How does one even start with this whole process? It sounds a little confusing and overwhelming right? Especially when you are starting from scratch.
Step one: set up a website (search companies and prices).... you would be amazed at how much people overpay nowadays for things that are very cheap or free. My advice is to spend the time and search the products. You won't regret it! Your jaw would drop if you knew of the next to nothing price I paid for my real estate website, and my jaw drops when I know what other people pay on a monthly basis! I do realize that most people aren't necessarily technical and it will hold you back if you don't get a little fearless about it all and start exploring. Yes I do all my own website editing, you can pay someone else and save yourself a whole lot of time but then you aren't in control of your product. In this new technical age I say 'bite the bullet and do it', if you don't learn it now then you will probably be forced to learn it later and isn't it better to be ahead of the game?
Step two: pick up a domain name and route it back to your website. Doing this for the first time is very confusing, but I feel better about knowing how the rest of the world does it. oh and learn how to attach google analytics to your website... equally confusing but I think if you invest the time in learning it then it can pay off huge.
Step three: work on your website enough that you feel comfortable making it 'findable'.
Step four: hey hey!! your ready, share it with your friends! Why not let all your friends (potential future clients) know about it---put it on facebook and ask for their advice and be open to suggestions.... I got great tips from my brother and mother that I would have never thought of without them, why because they are looking at it from a purely user point of view where yours is already a bit clouded with all the cool (hopefully) stuff you have been putting on there! (and by the way if you aren't on facebook, get on there! But thats a different discussion.)
Step five: Search Engine Optimization... thats right.... SEO!!
It seems crazy that its such an intrisic process to get your website to the top of google but oooooh soooo important especially in the business of real estate. I know when I look for stuff I rarely search past the first page of google hits and usually look in the top 3 results. Ok so the one thing about paying someone else to do your website is that you have no control in this and this my friends is the most important part THAT PEOPLE FIND YOU FIRST. So where do we start?
Well this is one thing when buying a website that you find out how much control over all the details of SEO you have and how easy it is to control. I knew nothing about any of this so it wasn't a concern when website shopping but I seemed to have lucked out. I do recommend websitebox and check out my page www.outlookhomes.ca to see if you like the look of it.... and hey... give me some advice if there is something you think would help ;)
There are tons of videos and newsletters and blah blah about all the ways to enhance your SEO and you know it takes a ton of time digesting all the information. What I have learned and am continually learning is something we all have learned at one time or another 'KISS' or also known as 'keep it simple, stupid'. On my website content I leave it as people would like to read it because you could pile a lot of crap in there that you think makes it more findable by google but in all honestly its so packed full of words that its a pile of mumbo jumbo. If its like this when someone clicks on your site they aren't really gonna read it now are they. So in my opinion don't mess with the content too much KISS.
The area I think needs the most time is your meta-tags, page titles, links to other pages and importantly--back to your site, running rss feeds, videos, blogs (what I'm doing here), etc., etc.
Its a lot, right?
Don't get to overwhelmed with it all. While building a cardboard castle with my nephew last night he said "awe man! we aren't ever gonna get this figured out" and I told him "start with what you do know, and it will build itself"... sometimes we don't need to see the finish line, just the next step.
Well its running late in the day for me and getting into meta tags and all that wonderful technical stuff is for another time I think.
Good luck with your website building and getting to the top... I'm still working on mine!
Step four: hey hey!! your ready, share it with your friends! Why not let all your friends (potential future clients) know about it---put it on facebook and ask for their advice and be open to suggestions.... I got great tips from my brother and mother that I would have never thought of without them, why because they are looking at it from a purely user point of view where yours is already a bit clouded with all the cool (hopefully) stuff you have been putting on there! (and by the way if you aren't on facebook, get on there! But thats a different discussion.)
Step five: Search Engine Optimization... thats right.... SEO!!
It seems crazy that its such an intrisic process to get your website to the top of google but oooooh soooo important especially in the business of real estate. I know when I look for stuff I rarely search past the first page of google hits and usually look in the top 3 results. Ok so the one thing about paying someone else to do your website is that you have no control in this and this my friends is the most important part THAT PEOPLE FIND YOU FIRST. So where do we start?
Well this is one thing when buying a website that you find out how much control over all the details of SEO you have and how easy it is to control. I knew nothing about any of this so it wasn't a concern when website shopping but I seemed to have lucked out. I do recommend websitebox and check out my page www.outlookhomes.ca to see if you like the look of it.... and hey... give me some advice if there is something you think would help ;)
There are tons of videos and newsletters and blah blah about all the ways to enhance your SEO and you know it takes a ton of time digesting all the information. What I have learned and am continually learning is something we all have learned at one time or another 'KISS' or also known as 'keep it simple, stupid'. On my website content I leave it as people would like to read it because you could pile a lot of crap in there that you think makes it more findable by google but in all honestly its so packed full of words that its a pile of mumbo jumbo. If its like this when someone clicks on your site they aren't really gonna read it now are they. So in my opinion don't mess with the content too much KISS.
The area I think needs the most time is your meta-tags, page titles, links to other pages and importantly--back to your site, running rss feeds, videos, blogs (what I'm doing here), etc., etc.
Its a lot, right?
Don't get to overwhelmed with it all. While building a cardboard castle with my nephew last night he said "awe man! we aren't ever gonna get this figured out" and I told him "start with what you do know, and it will build itself"... sometimes we don't need to see the finish line, just the next step.
Well its running late in the day for me and getting into meta tags and all that wonderful technical stuff is for another time I think.
Good luck with your website building and getting to the top... I'm still working on mine!
I just learned that outlooklistings.blogspot.ca can be used as an RSS feed too. What this means is that its a page that continually updates its content. I just added it to my news feed at www.outlookhomes.ca/news, this way whenever I write a blog post it is automatically updated to my website. Very neat! Technology is doing the work for me as I will never have to go add the blog to my website, its already done!
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