Custom Real Estate Web Design

Local Exposure Through The Internet

April 30th, 2007 Posted in Online Marketing

As clients have found through my conversations with them, I have consistently spoken about receiving exposure on the internet through multiple sources. No one should depend on only one source of advertising. There are of course sources where you focus your efforts but they should not be your only source of exposure. Below, I have listed some of the top sources to generate business:

  1. YOUR WEBSITE: The most cost effective method is having a search engine friendly website. As you all know, by investing in the custom website with custom content and properly optimized, over time your website will generate exposure via the internet.
  2. PPC(Pay Per Click): The second most effective source is through having PPC campaigns running on the top 3 search engines which account for over 90% of all searches in the USA.
  3. BLOGS:Utilize a blog to communicate to your current, former and future clients. Having a blog only for SEO purposes is NOT an effective use of your time. In that regard, I believe that once you have a website up and running, SEO is secondary, but must be considered in regard to all your online activities. What this means is that SEO is time consuming and you normally will not see the results of your SEO activities for 6-8 months. In regard to a blog, it means that having a Blog can be a powerful SEO tool but that must be a secondary reason for using a BLOG. The real power of a Blog is that by using a Blog and promoting your blog, you are able to communicate your thoughts, ideas, information or activities to a larger audience. Being a small business person, there is only so much time in the day and using a Blog allows you to reach more people with that limited time frame.
  4. FORUMS: In the same light as Blogs, Forums are an effective SEO tool, but participating in Forums only for SEO purposes is not an effective use of your time. The primary reason one should participate in forums is from a networking perspective. From a real estate agent perspective, look at forums as your online farm. Just as all real estate agents are told to work a farm in their neighborhood, Forums are an online farm for real estate agents.
  5. DIRECTORIES: Before search engines were developed, the best way to find what you were looking for online was through directories. Some of the biggest directories were Yahoo and DMOZ. With the advent of Google, directories have been used for many purposes including SEO, however, SEO is not the primary reason to be listed in directories. Most search engines have reduced the value of being listed in directories, however being listed in a directory is not going to hurt you from an SEO perspective. Once again, there is value of being listed, however the value must be more than only from an SEO perespective, or it is not worth your time. In tihis case, the added value is exposure. As most marketers know, you receive most of your clients from your primary marketing sources. On the internet, that also remains true however, their is a phrase in SEO called “chasing the tail”. What this means is that through the SEO process, you receive traffic from searches you would not think about . For example, last week a client told me that one client found them by typing in the term “claim jumper”. Because of the SEO process, their website came up under that term. It was not a term they were focused on, but because they have a Search Engine Friendly website, the couple found saw their website and liked what they saw, so they contacted the client in regard to their real estate needs. Directories work in much the same way. By being listed on multiple free directories, those websites receive exposure and being listed in those directories allows you to receive additional traffic to your website. Is it significant? In most cases no, which is way you shouldn’t pay to be listed in directories except for a very view.


So This gets me back to the title of the article. Local Exposure Through the Internet. There are a number of ways to gain local exposure. Over the past few years, the search engines have offered a local search as part of their search options. One of the main ways they create these results is by cross referencing their global results with directories they have agreements with. It is important to get listed in these directories. I have listed a number of them below:

  • Superpages.com - You can add your listing on this page: SUBMIT
  • Yellowpages.com - You can add your listing on this page: SUBMIT
  • infoUSA.com - You can add your listing on this page: SUBMIT HERE

Once you have set-up listings with these online phone directories, then go to the search engines and set-up your local account here:

These will get you started. Remember, no one submission will bring down the house in delivering traffic to your site, but over time, all these various methods add up. Just remember to do a little each and every week or month depending on how quickly you want to see results.

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