How To Promote Your New Website: Part I

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YOU’VE GOT A NEW WEBSITE- CONGRATS!

Every day Boston Logic helps Real Estate brokerages and independent real estate agents leverage the web in promoting their services and listings online to help them generate more leads- and ultimately, close more deals. Being a seasoned leader in the real estate technology space, we know that your success in competing for business online is tied to the usability and value of your website to your potential clients, as well as how easily your website can be found on and off-line.

And this is precisely why you, our clients, come to us. You recognize the value of having a best-in-class website that provides user-friendly features that buyers and renters want- like advanced MLS search options, the ability to save and “favorite” properties, live chat with agents, and more- all bound by our powerful Sequoia system– served with accessible, friendly product training and support. (We really don’t mean to toot our own horn!) But now that you're armed with great technology and tools…

HOW DO YOU GET YOUR NEW WEBSITE NOTICED?

We get lots of requests from our clients for suggestions on what to do to market their new (or newly redesigned & upgraded) website. I thought others would find this list of suggestions helpful. I’ve included a lot of low-cost options, things you can do before and after your new website launches, as well as long-term strategies to increase traffic to your site.

ONLINE TECHNIQUES – SOCIAL MEDIA & SEARCH MARKETING

Company Facebook Page

Be sure to add the URL to your website (and your other social media profiles, for that matter) on your company’s Facebook Fan Page’s Info Tab. Make announcements about the new website when it’s ‘coming soon’ and when it launches. Post screen shots in your Facebook Page Photos and ask your followers for feedback!

Employee’s Facebook Profiles

Employees can link to the Company Fan Page in their personal Facebook profiles in the ‘Employment’ section of their bios. Over time, this will encourage their social network to visit your company Facebook Page, and then lead those people to your website. Have your employees review this helpful LogicClassroom presentation about Facebook Privacy Settings, too!

Company & Employee Twitter Profiles

If you don’t have a company Twitter, create one! Add a link to the website in the profile. Just like on Facebook, you’ll want to make ‘coming soon’ announcements, and link to the site when it’s live and ASK for feedback and/ or a Retweet! Consider sending a Direct Message to important followers. If you change your Twitter handle, make sure to keep the old one in the profile bio for a prolonged period of time so if people do a search for your old Twitter name, they can still find you.

Encourage employees to engage with the Company Twitter account (@mentions), retweet announcements about the new website, etc. If they want to include something about their position at the company in their Twitter bios, encourage that too because it will give you exposure to their social network. Just be sure to have a clear Guidelines Policy in place so your employees know what is/ isn’t allowed if they are representing the company online. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter profiles that say things like “CEO at XYZ Company, opinions are my own!”

LinkedIn Employee & Company Profiles

Employees should update their personal LinkedIn profiles to include the new website URL. Does your company have a listing on LinkedIn? If not, create one! Having a company listing on LinkedIn is a great way to promote your products and services, improve your credibility, and boost your SEO.

For tips on how to customize the anchor text linking to the website on your LinkedIn profiles and other optimization tips, view our recent LogicClassroom on Marketing Yourself on LinkedIn.

Yelp Listing

Is your company listed on Yelp? Yelp is an ever-growing social networking site where users review local businesses and give them a rating of 1-5 stars. Even if you haven’t created a Yelp listing, one of your past clients may have added you to the site without your knowing. Do a search in your area to see if your company appears in the search results. If so, claim your Yelp listing! If not, create one! Make sure you optimize your company listing by filling out all the available fields. Make an announcement about the new website and maybe offer a small percentage off for mentioning they found your new website on Yelp.

There are LOTS of review sites like Yelp, such as YP.com, SuperPages.com, Merchant’s Circle, CitySearch, etc. There are also a large variety of industry-specific directory/review sites available online. Do your research, and register your new website!

EXPERT TIP:

Once on Yelp, it’s important to add new photos to keep your listing fresh. You also want to encourage your happy clients to review you on Yelp so if the occasional unhappy customer leaves a bad review, you’ve got enough good reviews to soften the blow. Set up email notifications so that if you get a review on Yelp about a negative client experience, you can respond to it promptly.

Google Places Listing

If you need your website to be at the top of Google’s search engine results for some marquee keywords asap (don’t we all?), one of the ways to help that happen faster is by registering your website with Google Places! You’ll need to register your company with an actual physical address where you receive mail, but if you run a small business out of your home, you can hide your street address from your listing and only show your city and state.

A Google Places listing is FREE and you can make announcements, add photos, service area, company history and other business information, feature YouTube Videos, and more! This is a great way to showcase your business and increase clicks to your website without having to shell out lots of money for PPC advertising!

Your company may have been added to Google Places by a user and given a review and star rating. In that case, all you’ll have to do is click the “Business Owner?” link in the upper right corner of the listing page and follow the directions to claim the listing. Google will send a postcard to your attention via snail-mail to your business listing with a verification code you will enter online to claim the listing.

Add Links to Company Social Media Profiles to Your Site

Say WHAT?! You just got your visitors to land on your new website, and now I want you to lead them away again? Not exactly. It’s just a good long-term investment for your relationship with that lead. You want people using your site as much as possible, but if your potential clients and clients want to check in with you via the social media channels they use regularly because it’s convenient for them- make it easy for them to do so and give them access right from your home page.

Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Site Content

Make it easy for your website visitors to share and syndicate your content for you! Add quick-share options such as the Facebook ‘Like’ Button, the Twitter ‘Tweet’ Button, and the ‘Google +1’ Button to your blog posts and property listings, etc. Utilize social sharing plugins for your blog like ‘AddThis’ to let readers quickly syndicate your blog posts to popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, etc.

Blog About It – Share, and Syndicate

Your first blog post on your new website should essentially be a press release about your new website that you will syndicate to your social media profile & share on popular and industry social bookmarking sites. If you already have a blog, consider doing a ‘coming soon’ teaser blog about the upcoming relaunch.

Guest Bloggers

Invite a vendor (like a landscaper, interior designer, or exterminator, etc.) you frequently do business with to post as a guest blogger on your site, and link their blog post back to their website. As a Realtor, you can pick local business in the areas you serve to spotlight and invite someone to guest blog from that business about their company and the neighborhood. These ‘First Tier Guest Bloggers’ will promote their blog post on your new site for you and will appreciate the exposure and inbound link from your site!

Once your blog is more established and you begin to get a substantial amount of traffic to your site and blog, you can start to attract ‘Celebrity Guest Bloggers’, industry leaders and experts that are fairly well-known and will drive traffic to your site because they have a big following or good name recognition or are in the news frequently, etc.

Watch the Recent LogicClassroom on Blogging for Business Here

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Analytics

To get the most out of your content creation efforts, it’s important to optimize your pages with meta data, headings and subheadings, keywords, internal links, images, etc. so that search engines can properly index your site and potential leads can find your content when they search for your services online.

In order to run a successful SEO Campaign, add Google Analytics to track visitors to the site, and find out what content they find the most valuable (i.e whatever gets the most traffic). This will help guide your content creation over time. If you sign up for SEO and Online Marketing Services through Boston Logic, we will help you! We also have a blog full of resources on SEO and Social Media at www.realestateseo1.com to provide you with helpful tips and education on best practices and industry updates.

Optimizing your website pages and content should be an ongoing process, especially because you’re going to have a very active blog (right?!). Plan to review your SEO campaign keywords and strategy regularly to ensure you’re on track.

301 Redirects

301 redirects are an important, yet often overlooked, part of an SEO campaign if you already have an existing website. Essentially, 301 redirects are a little snippet of code that directs any search engines and visitors trying to reach URLs on your old website, that are no longer on your new website, to the appropriate replacement page on your new website. 301s are convenient for users and help ensure your company’s website won’t lose any SEO ranking it had with its old website. Boston Logic can help implement 301 redirects for your website upgrade - just ask!

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

pay per click advertising There are a variety of PPC advertising options available to you. I encourage you to take the time to look into each option. Find out what type of tracking each option offers (Google Adwords data tracks nicely in Google Analytics, for example), as well as the type of exposure your ads will get, and what type of competition they’ll be up against.

Facebook and LinkedIn PPC advertising may not offer the exposure of Google or Bing PPC ads, but you can make your ads extremely targeted based on geographic region, workplace, personal interests, industries, relationship status, etc. This kind of highly targeted advertising may be a better place to start for smaller budgets. LinkedIn PPC ads are best for B2B or recruiting ads.

You may also want to consider industry-specific venues like the real estate section of Boston.com or other popular industry websites that get a lot of traffic. Boston Logic’s Sequoia websites feature an Inbound Leads API so we can track leads from sources like Boston.com and enter them directly into your Sequoia CRM. Talk about Analytics!

Think outside the social media box, too...

There's still a bunch of ways to get the word out about your stellar new website! With a little creativity and good communication, you can be proactive about getting found. Stay tuned for the next part of our consultation to learn more about How To Promote Your Website: Part II.

We'd love to hear some anecdotes in the comments section from your own website launch experience- and check out our SEO blog for more on how to get your web pages ready for Google

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