Anyone who has navigated the digital space can confirm that your website plays a large role in the survival of your business. Websites are essential, as they provide a medium through which prospective clients can find you. Even if word of mouth says that your business counts among the better options, clients will still check your website to confirm what they’ve heard about your business. The Problem Property Pals website is a prime example of what a real estate website ought to look like. If you feel that your real estate website is not netting you the quantity and quality of leads that you should be receiving, you might want to check if you’re committing some of these mistakes.
Retaining Outdated Content
Information and technology change often, and an outdated website can make a poor impression, especially when your competitors are very likely to keep their websites fresh. Update the information on your website and check that hyperlinks are all working on a regular basis. An abandoned website will often be perceived as a representation of an abandoned business. Outdated information can also be perceived as a business that is not reliable as you’d be providing your audience with outdated and potentially erroneous information.
Lacking Well-Written, Original Content
Blog posts help establish your authority in your niche and they help drive organic traffic to your website. Original content can also help increase the time visitors spend on your website, which also helps improve your SEO. While writing your own content is not easy, the benefits it yields are well worth the trouble. Even if you don’t have the talent and skill needed to create high quality content, there are agencies that offer backlinking services to produce quality content.
An added benefit of working with backlinking companies is that you also nurture a long-term relationship with these partners, which will supply you with a reliable stream of high-quality content. Backlinking also eventually blossoms into a small network composed of mutually-benefitting relationships.
Real Estate Website Mistakes – Neglecting SEO Best Practices
Never forget that the premise of a website is to help funnel traffic into a sales funnel that will help you close more real estate sales. This means that there must be a structured approach to the way that you build and present your website. If you neglect to implement SEO basics such as keyword research, you’d be defeating the purpose of your website because your website won’t rank as well as it should without SEO, which also results in reduced traffic to your website, and diminished exposure to your business. Poor SEO habits can also do a lot of harm to your search index ranking, especially if you employ blackhat SEO techniques.
Not Seeking Professional Help
While it may be tempting to save money by building your website on your own, the money you save may not be worth the risks involved. A professional website requires a lot of work to properly optimize for the best possible user experience, and it also requires regular maintenance to ensure that all website features function smoothly. Working with professional website builder companies will almost always be worth the money.
Failing to Optimize Real Estate Website Speed
A website’s loading speed is important because this has a direct impact on whether or not your website passes the blink test. The blink test is based on the premise that web visitors use the first three to five seconds to determine whether the website they’re visiting is worth their time or not. A website that takes too long to load is likely going to lose visitors. Your competitors are very likely going to optimize their websites properly given that this is an industry-standard. A slow-loading website will only cause your web visitors to click away to search for a website that loads properly.
Forgetting to Implement Facebook Pixels
Apart from user experience, it’s also important to cover your analytics, as traffic data will provide you with insights into web visitor behavior. This will help you determine what parts of your website are interesting to your web visitors and what parts need improvement. Facebook pixels are simple fractions of code that track visitors and what they do on your website. This tool helps you pick out visitors who are likely to convert into sales based on how they navigated through your website.
Facebook pixels can provide you with information such as the type of device visitors use, as well as their location. They can also reveal whether or not your web visitors came from a paid search. This information will help website owners determine which marketing strategies are most effective, thus helping them focus their efforts on strategies that yield better results.
Real Estate Website Mistakes – Not Having Google Analytics
While both Facebook pixels and Google Analytics function in a similar manner, Google Analytics is capable of collecting user data across various channels. This means that Google Analytics provides a greater dataset, which provides users with more accurate insights into how their marketing strategies are performing.
Google Analytics is a better tool for tracking traffic through multiple mediums while Facebook Pixels is ideal for businesses that rely primarily on ads from Facebook and Instagram. User data is important, as this will help you direct your marketing efforts toward prospective clients who are more likely to convert into a sale.
Not Implementing a Way to Collect User Contact Information
The importance of being able to establish a way to get in contact with prospective clients is something that no real estate website should ever be without. Collecting contact information will enable businesses to follow up on clients who have shown an interest in a particular property.
It’s important that you don’t simply ask your web visitors to provide their contact information without giving them a compelling reason to do so. A good place to start is with Google’s Keyword planner which helps users choose the right keywords to determine what keywords are currently drawing a lot of interest. You can then use this information to offer users something of value (like a newsletter relating to relevant keywords or content) in exchange for their contact information.
Neglecting Real Estate Website Security
The increased use of digital solutions has also caused an increase in the rate of cybercrime incidents. Real estate businesses are particularly at risk because of the client data their databases often hold. Keep in mind that it’s important to make your prospective clients feel safe when interacting with your website by making sure to check that these website security measures are implemented so as to minimize the risk of a data breach.
A data breach is a serious blow to any business; companies that suffer a data breach will almost always underperform and may be fined in accordance with the general data protection laws that apply in their jurisdiction. This is based on the premise that companies that collect user data are mandated to protect the data of their customers because the data would not be given otherwise.
The importance of a proper website cannot be understated, especially when it serves as a digital representation of your business. These are some of the worst website mistakes that every real estate business owner should avoid.