Bob Wuest

A point I made on the SEO for Realtors blog was that it'll take a good 4-6 hours a week to do the work to optimize your site for the search engines.

One Realtor who left me a comment there. Here it is:

"Bob,

Thanks for laying out in such simple terms the series of steps necessary to optimize my website. It's clear you know what you're doing.

If I were to devote 4-6 hours to that work, it'd be time I'm taking away from my primary work of selling homes. I've concluded that even if I were to start, I wouldn't be able to maintain that level of work during the prime selling season.

Thanks again!

Ron Bennett"

Good point, Ron. As they said in Cool Hand Luke, "A man's got to know his limitations!"

I said on the SEO for Realtors blog, it'll take 4-6 hours a week for the first month or two to get your site visible enough that you're seeing a substantial uptick in the number of leads coming from your website. After that, it's just regular maintenance - maybe an hour or two a week.

But I'm clear on one thing. SEO work is not for everyone. If you're in one of these classes, don't even bother trying to do it yourself:

1. You're satisfied with the number of leads from your site or that you're buying from lead aggregators
   
2. You're busy enough running your RE sales business that you don't need to take on another venture
3. You have either inadequate interest or inadequate capacity for technology

I developed that blog in response to a few people here on ActiveRain who specifically asked for how I'd achieved the results I have with my own website devoted to Cincinnati Home Buyers - 18 leads in May; and 16 so far in June.... after a grand total of 47 leads in the prior 3-1/2 years. My ongoing objective is to work only leads from my website (and referrals of course). This will allow me to devote even more time to Internet Marketing - of real estate and a number of affiliate products.... to build a residual income that takes very little effort to maintain.

So, it seemed clear that some people were ready and willing to do what it took to bump up their lead volume. That's who I devoted the blog to.

If the idea of increasing the number of leads from your website appeals to you, though, I'm toying with the idea of helping a few other Realtors do the work on a "for-hire" basis. I've spent over $2K in the past with SEO firms and not gotten any substantial results from it. If I decide to do this, I'll have to figure out some hard results that we'll agree to in advance of any money changing hands.

Let me know if there's any interest among ActiveRain members in doing this, OK?

To your wealth!

I thought it might take a month or so to get ranked on Google under the phrase "SEO for Realtors".

Nope. Abour a week to achieve #5 position, ahead of roughly 155,000 Google results.

What's fun is that I displaced at least two firms that offer fee-for-service SEO work for Realtors.  Presumably, they've been around longer than the SEO for Realtors blog.  And, one would presume that they'd know more about SEO than a Realtor.. and apply that knowledge to their own site. 

It's like I said in an earlier post.  SEO is not that difficult.  And we just proved it.

Can you achieve the same results for your real estate blog or website?  Yep.  Would that result in more traffic, and more leads?  You decide.  I'll just say it's helped more people find my website, who want to buy a home in Cincinnati.

Just follow the steps on How to Use SEO for Realtors.  And please - leave me a comment that lets me know that the site's useful for you.  I've put a lot of energy this week into building a site that gives you a 1-2-3 approach to getting more leads from your website.  It'd be good to know that someone finds it useful :)

To your wealth!

Interesting article in BrokerAgentSocial today about earnings.

Check it out: Traditional Agents Earn $36,700 Annually; Internet Agents Earn $100,000+ Annually

The article goes on to say that only those agents who make the transition from traditional selling & marketing to Internet-based selling & marketing will succeed over the longer term.

I agree. After doing what it takes to optimize my website for the search engines, I've gotten more leads in the last couple months than I did in the last 3-1/2 years since my site's been up.

And when I started talking on ActiveRain about how I did it, people were hungry for more information.

So I developed a blog specifically to give you the step-by-step instructions to optimize your site for the search engines. I call SEO for Realtors. And (for now, anyway) it's free.

I'm personally tired of paying thousands of bucks to the lead aggregators; and thousands more to so-called SEOs whose promises are like the wisp of campfire smoke when it gets around to implementation.

So I figured out how to do it for myself. And now I'm sharing it with you.

Check out my site, and let me know what you think: SEO for Realtors

To your wealth!

Bob Wuest

I wrote a little article exposing this scam. You can find it HERE.

And if you want more Google Juice, check out my SEO for Realtors site. Developed specifically for Realtors who are active on the ActiveRain SEO channel. .

So much so that yesterday I offered to author a blog specifically devoted to Realtor website SEO

The blog is up, along with what I think are a couple pretty meaty posts on what I'll call "early stage SEO activities".

So if you have interest in optimizing your site to get more leads, withdraw from dependency on lead aggregator dependency, and upping your biz, check it out and let me know what you think. Also feel free to add your own ideas and comments about the subject!

You can find the blog here: SEO For Realtors

To your wealth!