The more tentacles we have out all over cyber land, the more traffic we can generate. There are a number of different ways we can create the outreach that we want in cyberspace. Having all of your properties on Realtor.com and your company website is the right start, but it’s not enough. A recent survey was done of the properties on the Internet. Over 50% of the properties listed did not have a picture attached to the property. You might generate traffic that way, but leads will probably not just click through on any inquiry about any property without a picture. It shows how far we still need to go to master marketing on the Internet.

Just as when Captain Kirk wanted to get back to the Enterprise by having Scottie beam him up through the transporter, through linking up with other websites, you can transport people to your website. If you sell real estate in a resort area, linking up with agents who sell resort real estate in other areas can drive traffic. Linking up with resort websites, tourism websites from your area, and the Chamber of Commerce will also help to drive traffic. The objective is to strategically link to help drive traffic.

Another strategy is to link up to other sites and sources to increase your search engine ranking. There is a difference between quality and quantity. Search engines give weight to the relevancy of a link. If you go out and link to anyone and everyone, it probably will not be very beneficial. Your links should be focused on real estate and/or your specific market area. Anything else would not be viewed by the search engine as useful or valuable.

The goal for every agent should be to have a website that is optimized for the search engines. The value of being ranked high in the search engines continues to grow.

The major search engines of Google®, Yahoo!®, and MSN® represent about 90% of all Internet search traffic. If you aren’t ranked with them, you won’t be found. If you are not on the front page with them, you won’t be found. Most people do not go beyond the first page when they type in a particular search. In fact, even the first page is astounding. If you are #1 on a search engine, you can expect to get about 40% of the people to click your link. If you are number two through number five, you can expect to share the next 40%. The rest go to the remainder of the first page. It pays to be #1. The next four ranked sites have to share the same traffic that the #1 ranked site gets all to itself.

A word of caution – before you run out and hire someone to implement search engine optimization on your site, be careful! Implementing SEO strategy is tricky business.

You need to make sure you are working with a reputable firm that will stand behind their work. You also can’t have the philosophy of one and done – fix it once, and it will last forever. Effective SEO strategy is never-ending. Everyone is fighting for that front page position. It changes each day, so you have to work to maintain your ranking.

You also want to make sure that the SEO firm is using reputable techniques. There are a lot of firms using what the industry calls “black hat tactics.” The problem with this strategy is it is very short term. Once search engines find out you used “black hat tactics”, they won’t just drop your ranking; they will likely ban you. By that time, the SEO Company has your money, and you probably can’t find them. Another trick is that they get you ranked in terms that no one searches for, and that lasts only as long as it takes for you to figure out that you have zero web traffic.

If all of this is confusing you; join the crowd. SEO is hot right now, and everyone is marketing it to agents. It’s very noisy out there, and it’s hard to make sense of it all.

More and more agents are getting into pay-per-click as an answer to their online marketing. Pay-per-click advertising on the search engines and other sources can be effective, or it can be a bust. Most search engines have pay-per-click areas on the right hand side of their website. People bid for the spots on a pay-per-click basis, and they can range from a few cents to a few dollars each.

The truth is only about 10% of searchers go to the pay-per-click section. The vast majority of people use organic methods to find what they are looking for. Organic methods are when you use a search engine to search a specific phrase and then select the top ranked sites to click on.

Keep in mind, you are not paying per prospect but per click. A click doesn’t mean that you are going to get anything. Pay-per-click can be used effectively if you know the conversion numbers of your website. Meaning, you know how many people take a free report, sign up for your newsletter, ask for more information, identify themselves as a lead, or are willing to book an appointment with you once they get to the website. To make pay-per-click profitable, you need to know your numbers both online and through your standard sales process. Until then, you will only be guessing that it works and is profitable. Perfect those ratios of conversion before you spend a whole bunch of money on pay-per-click.

The Internet is a moving, changing organism. What worked three years ago, last year, or even six months ago does not work today. You have to be focused on acquiring the newest and latest techniques to stay ahead of your competition. It would take you a large investment of your time to stay ahead if you researched and read all the Internet material available.

You need someone who is going to condense this vast knowledge into an executive summary or cliff notes version. No one does that better than the Real Estate Cyber Society at REcyber.com.

My final point on this subject is don’t assume the Internet is easy. Too many people are trying to sell agents stuff by using that as their sales shtick. It’s like anything else in life; you’ll get out of it what you put in.