An independent study into the behaviour of home buyers and sellers has revealed a strong interest in online property listings.
The Nielsen NetRatings findings show 50% of people will try and sell without using a real estate agent.
There are a number of reasons behind the shift. He says some sellers do not like the pressure from agents while others do not want to pay commissions.
Around 80% of buyers say they use real estate websites to research before calling an agent.
However, the role of real estate agents is not likely to become redundant as only 10% of houses are sold privately.
The biggest lesson to take from the study is for the real estate industry to embrace new technology and respond to client requests for faster and easier information.
What is better: SEO or PPC?
Many webmasters are unsure whether they should advertise their website with SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising).
Actually, most commercial websites work best if you use both SEO and PPC. The exact mix depends on your goals.
Pay per click advertising (PPC)Advantages:
- You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
- PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
- You can stop PPC ads at any time.
- PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
- PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
- PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages.
Disadvantages:
- PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
- Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.
- If you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should use a ROI tracking tool to make sure that you don't waste your money.
Search engine optimization (SEO):Advantages:
- Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done.
- After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
- A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
- Search engine optimization delivers long term results that don't require permanent financial input.
Disadvantages:
- SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
- SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.
- Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it costs considerably less in the long term. However, you must make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.
- Pay per click advertising and search engine optimization both contribute to the success of your website. If you use both wisely, you can get many new visitors and customers without spending a fortune.
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When to outsourceWhen do you need to outsource? Whenever it benefits your business to do so.
I would advise any new business never to employ anyone without a very good reason.
It's always good to be aware what you're good at, and where other people can do a job better than you. Even if you can always do something well enough, there are lots of occasions when it may pay to get someone else to do it.
- When someone else can do something better
- When someone else can do something quicker
- When someone else can do something cheaper
- When someone else can do something more reliably