Last month I wrote an article based on research that shows only 8% of internet searchers go past page 3 when running a search. As an agent, you know it’s important to be on the search engines don’t you? I mean, 84% of buyers are there right? Why, in spite of all of the NAR research, are such a small percentage of agents are taking all of the internet based business?

Let’s assume for a minute you are an agent in Atlanta, GA. Did you know that in July of 2008 there were 368,000 searches for “Atlanta Real Estate”? That does not even count the thousands of combinations when factoring in suburbs or other Atlanta keyword search phrases like “Atlanta homes for sale” which had 201,000 searches.
 
We know this: Google is searched 250,000,000 times per day, and it is important to be seen when people go looking for real estate. Entire books have been written about the title of this article but in a few short paragraphs, the best answer has to do with time.

SEO is the process of taking your website and optimizing it for the search engines in order that your ranking will put you on the first page, This process can take months until you’re seen on the first page of the “natural”, or organic search results. It can be optimized by you adding relevant content to your site, developing and maintaining a blog, exchanging links with other real estate websites, etc. As long as you’re optimizing better than the existing competitors on the organic listings, you will slowly climb up the organic ranking ladder until hopefully, you’ll be on the first page.

But you need leads NOW, not in six months. With PPC, or sponsored search, you can appear on the first page of Google within 24 hours. Who uses paid search you might ask? Barack Obama, John McCain, car washes, pizza shops, Honda, IBM, and the list goes on and one. Oops, I forgot real estate agents. Those agents get the fact that 84% of buyers are online, and they want to be there with them.

Look at your marketing budget and try to find a way to allocate a larger percentage of that budget to online methods. Read the success story in this newsletter, results like this are possible to everyone who is willing to work.

To learn more, call one of our Search Factory representatives at 877-567-3272 today to discuss the best solution for your business. We offer affordable solutions to search engine marketing, and best of all, over 90% of our clients are from the real estate industry. For more information, visit us at http://www.thesearchfactory.net/products-intro.html