SugarPineRealty.com Website Stats

Tough Love About Websites

How many of you out there have a website? I see that hand. I see that hand. I see that hand. Okay, hands down. Next question. How many of you think your website is getting a lot of traffic/visitors/viewership? A few hands? Maybe? The truth is, when it comes to the question of visits to one's website, probably more people than not don't know how much traffic they're getting (unless they're a computer geek like me). So let me fill you in. And this is the tough love part of this post. You're likely not getting very much traffic/many visitors to your website at all - and especially if you're not investing any time or hard work (underline those last two words) in the promotion of your website (especially online). It's kind of like listing a mansion in Big Hill. (For those of you from out of the area, Big Hill is equal to - no offense to people who live there - the boondocks. But I digress.) And frankly, your website could be the best thing since sliced bread, but if you don't tell anybody about it, no one's gonna know it even exists let alone visit it. This is where social media comes in. Are you on Facebook with your site building up a friendship base? Are you on Twitter with your site building up a follower base? (And there are other social media options to consider and use, too.) These great (and free) applications are places on the internet where you can communicate who you are, what you have to offer and allow people to see a personal side of you. The fringe benefit is you're able to offer a greater audience the opportunity to visit your website - thus the potential for increased traffic. One final and personal thought: Website traffic statistics are overblown (in my opinion). I'd rather have one visit to a website that produced one closed escrow than 1 million visits that produced none. Anybody agree with me? I see that hand. I see that hand. I see that hand.

Measuring the Worth of a Website

I came across a website recently where you can find out in monetary terms the worth of a website. You'll notice below a list of some of the popular websites and their worth as calculated at the What is Your Website Worth? website. It's all based on backlinks. For those of you that don't know, backlinks are simply when another website, blog, social networking page links to yours. (And I've just backlinked myself already three times in this blog post - twice with the term "backlinks" and once with the What's Your Website Worth? site reference. Click either "backlinks" and you'll get Wikipedia's definition page.) Search engines recognize backlinks as a measurement of the popularity of a site. And the What is Your Website Worth? (there's another backlink!) quantifies it to a dollar amount. (Again, see below for examples.) How does a person generate backlinks to their site to increase the worth of their site? Well, one of the easiest ways is to get out there and join some of the social networks on the web (that I talked about last week in Social Networking with the Realtor in Mind) and leave comments on people's blog posts. And when you do, make sure to include in your signature your website or blog address. And voila! You've created a backlink. And don't forget to visit What is Your Website Worth? and just type in any web address to see it's value. And finally, to that list I was telling you about:

WORTH OF WEBSITES (according to SootleDirectory):
google.com: $2,765,044,900
myspace.com: $1,234,176,100
yahoo.com: $604,967,261
facebook.com: $604,859,395
live.com: $553,716,193
youtube.com: $486,307,260
nytimes.com: $240,713,910
weather.com: $164,537,971
cnn.com: $152,298,428
msn.com: $71,122,460
foxnews.com: $34,025,350
wikipedia.org: $26,939,475
drudgereport.com: $16,135,929
activerain.com: $3,850,242
godtube.com: $1,138,875
gmacrealestate.com: $639,302

All About Avatars

Do you know what an "Avatar" is? If you said it's "the incarnation of a Hindu deity," you're right. If you said it's "an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) often in a person," then you're right again. (All definitions in this post are from Webster's online.) But these are not the kind of Avatar I'm thinking about. Instead, the Avatar on my mind is "an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user." You've seen an "Avatar" before. Yes, you have. They're those people images that speak to you on websites and blogs. (For an example of an Avatar that promotes Sugar Pine Realty, CLICK HERE or on the picture above.) And it isn't too costly to include an Avatar as part of your promotional online technology. And they're kind of fun, too. You can basically put whatever words you want in your Avatar's mouth and he or she will say it. (Again, CLICK HERE or on the picture above to see the Avatar whose mouth I filled to talk up Sugar Pine Realty.) You can also choose the gender, facial features, etc., of your Avatar - and even the type of voice. You want one with a foreign accent - voila! - you got it. Ultimately, the "Avatar" is just another technology that's available to enhance your presence and set you apart on the world wide web. For a free 15-day trial of your own Avatar, visit Bravenet.com, sign up for a free account, then choose Web Tools and after that click on Speaking Characters (in the third column, the last item). Let me know if you have any questions.

The Neglected Tool of Real Estate

I've been doing some reading about real estate tools recently. And I guess if you ask any real estate agent what tools he (or she) has to promote his (or her) business, you might get a myriad of answers. (I always wanted to use that word: myriad.) And so what would you consider as your own personal real estate tools? (Click here to email me your list. I'd really like to know.) Did you include the telephone? Most likely. What about your signage? Sure, that's a real estate tool, too. And then your "sphere of influence" is a tool. Did you think of that one? The people you know and that know you are probably one of the most important real estate tools you have. And then there's another tool that I wonder if you would include on your list. I'd daresay that some of you did, but then there were some others of you that it might not have even crossed your mind. It's probably equal in importance to the tool I just mentioned (sphere of influence) and yet I propose it's likely one of the most neglected tools of real estate. What tool am I talking about? Did you guess it? It's the internet. Everywhere I go online and everything I read says that 80% plus (and growing) begin their search for a home on the world wide web. And so it behooves (I always wanted to use that word in a post, too) real estate agents to not only have a website and a blog (among other things), but to become good at managing and maintaining their website and blog and making them a worthwhile place for consumers to visit often. And why aren't you the expert/go-to-real-estate-agent online in the Sonora, Twain Harte, Groveland, Copperopolis area when 4 out of 5 people looking for property in the Mother Lode are doing it via their computer screens? There's a void in our area for this type of realtor. It's true. It's time for you to fill the void. For help getting started, CLICK HERE and then contact Mike C. for further support.

Brand New Look for sugarpinerealty.com

I'm very pleased to announce the redesign of sugarpinerealty.com is now complete and live! I want to encourage you to visit the homepage when you get a chance to check out our attractive new look. And let me just point out a couple of the changes so you're familiar with them and can relate them to anyone who's interested. Of course, we've just got things laid out a whole lot more clearly so as to make it as user-friendly as possible. There's the "Find a Home" button (goes to our default search page) and "List a Home" button (goes to a Virtual Market Analysis page) right up front where they can't be missed. And just to highlight the "List a Home" choice. A person clicking here goes to a page where he can submit his contact and housing information and it will pull up comparable properties similar to his. After that, he can choose for an agent to contact him. This is just such a great tool and lead capturing device in my mind. And then there's the TransactionPoint login choice near the bottom left of the page right above the Real Estate School banner. I wanted to highlight this as a reminder. Not only are you able to log in by clicking here to view your listing and escrow documents, but your clients are able to do the same thing as well. (Contact Kelly, Diana or I and we'll be happy to remind you how this works. We'll be having a refresher course on TransactionPoint in the very near future.) And then there's another new feature (which I'm especially proud of) over to the right of the page near the bottom of the new look design. The technical term for this feature: it's a Google Gadget. With this gadget what you have is access, of course, to the Sugar Pine Realty blog (which is responsible for 6,600+ page requests to sugarpinerealty.com per month currently - and growing), but also there are three other tabs which point to, among other things, relevant links throughout the Mother Lode as well as all of Sugar Pine Realty's listings as they appear on the popular classified ad site, Craig's list. And so I guess the bottom line of it all, as you can see, there's just a lot of good information on sugarpinerealty.com just like before except in the new design it's much more user-friendly we're convinced. I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Redesign of sugarpinerealty.com

I've got some exciting news to share with you today. In recent weeks we've been working on a redesign for our company website - and it's in the final stages of coming together. Click on the picture on the left to get a preliminary look. And I guess it's a just a real good time to be reminded again just how important a website is when it comes to real estate in the 21st century. Over 80% of all homebuyers begin their search where? In the newspaper. No. By calling a real estate office. No. By visiting an open house. No. By going online. Yes! And so, of course, it's important to have a web presence. But it's so much more than that. A website must have the right design. A website must be constructed so that appeals to and engages visitors. We believe sugarpinerealty.com's new look will do just that. When launch date arrives I will highlight some of the new and different features that will be available for our customers to use. Until then, don't forget to use your own Sugar Pine Realty website to promote yourself. People need to know that their listings are being seen. And if they're on sugarpinerealty.com, they are being seen - and sold.

E-Cards and E-Stats

Just wanted to remind you about a couple of features on the Sugar Pine Realty website that are pretty cool. The first is E-cards. You can use E-cards to tell others via email of a new listing, an open house or a closing. (For an example of the E-card look, click on the picture above.) To set up an E-card follow these steps: CLICK HERE to log in to the back end (maintenance area) of your website. Then click on the Marketing Tab > E-cards Tab > Select Template (New on Market, Sold or Open House) > Enter MLS# or Address > Click Search > Click Submit > Select Image > Enter Contact Info, etc > Preview > Send. When sent the E-card includes a link near the bottom that goes directly to your website. Send an E-card to yourself to see how it works. On now to E-stats. Some of you have been using it already. You can set up your Sugar Pine Realty website to automatically email your listing clients (and/or yourself) statistics that show how many people are viewing their property in any given week. (Click on the picture on the left to see an example of the page where you can view E-stats or enter the E-stats set up area. The third picture at the bottom right below shows you the actual E-stats set up area.) To configure E-stats follow these steps: CLICK HERE to log in to the back end (maintenance area) of your website. Then click on the Listings Tab > In the Seller Reports column, click on "None Set" > Input Seller Info, then click "Add Seller" > Choose "Add new report to this seller" (on the right side of the page) > Choose to modify the report day, etc (on the left side of the page). You're done. To see the number of visitors to any given listing, in the Seller Reports column (see second picture above), choose "Click Here." Let me know if you have any questions or need help.

Sugar Pine Realty/GMAC Ranked on Alexa

For those of you who couldn't be at the Thursday morning meeting this past week, I wanted to let you know about one of the things that was talked about: the Alexa ranking of sugarpinerealty.com. Of course, you can click on the first picture in this post to see the ranking for yourself. But let me help interpret it for you after you do. The Sugar Pine Realty/GMAC website is now ranked among the highest-trafficked real estate websites in the greater Sonora, Twain Harte, Mother Lode area. You'll notice on the Alexa ranking sheet that sugarpinerealty.com has seen an increase in pageviews over the course of the last three months by some 200+ percent. How were we able to achieve this increase? Well, we've been working hard as a company in promotion of the website for one thing. Our "All points lead to sugarpinerealty.com" funnel graph spells out where the majority of our website traffic comes from. (Click on the second picture to view.) We have the Sugar Pine Realty/GMAC website promoted just about everywhere. And so when you're out there trying to get that listing, it's important to let your potential clients know. They'll want to list with a company where their property has the potential to be seen not only in the Sierra foothills, but beyond. With sugarpinerealty.com they'll have just that. And we have the documentation (even from Alexa) that proves it. (Sugar Pine Realty is committed to providing the greater Sonora, Twain Harte, Mother Lode area of the Sierra foothills with the best in real estate sales and services. Email Sugar Pine Realty for more information.)