October 27, 2011
At this year’s Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, Active Website’s Director of Deployment, Tyler Olmsted, and Director of Mobile Technology, Chris Chares, discussed the impact search, mobile and social networking can have to the online home searching process. 89% of home searching is done online and the process can often be a cold, impersonal experience. However, with the new advances in these areas we are able to bridge this gap and provide a robust experience to customers and give them search results that better match their needs.
Before people started home searching online, they would first go to their realtor to help them find homes based on criteria other than the number of beds and baths, price range, etc. Customers would discuss what was important to their lifestyle and the realtor would then be able to help them find homes that matched all of their needs.
However, since more and more buyers are starting their search online before talking to an agent, we need to provide better tools that mimic the experience they would have with an agent. Through search, mobile and social networking, we can achieve this goal. (more…)
October 26, 2011
At this year’s Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, attendees had the opportunity to hear from Enterprise Network member, Tom Flanagan, on the importance of establishing your brand. Tom is the Technology Director at Residential Properties Ltd., a syndicated technology columnist for Inman News and has spoken numerous times at Enterprise Network events.
Because Tom is one of our most forward-thinking members, we invited Tom to present at the conference on ways to bridge the gap between your brokerage’s brand and your customers through a usable website and superior customer service. In order to do this, it is important to understand that your brand consists of more than just your logo; your brand is everything, including your strategy, communication tools, agents and staff, website and more.
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October 25, 2011
Building on our recent syndication discussion, we’d like to take a closer look at ways we can optimize our SEO efforts in order to alleviate the need to syndicate to outlets like Trulia and Zillow. With syndication sites competing with you for authority on your content, and often ranking higher than you on search results, it’s important to have an effective strategy in place when these issues arise.
At this year’s Active Enterprise Network Annual Conference, members had the opportunity to hear about the emerging trends in SEO from Rob Ousbey, VP of Operations at Distilled LLC. During his presentation, Rob discussed how to leverage our search rankings with Google’s recent authorship markup and how it can help your brokerage remain the authority of your content.
The Authorship Markup
The authorship markup links a picture of your face to your article. The image appears in the search results and creates a more personal experience for users. The emotional attachment can influence the amount of traffic that is being generated from that search as people love to associate what they are reading with a face, especially a face that has become well-known.
In all of search’s history, an author could write anything he or she wanted, whether it be factual or relevant. Now, if an author chooses to be a verified author with their image attached to their article, they have the opportunity to build a reputation by face. This change should only breed better content! The image will hold an author accountable for what he or she is writing, and place a personality behind each article. (more…)
