Website Optimization

There are two basic goals when trying to optimize a website. The first goal is to keep people on your website for an extended period of time. The average person will look at a website for 4 seconds before they decide if they want to go onto another site or stay on yours. That doesn't leave much time to get their attention. You need to know what your demographic wants. The common answer I get from real estate agents is "to search for houses." Although true, that's not what's going to keep them on your website. They are looking for information. Community information, school information, neighborhood information, and in some cases weather information. Information is the key word here. Your website visitors want to see pictures, links to local schools, local attractions, shopping, dining, etc. In a lot of cases, many of your buyers won't be from your local area. Having a website with a lot of information about your community will appeal to them simply because now they have a resource of information for buying houses and anything else they might need. The reality is that people aren't looking for real estate agents. You can find a real estate agent anywhere. What makes you stand out is that you actually gave theses people what they want. Information.

So, now you have these people staying on your website. What's the second goal when trying to optimize a website? Getting them to leave you contact info. This can become a bit of an art form. When I tell agents that their site isn't set up to correctly capture contact info, many misunderstand and think I'm talking about having a guest book login on the site. A guestbook login is the form on the website that requires people to input their information. Just because a website has a guestbook login form does not mean it is set up correctly. There are several more things to be considered. Where on the website will you require people to log in? Before they search? After? How much information will you give away before you ask for their contact information? If you give away to much they won't put their information in. If you give away to little they give you fake information. How do you get your website visitors through the guestbook login? Do I even want a guestbook login? These are all things that you need to consider when optimizing your website. The fact is,  if you want leads you need to use your guestbook login correctly. Your goal is to get as many people through that guestbook as possbile. Increase your chances, by increasing the number of links on the home page. Make every city you work in a link. Put as much information on the page as you can and use it as an excuse to add more links. All of these will link to the guestbook login. Look at it as fishing with a big net as opposed to a small net. You get a good idea what you need from our DIG Marketing hosted websites. They all come pre-optimized and will be a good starting point for you. The trick is that it doesn't matter really where they click or what they're interested in they're going through the guestbook first. I'll answer a question I know a few of you will have. No. You won't get everyone to leave you lead information. That's impossible. Your simply trying to increase your capture rate. Capture Rate is the ratio of people that visit the site versus the number of people that leave you lead information. This isn't meant to be an in depth article. It's just to teach you a few things to focus on. Discussing your options as far as where to put your guestbook login and what content to add are discussions all their own. Adding the links give you another benefit as well. The search engines like links as much as your buyers.

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