consider how your property or service can help prospective customers to meet those needs and desires. Finally, communicate those desire-fulfilling aspects in your ad copy in simple, direct language. Make sure to name the desires as well as showing how they’re fulfilled by your “product” and you’re well on your way to a successful advertisement.

Check back soon for more on calls to Action!

A few years back, many search engines devalued the use of certain meta-tags in determining rankings, so not all search engines place as much emphasis on all the tags in your <HEAD> section as they once did. Rather, they will just pull from the first text they find on your site page, and display them in their results. This may give less than an ideal description of what your sites are all about. You have probably seen a few weird descriptions in the search engine results page (SERP) and wondered why…well that’s why.

For search engines that do give attention to the tags, these tags should be optimized as best you can for your nitche and marketplace. The <Title> tag still is very important. It should not be overly long and should incorporate the most important keyword phrase that represents your business. Most search engines will use this title tag for ranking your site and it is also the title that is displayed on the search engine results page. Use 4 to 12 keywords here (Seattle Real Estate - homes - condominiums - relocation).

Let’s spend a moment looking at your <Meta Description> tag. Usually, most search engines use the Description tag to describe what your site is about when the results are shown on the search engine results page. The length they pull from your meta tags can vary anywhere from 15 words to 30 words or so. Some engines use only the first 15ish words, so you should build a really good 12-15 word phrase that will keep them happy. Other engines can use up to 30ish words in their site description. I would add an additional 10-15 words that expands and enhances the first 15 words. Then, depending on which engine visits your site, the 15 word description makes sense, as does the 25-30 word description.

What am I saying…to clarify, I have a 25-30 word description that if cut at the 15 word mark makes sense to the visitors, as does a full 25-30 description. If you don’t plan it this way, you can have a description on the SERP page that seems to be cut off in mid-sentence and not make much sense. Google searchers may also see the first 15 words (or less…and not always).

The <Meta Keyword> tag has really fallen on hard times mostly due to people cramming keywords in that were considered spam, so most engines give very little attention to this tag.

GraphicalData web site users can tweak all three of these tags on any of their web site pages from the appropriate editing sections provided. And what is cool is that the title and the description is then automatically pulled and inserted into the site map that is generated and linked into your site. So, double important to tweak your tags.

[Note: When modifying your tags, you need to give ample time between modifications for the search engines to re-crawl your site and re-rank your position for any given search term. And hear this…pretty much anything you do here, if the content on your page is not of high quality, original content, then all this is very nearly in vain…Get your “House” in order first]