Todd Waller is a Realtor whom I hold in high esteem. Todd and his Team 366 work the Ann Arbor market, and Dmitry and I share a passion with them for innovative real estate marketing. The number one motivation to keep ourselves on the bleeding edge of real estate technology, at least for us, is that we want to make sure that our listings are found quickly and easily by potential buyers. Buyers are looking on the web, and we want our listings to have THE BEST positioning.
Todd has set a new test for gauging his success in maximizing exposure. He feels that the best way to gauge how widely distributed a property is on the internet is to see how many backlinks appear in a Google search to that address. Being the curious type I am, I ran through a couple of my own listings. 1919 Henrietta (which will have a new occupant moving in during the month of March), has well over 700 backlinks, or 700 places on the web where a consumer can find this home. 420 Suffield has over 570 backlinks from Google.
By comparison, I checked on a competitors listing on a nearby street in Birmingham. The home has been on the market for 232 days, has been reduced in price by about 30%, has had 2 brokerages marketing the property, and there are zero, yes 0, backlinks to the property address. That means the house is not on highly searched sites like Trulia, Homes.com, and the web marketing is limited to, well, its just limited.
Why does any of this matter to a seller? Here is an anecdote that I think is very telling. Last summer I placed a cute bungalow in Royal Oak that I thought would be great for first time buyers on Facebook. Many of you might think that Facebook is something for your kids, but its not. Within 24 hours of placing the home on Facebook I had an inquiry from an employee of the Michigan Association of Realtors. Do you see the irony there? This woman is in daily contact with many, many Realtors, and presumably she knows the best sites for searching for homes. In my mind, Facebook is not in the top 10 list of home search sites, but my ad caught this woman’s attention.
I can’t guarantee where the buyer will come from for your home. But I can offer to scatter the widest possible net so that your home appears where ever buyers may be looking.
A final thought from Todd:
If Google can find 1,000 links of a home’s address in its index, that means that there are 1,000 instances where prospective buyers can find your home!
Our experience has shown that the average agent generates about 10 links back to their clients’ property. Try it out yourself! Go to Google and type in the address of a home you know is currently on the market.
Written by Maureen Francis
SKBK Sotheby's International Realty, 248.430.4450
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Missy Caulk 02.18.08 at 12:06 am
Wow, I went and checked my listings, they ran from 26 to 75, I’ve got some work to do if your are in the 500’s. Wonder what I can do, since I syndicate to all those sites, of course my blog on AR gets top billing.
Maureen Francis 02.18.08 at 5:27 am
I know you use Vflyer, Missy. Are you using them to syndicate? Just asking, as I don’t think there is one answer on how to get listings syndicated.
Missy Caulk 02.18.08 at 7:18 am
Yes, I use vflyer to syndicate and point2agent and number1expert and realestate shows. All 4 syndicated to the same sites, so does Keller Williams.
David Sherfey 02.19.08 at 11:12 am
Maureen-
I found you via your Agent Genius welcome….so welcome!
In the “links” that google brings up on a search like this you will find MANY duplicates. You only have your property listed once on Trulia, for instance, but you’ll find many “links” coming from Trulia… Any number of searches for property will bring up our listings as well, but i don’t think this indicates a unique link. You will also find stuff like multiple whois “links” where I doubt anyone will be doing an active search for real estate…. A web savvy customer will recognize these things. This would mean that Todd’s “1000″ really is far less.
A far better measure, although not nearly as exciting, is how many different sites your listing appears on. For this you probably need to do a hand count, a small hassle, but after you get past the first 100, you have probably found them all.
Your listing shows up on many different sites, so by this count you look pretty cool. Our listings don’t show up on many, so I need to see what can be done to improve this if anything. We syndicate on Point2 and Keller Williams, so perhaps it may be the relative lack of use of the syndication opportunities by agents in our area (60mi NW of NYC) causing less local traffic to those sites. With our listings we make use of IDX by having our property site urls in the description of the MLS listing, which gives us a pretty long reach. Those links won’t show up in a Google search tho….
Stephen Wolfe 02.21.08 at 12:56 pm
Maureen, Hello from the other Birmingham! I wanted to stop by for a visit and figured this was faster than driving… I had never thought of this before, luckily I at least found about 150 for one of ours. It shows me that we are on track, but we could still do more. Thanks for sharing.
Ashland MA Homes 02.26.08 at 10:26 pm
Maureen I am constantly preaching the same thing about the internet and maximum exposure for our clients. It absolutely astounds me when I do a search like you did and find so very little. I alos use point2 and a host of other sites.
Another great thing to show sellers in a listing interview is to Google the agents name. An internet savvy agent should have pages of results. You would be shocked to see how many agents have very little presence on the net.
Maureen Francis 02.27.08 at 1:18 pm
Ashland MA Homes, here is a blog I wrote about not being able to find other agents on google in 2006. Still a problem today.
http://mioaklandcounty.com/blog/2006/11/26/help-i-cant-find-your-agent/
Ashland MA Homes 02.27.08 at 1:27 pm
Maureen it really is funny how some agents don’t pay attention to the internet. When over 85% of consumers find a home in this manner one would think an agent would have their name plastered all over the place. I know it works for me
Maureen Francis 02.27.08 at 8:16 pm
Shhhh. Let’s keep it our little secret!