Boston Logic Launches New Chicago Website!

Chicago Real Estate Artists recently became our first client to utilize data from MRED, the MLS covering the Chicago metro area and beyond!

They came to Boston Logic ready to start a new brokerage, and needed a new website which could be up and running fast and on a budget - and they wanted the look to be as sophisticated and quintessentially Chicago as possible. For brokers and agents who need quality design work fast, we have just the thing - our Personalized Theme design option. Starting with any one of our already outstanding ready-to-deploy standard design themes, the Personalized Theme process lets you change colors, fonts, and images to make the theme match your existing brand collateral, or simply just make it suit your individual style. Within a matter of only a few days, Boston Logic worked with Chicago Real Estate Artists to make their new Sequoia website platform a visually compelling part of their brand identity.

If you are on a budget but want top notch visual impact, or need to launch a new site that speaks to your unique aesthetic in a hurry, our Personalized Theme design package might be just the thing for you. Contact us today to learn more!

New Agent Site Designs Added to Theme Gallery!

Go ahead, judge a website by it's cover...

Boston Logic's creative team has added a slew (31, to be exact) of new Individual Agent Themes for Realtors to choose from as they begin the website building process. Choosing a website framework and design that aligns with your personal preferences and specific business needs is an important part of developing your "web presence" and creating a strong personal brand online.

Our designers worked off three basic, user-friendly layouts each with different color schemes.

Agent 3- Black

They also added some additional layouts which match the branding for some of our biggest clients (i.e. Gibson Sotheby's, RE/MAX, Jack Conway and more). And the best part about these newly crafted templates is the auto-populated homepage that will pull information from the profile you create on the back-end of the site (i.e. your picture, contact info, and bio). So after choosing a template that fits, you'll have a quicker path to launching your site.

Conway C

If you are a Real Estate professional looking for a personalized or customized website that will help you get recognized by more prospective clients online, check out all of the designs in our Theme Gallery, or contact us for a free consultation today!

More Sequoia System Updates!

Sequoia Site Launch: Tory Row Real Estate, 12/21/2010

Tory Row Real Estate came to Boston Logic looking for an upgrade. They added themselves to the long list of real estate firms who have taken advantage of our Modified Theme realty web design package for the Sequoia platform.

Starting with one of our standard property web design themes, our team worked with Tory Row Real Estate through several rounds of revision to get them the site they wanted. The result, with minimal investment, Tory Row now has a uniquely branded real estate website.

The new Tory Row Real Estate site is clean and modern, and gives users easy access to the many tools that make the Sequoia platform the best in the industry.

By far our most popular design package, the Modified Theme lets you alter one of our standard themes through several rounds of revision. Home page layout, color schemes, global elements such as headers and footers, and many more elements that can be changed to suit your needs and brand identity.

Contact a member of the Boston Logic sales team today at 617-266-9166 to learn more about this great way to make your new Sequoia site unique and targeted at your specific audience.

Tory Row Real Estate is a leader in Cambridge apartment rentals, with a further specialization in apartment and home rentals in the surrounding areas of Arlington and Somerville.

Town Pages Improve Your SEO & User Experience

If you’ve started reading any of the blogs here or at RealEstateSEO1.com or BostonLogic.com, then you know that for a successful SEO campaign, unique high quality (and keyword-rich) content is king! But how do you add that type of valuable content to your real estate website?

LEVERAGE WHAT YOUR ALREADY KNOW:

One of the easiest ways to leverage your expertise in the real estate industry - and provide your real estate agent website design with keyword-rich content that is useful to search engines and visitors alike - is by adding Town Pages. Town Pages are pages with a paragraph or so you create with helpful information about an area, and dynamic search results you control by setting criteria when building the page. If your offices' websites for realtors currently does not include town pages, you can upgrade your website to include town pages for only $20 per month!

The information on these pages can be what you would tell someone looking for a new home in the area in question; you can talk about the demographics of the area, the great amenities, the architecture, the public transportation, etc. Basically anything you think clients would find useful or interesting. In addition, information on properties in the area such as average price, number of properties on market, and more is automatically added to the page.

HOW TO CREATE A TOWN PAGE IN THE SEQUOIA SYSTEM:

1. Log into your website. Click on the 'CMS' (Content Management System) Tab.

2. Select the 'Pages' text link from the sub-navigation menu.

3. From the 'Pages' menu, click on the 'Create New' button with the green plus sign icon. Then fill out the form in the 'Create Page' pop-up window that appears.

4. Fill in the Town Page information:

a. Name: This is your internal reference for the page- visitors won't see it. We recommend including the words 'Town Page' at the end so they are easy to find in the Pages Menu.

b. Path: This is the URL your clients will see in their navigation bar and it is also used by Search Engines to help rank your site. Make sure you use a keyword you want to rank for ('Fenway Apartments', in the example above).

c. Redirect URL: Leave this blank for your Town Pages unless you want to redirect your visitors to a different page on your site.

5. Page Content:

a. Page Header: This is the headline of your page that visitors will see when they land on this page. Make sure it is relevant, and utilizes one or more of your keywords.

b. Body Content: This is where you enter that paragraph of useful text you created. If you are pasting your text from a Word Document or Text Pad/ Notebook program, make sure to use the appropriate pasting option from the tool bar. You can edit the text within this box much like a Word Document, changing text with Bold or italic styles, adding hyperlinks, etc. using the icons in the tool bar.

6. Meta Data: This section is where you enter your SEO Title, Description, and Keywords as covered in our earlier email about Optimizing Your Pages. Remember to make sure your Title and Description are readable to a viewer and not a rambling list of Keywords.

7. Don’t worry about the ‘Footer Content’ or ‘Who Can See This Page’ for this lesson. The default settings are fine.

8. Hit the 'Create' Button when you are finished!

9. Your new Town Page will now appear on your 'Pages' list. Ta-Da! Congrats! You've just created your first Town Page!

You can now link to this page, using the URL you created, from blog posts or other pages that mention the neighborhood. The more relevant internal links your site has, the better for SEO and user experience. For example, if you mention something about Fenway Condos for Sale in your Fenway Apartments Town Page, make the words 'Fenway Condos' a hyperlink to a Town Page about Fenway Condos for Sale. If you talk about the Fenway's proximity to another neighborhood, link to that Town Page, too! Your potential client might not be sold on the Fenway area and you can keep them looking on your site longer by providing them with helpful links to other information they might find useful. To automatically boost SEO for your site, be sure to ink each of your Town Pages to dynamic (c0nstantly updating) Property Search results!

LINKING YOUR TOWN PAGE TO DYNAMIC CONTENT:

By linking your Town Pages to a Sales or Rental Property Search for that area, you will create a page with not only great text for visitors and search engines, but also a page with constantly updating information, which is great for SEO! We recommend making a Town Page for every area you want to increase your Sales or Rental activity in, to help improve your real estate online marketing campaign.

1. From the 'CMS' Tab, select the 'Town Pages' link from the sub-navigation bar.

2. Click the blue link for a 'New Town Page' from within the Town SEO Pages Menu.

3. The 'New Town Page' popup window will appear. Select the Town Page you just created from the 'CMS Page' dropdown menu.

4. Select the 'Search Type' you want associated with this page (Sales or Rentals).

5. Then select the search parameters for the listings you wish to show to visitors on this page, such as price range and the location (Fenway in this example). Be sure not to leave the price range blank or it will cause errors on your page or lead visitors to believe there are no listings available in this area.

6. Click the 'Create Page' button at the bottom of the screen once you've entered all your information.

Your new Town Page now appears in your Town Pages menu under the 'CMS' Tab and is linked to a relevant search to keep your page constantly refreshed with new information and no more effort on your part!

You're ALMOST DONE! Now you just have to make it so visitors can find your new page without knowing the URL through real estate website marketing. The best way to optimize your new Town Pages is to create a link to it that can be clicked on from any page of your website. This will ensure that users and search engines can find it!

MAKING YOUR TOWN PAGE EASY TO FIND:

Did you know that search engines cannot see information in forms, such as the drop down menus used in your property searches? In fact, search engines often only 'crawl' within 3 clicks of your website's Home Page. Search engines and users alike will find it easier to navigate to your Town Page if it is prominently displayed.

The ‘Town Page Footer Navigation Menu’ feature of the Sequoia system offers a great solution to this SEO dilemma, allowing you to create a text link (which search engines DO see) on the bottom of every page of your site (including your Home Page) using the keywords you chose when creating your Town Page. Adding each Town Page to this menu will increase real estate internet marketing presence, SEO, and promote ease of use for your customers.

1. From your ‘CMS’ Tab, select the ‘Menus’ link from the Sub Navigation Bar.

2. Select the link ‘Menu Items’ from the ‘Town Pages’ row on the Menus List.

3. In the ‘Menu Items for Town Pages’ drop down that appears, click the ‘Create New’ button.

4. Creating Your Footer Link:

a. Menu Text: This is the text that will appear at the bottom of your pages as a hyperlink to your new Town Page. Make sure the Menu Text you create is one of your keywords, so, in our example, the Footer link would say ‘Fenway Apartments’.

b. Page: This is where you select the page you want this link to go to. This is why we find it helpful to include the words ‘Town Page’ in the name of the Town Pages you create.

c. External Link: Only use this if you want to create a Footer Navigation Link to a page outside of your website, such as to an affiliated site, instead of an internal link.

d. Click the ‘Create’ button.

You're DONE! Your new Town Page now appears in the ‘Town Page Footer Navigation’ Menu, and in the footer of your website.

Once you create multiple Town Pages, you can change the order in which they appear in the footer navigation by click and dragging the menu item up or down by the green arrows icon to the right on this screen. Below is an example of what a hyperlink for your new Town Page will look like in your Home Page footer.

Now all the valuable content your wrote for your users and search engines is just 1 click from your Home Page, helping you begin to rank higher in organic search engine results for the keywords you are targeting!

Boston Logic offers various SEO and Social Media Services if you’d rather focus on your clients instead of your website! Feel free to contact me with any questions or for more information about our services!

Importing Leads to Your New Site With the Logic Leads System

Our goal here at Boston Logic is to help you deliver an exceptional real estate website that looks great, saves you time, and helps you close more deals. With the much-anticipated launch of recent real estate agent sites, we wanted to reach out to those users and develop some helpful blog posts to hit the ground running with their new real estate website design.

This post discusses how to import your existing leads into your site- if you haven't done so already. When logged into your new site, you can also reference our User Guide (see image) which is located on the right-hand side of your dashboard to help you get answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about your real estate platform. We have also created a very thorough walk through demo video on Lead Management.

Getting your leads into your website and leveraging your LogicLeads system will help you get more referrals from your clients and close deals!

Follow these steps to upload your leads:

1) To upload leads, select the Import Leads sub-item under your Lead Management tab.

2) Next, download the Batch User Template file by clicking the link to download. Once you have entered your lead data, simply upload the file by clicking the "Browse" button, locating the file, and clicking Import Users. The file must be less than 1KB.

3) After you have uploaded your leads you can manage them under the My Leads sub-item.

4) By viewing a lead's detailed information you can check out their favorite properties and searches, site activity, and tool usage.

5) As a real estate agent user, you can also update a lead's contact information and sales info, and add follow-up dates and contact events to keep your lead's information up to date.

6) One of our favorite features offered to leads is Daily Email Updates. Both the lead and Agent can set these up - Agents can do so by simply selecting "Email Updates" under the leads' detailed information.

7) Email updates can be set up for both sales and rentals. An agent can also choose to send out an updated search to their lead by clicking the New Daily Search link under the Email Updates tab on the lead's detailed information view.

Like what you see and want to get in on the real estate website action? Contact Boston Logic to get started on your very own agent real estate web site today!

Major upgrades to the Sequoia platform released: 6/4/2010

We’ve been hard at work keeping Sequoia sites head and shoulders above the competition. We recently released a round of system upgrades that improve the performance, user experience, and functionality of the Sequoia platform. Among many others, here are a few of the highlights for your custom real estate website:

• Multiple MLS search capability. Now we can display listings from more than one MLS in the same search results view, so brokers and agents who belong to more than one MLS can give their leads access to more properties than ever before.

• The ability to choose which property types are available for public search. Now Sequoia customers can control, through their Settings tab, which property types are searchable, on a per-MLS basis. Don’t want your users searching for commercial listings? Only want multi-family houses on your site? You can choose any or all property types.

• The ability to choose which towns appear on public search forms. Also on the Settings tab, you can now select as few or as many towns as you like from the list provided by your MLS, so you can broaden or focus the area your site represents at will.

• Faster search! We’ve upgraded the technology behind our property tools to greatly increase their speed.

• Multiple sets of search criteria for Daily Email Updates. Both users and agents can set up multiple searches to return results through Daily Email Updates. This lets users refine their results even further, showing them only the most relevant properties for their needs.

• Agents’ own listings can now be displayed on their Agent Details pages! Agents can now choose to have their bio include their exclusive listings.

• Direct-mail friendly lead export. Agents can now export their leads’ names, email, phone number, and address – handy if you want to send postcards or other direct mail pieces.

• Companies can now have multiple offices! Sequoia clients can now enter multiple offices and associate agents with each specific office. Offices can also display any exclusive properties listed by the agents in that office. All office locations can have a full profile and are displayed on a map, just like searched properties.

• Dynamic forms! Our newest optional feature, Dynamic Forms lets you create customizable forms for your users to fill out. From simple lead capture forms and requests for information to full questionnaires and more, you can build your own forms with checkboxes, radio buttons, required fields, file uploads, calendar selections, and much more! You can view all form submissions on the admin panel of your Sequoia site. Contact us to learn more.

Upgrade to Sequoia from z57

A client asked me for a list of reasons why they should upgrade to the Sequoia Real Estate Solutions platform instead of using z57. Here was my response:

Here's a list of just some of the upgrades that you will get:

Integrated property search with more picture, google maps, and interactive user tools
1. Currently, the search on the site is placed in an iFrame. This impedes search engine placement.
2. Additionally, the current search is labeled, in big bold red letters: Listings last updated at Monday at 02:12PM. This means that the data is a day old and as many agents come in after the long weekend to update their listings in MLS this morning, the searcher is looking at old data. Our data is updated hourly.
The site is not currently designed in a fashion that will maximize lead conversion. Our sites are created to convert anonymous users into leads at superior conversion rates. The current setup of your website isn't likely to produce nearly as many leads.
Lead management - The site will have a comprehensive lead management/CRM package to track and manage leads, see their site activity, etc.
Users will have access to tools which make the site the foundation of their search including
1. Save favorite listings
2. Save Favorite searches
3. Sign up for nightly property updates by email
4. Ability to RSS search results
5. Ability to take notes on listings
6. Mortgage calculators
7. etc.
When we met and demonstrated the product for you, there were a number of features that you identified would save you time every day. This was over a month ago. So, I can't remember them all, but for example, featured listings don't need to be entered/uploaded into the site. They're pulled directly from MLS.
Our platform will allow the team to create as many pages on the site as they wish. They'll have the power to edit and update pages as they see fit.
I remember you being attracted to our developments component. This would give them the functionality to create profiles on developments in Andover, surrounding towns, or even downtown Boston. The team would enter content on each development and the tool will then automatically populate the pages with inventory from MLS.
Our new forms tool will allow the team to configure custom forms on the site asking the user to provide any information that they request. For example, they could have a "List My Home" form which asks for information on the seller's home. This information is of course stored in the Lead Management/CRM system and an email with this information is sent to the agent as well.
Each agent in the office can be given a lead management account and leads can be assigned. This allows all of the agents in the office to direct their clients to the office website, if they wish.
If agents want to have their own website (Example: johnsmithrealestateagent.com) Our agent site product gives the agent 1 place to manage leads from their own site as well as lead generated on the office site which are assigned to him/her. Agents also get advanced property search features and as many pages on the site as they wish.

I could go on - Suffice it to say this represents a *major* upgrade to the site with many many capabilities, features, and functions that the z57 current site lacks.

The Importance of Websites for Realtors

A few years ago, it was difficult for Real Estate agents to acquire leads. With the constant utilization of the internet, this has become much easier for realtors. The vast majority of clients are now seeking homes by turning to the internet as their first means of search.

However, this is not to say that hard work isn't involved with this process. True, there is potentially no limit to how big your business can grow online - but it is up to each realtor and real estate broker to put in the effort. It is up to you how far you want to stretch, how much money you want to spend, and how much time and effort you are willing to invest in your website.

Without a functioning, aesthetically pleasing web presence (or without a web presence at all), your realty company risks becoming obsolete: customers and leads trust agencies with good websites. The fact is that your brick and mortar office is no longer your biggest sign of significance, it's your real estate office website.

Consider a new website or website makeover as an investment in the success of your real estate brokerage. Sequoia Real Estate Solutions provides a high-quality, customized website option for you at a great price. Click here to read more about how you can market your real estate brokerage - and all the advantages and features that go along with it!

Boston Logic Launches New Chicago Website!

Chicago Real Estate Artists recently became our first client to utilize data from MRED, the MLS covering the Chicago metro area and beyond!

If you are on a budget but want top notch visual impact, or need to launch a new site that speaks to your unique aesthetic in a hurry, our Personalized Theme design package might be just the thing for you. Contact us today to learn more!

Related Links:

New Agent Site Designs Added to Theme Gallery!

Go ahead, judge a website by it's cover...

Related Links:

More Sequoia System Updates!

Related Links:

Sequoia Site Launch: Tory Row Real Estate, 12/21/2010

Related Links:

Town Pages Improve Your SEO & User Experience

LEVERAGE WHAT YOUR ALREADY KNOW:

HOW TO CREATE A TOWN PAGE IN THE SEQUOIA SYSTEM:

LINKING YOUR TOWN PAGE TO DYNAMIC CONTENT:

MAKING YOUR TOWN PAGE EASY TO FIND:

Related Links:

Importing Leads to Your New Site With the Logic Leads System

Related Links:

Major upgrades to the Sequoia platform released: 6/4/2010

Related Links:

Upgrade to Sequoia from z57

Related Links:

The Importance of Websites for Realtors

Related Links:

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