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New Video About the Sequoia Platform!

There's no doubt that the Sequoia platform encompasses the most cutting-edge real estate website software available on the market. But how is this done? What features are available on a Sequoia website? How does Sequoia help you succeed in your real estate business?

We've put together a great real estate website video that breaks down exactly what it takes to make your real estate online marketing campaign to be successful. Click the image to view the video, or visit the Boston Logic YouTube page.

First, you need to drive traffic to your website. To do this, the Sequoia platform helps your site rank higher in search engines for highly applicable search terms. The platform also helps you leverage social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. All of this is tracked using state of the art Analytics so that you can hone your campaign based on performance and actual usage statistics.

Next, when users arrive at your site, they should intuitively know where to click, and they should be able to quickly find what they came looking for. For example, many users on real estate websites arrive and want to immediately search for their perfect home. Once they’ve found what they want, or feel like they’re getting close, we want to compel them to provide their contact information. This is when the visitor converts from an anonymous user into a lead.
Throughout the user experience, prominent calls to action give easy access to tools which allow your customers to contact an agent, schedule a showing, save a favorite property, take notes on listings to help organize their search – even share a listing by broadcasting it to social media sites or emailing it to a friend.

How Can Sequoia Help?

The Sequoia Platform educates your clients by showing them the complete MLS listing. In addition, we’ve integrated the Sequoia platform with Yelp!, Walkscore, Education.com, Google Maps, Zillow, and myriad other data resources to provide relevant information about the town or neighborhood where your customers are looking to buy or rent. All of these tools help educate the user and ensure that your website becomes the foundation of their search for a new home.

Now that you have generated lots of leads and your site has become the foundation of their online home search, you’re going to need tools to incubate those leads until they’re ready to buy or rent. Not all leads are ready to close at the moment when you first identify them. So, we’ve built extensive functionality designed to maximize the ease of workflow and help you manage your pipeline.
We’ve also automated many of the tasks that you perform most often. The Sequoia system makes it quick and easy to create and print listing sheets, communicate with clients, schedule and coordinate showings, print showing sheets, search your MLS or rental database, send listing updates, follow up, and never forget a task.

While you’re at it, you’re going to want a record of your communication with each client. The Sequoia platform helps you precisely track your website’s user activity. You’ll know exactly what your clients are doing on your site, including how often they’re coming back, what they are searching for, homes they’re looking at, which listings they liked the most, and much more. All of this data will help you serve your customers better and close more deals!

When it’s time to put in an offer, the Sequoia platform helps you stay organized with our deal tracker component and virtual documents feature, making the process an organized procedure, rather than a mess of paperwork and tasks to juggle.
By facilitating this process, Sequoia makes your real estate online marketing campaign successful while making you more efficient! The Sequoia platform even helps you sign new seller clients by making your listings look great and maximizing the exposure of those listings on sites like Facebook, Trulia, and Zillow.

To learn more about Boston Logic, and how we can help you achieve results online, please give us a call or contact us for a demonstration.

Warren Residential New Real Estate Site Launch!

The Warren Residential Group has been a Boston Logic customer for many years, and their custom website brought them much success in that time. Looking to build on that success with an eye to the future, the Warren Residential Group recently opted to transfer their existing design theme to the Sequoia platform.

The Warren Residential Group's successful Newbury Street real estate brokerage is a perfect example of how leveraging your Web presence can grow your business exponentially. Working with Boston Logic over several years, the Warren Residential Group first built a fully customized real estate website, taking advantage of every tool available at the time. Realizing that the Sequoia platform offers not only the best suite of tools available today, but that that toolset continues to grow constantly, Warren recently moved their highly acclaimed design (also by Boston Logic!) to the Sequoia platform.

Our Mimic Theme design option lets you keep your aesthetic, emotional, and financial investment in the look and feel of your site intact, while moving onto the best software platform in the real estate industry. The Warren Residential Group constantly receives amazing positive feedback on the look of their website, so this was an obvious choice for them.

We can talk at length about the power of the Sequoia platform and how it can benefit your business, but this testimonial from The Warren Residential Group sums it up nicely:

"Boston Logic has been a huge part of my company's success. Their technology and design have helped move Warrenre.com to the top of search engine rankings and convert visitors to customers. But, most importantly, they have acted as a part of my team just as if they worked directly for me. They don't just build websites, they help build businesses." - Nick Warren, Broker

The Warren Residential Group is one of Boston's leading full service real estate agencies. Located in the Back Bay, they focus on luxury residential properties in the Boston area and beyond, and their focus on technology and customer service consistently earn them rave reviews from their clients.

Learn more about the Sequoia platform and our various design options - Contact a member of the Boston Logic sales team today at 617-266-9166!

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 3/7/2011

While the Sequoia real estate website platform already has the best real estate website features available, read up on the latest in Sequoia feature upgrades for your real estate website!

1) MLS rental listings now show in rentals searches. Our RentJuice clients can now show off rental listings from their MLS in rentals searches! Thanks to recent upgrades to the RentJuice API, Sequoia sites with this component enabled will now show users any MLS rentals that match their search criteria in rentals searches. This can be turned on or off at your discretion in your Settings section.

3) Featured Properties Page Company Listings. You can now choose whether your company’s listings automatically show on your Featured Properties page. Controllable in the Settings section of your Sequoia realtor web design, you can now opt to have all of your listings automatically show up here when listed, or not – for those of you who wish to hand-pick only the best listings to feature!

4) XpressDocs Single-Token Login Tool Integration. For those of you who use XpressDocs for your print advertising needs, we’ve integrated their single-token login tool to the back end of your Sequoia realty web design. Simply enter your XpressDocs account info into your Settings section and your brokers and agents will have access to an XpressDocs login button on their Dashboards, allowing them to access this web-based tool without needing to log in twice!

Not a Sequoia client yet, but like what you see? Contact us to get started on your own real estate website design today, and to have access to all the features above and much more!

New Sequoia Site Feature Launches: 2/21/2011

1) Added MailChimp Account Service. We’ve added settings to pass your leads into another useful email marketing service – MailChimp. Just like the settings for iContact and Constant Contact, all you need to do is enter your account settings in order to start getting new leads in your MailChimp lists anytime they sign up for emails from your company on your Sequoia site. Please contact us for details on how to set this great new feature up!

2) CMS Format / Character Validation. CMS pages have been the beneficiary great new upgrade aimed at improving both the ease of creating pages and the SEO potential of the page itself. We’ve now instituted proper format and character validation for URL paths – only valid paths beginning with a ‘/’ and containing proper characters are allowed. This helps to make creating new pages easier, and also boosts SEO by disallowing characters that can hinder your rankings.

3) Display your Logo in your real estate website's footer. We’ve added a new option for showing a footer logo – if you want to display the logo you show in your header at the bottom of every page, or want to show a different logo (great for agent sites that need to display their brokerage’s logo but want to personalize their site further) you can now do so with ease. Just upload the logo to your Sequoia site’s Settings section and the logo will appear in the footer of every page of your realtor web design site!

4) New MLS Integration: MREIS and MRIS. We’ve recently integrated two new MLS services with the Sequoia platform! We’re now serving all of Maine with the integration of MREIS, and thanks to integrating MRIS, one of the nation’s largest MLS service providers, we are now also covering Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. in our property web design services! We’re excited to welcome new clients in these areas and look forward to continued growth into new markets!

A "Guarantee" that's Worth it's Weight in Dirt

I'm honestly astounded.

I know that we offer high quality products and services for the real estate vertical and I'm proud to say we're firmly the very best, but I'm astonished at just how low some of our "competitors" set the bar.

" We guarantee 60 visitors within the first two calendar months or it's free! "

This is the "guarantee" that z57 has right on their home page! I'd be embarrassed to put this sentence on this site or on BostonLogic.com. Down right embarrassed!

If you're reading this and you're a real estate website beginner, I'll explain in the next paragraph. If you're an educated web marketer or, really, have spent any time looking at online marketing traffic reports, you've probably already concluded just how poor z57's sites must be.

For the novices out there - nothing to be ashamed of - here's a reality check:

A website that sees just 1 visit/day is almost useless! Most of the real estate websites we launch start seeing 5 or 10 times this traffic within days.

Like selling a car and saying it will run 5 miles

Would You Trust This Guy?

z57 is, in effect, guaranteeing that they'll provide next to nothing. This is like selling a car and guaranteeing that it'll drive 5 miles. No thank you.

Here's what really gets my goat; These folks are praying on the lack of education that most of their potential customers possess. I think that's just plain dishonest. I couldn't do it and I don't think anyone who has ever worked at Boston Logic would ever stoop to this level.

Instead, we have 3 blogs working to educate our current and potential clients. We hold a free LogicClassroom every month. AND we'll honestly answer any question you might have and base those answers on web best practices.

If this blog post reads like a rant, well, it is. I hope it was illuminating, if not entertaining.

New Sequoia Site Launch: Maxfield Real Estate 1/14/11

Maxfield Real Estate came to Boston Logic in need of a new real estate website design - and having spent many years with their previous site, they knew that it was time to redesign from the ground up.

For the Maxfield team, this was an opportunity to both explore a new look and feel for their web presence, and to build that real estate web design on the best software in the business - the Sequoia platform.

As many of our clients do, Maxfield Real Estate chose to have us design a fully custom Sequoia theme - redesigning everything from the home page and common theme elements to interior pages, such as the listing details and search results pages.

The new Maxfield Real Estate site is modern and organized, giving users easy access to Maxfield's many listings in the lakes region of New Hampshire.

The design option of choice for our most discerning clients, our Custom Design Theme lets you start fresh, with a newly designed site built just for you. Our design team presents several initial concepts, from which one is chosen and modified through several rounds of revision. Home page layout, color schemes, global elements such as headers and footers, are configured to order - and the custom layouts don't stop at the home page. Custom Design Themes also include layout changes for standard system pages such as search results, agent profiles, and more.

The following is a great testimonial from Maxfield Real Estate in working with Boston Logic and the Sequoia platform:

"Boston Logic has been instrumental in bringing our new Maxfield website to fruition. We look to Boston Logic as an expert in online marketing. Ashley Osgood especially has been dedicated to helping our agents get started, answering questions and providing educational opportunities. We look forward to continued success and the growth of our site through the help of Ashley and Boston Logic." - Denise Williams, Maxfield Real Estate

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 truly unique.

Maxfield Real Estate is a sales leader in the lakes region of New Hampshire, with over fifty years of experience representing luxury properties and unique vacation homes.

Boston Logic Grows with Rhode Island MLS Integration! 12/30/2010

Boston Logic's Sequoia platform continues to grow with the newest integration of the Rhode Island MLS.

Boston Logic recently integrated the Rhode Island Statewide MLS with the Sequoia platform!

We're now serving the entire state of Rhode Island thanks to our integration with the Statewide MLS. Those with our user-friendly Sequoia real estate websites can access data from any MLS we serve.

If you are one of our many customers who use this MLS, please contact us today for details on how to get started with Sequoia!

There's also still time to take advantage of our special holiday offer for Sequoia Agent Sites: don't miss out!

New MLS Databases Now Integrated with Sequoia: LINK and LINKMV 10/26/2010

Two new Multiple Listing Service databases integrated with Sequoia to offer our clients complete coverage for Massachusetts.

We've recently integrated the listing databases of LINK and LINK MV (Martha's Vineyard) to offer our Sequoia clients complete MLS coverage across the Massachusetts coast and islands. We now cover all of Mass, with LINK, LINK MV, the Cape Cod & Islands MLS, and MLS PIN all serving our clients and their customers - and will soon welcome the addition of the Rhode Island Statewide MLS to better serve our clients in the Ocean State.

We are constantly increasing our MLS coverage in order to serve as many customers as possible - and as an added benefit, allowing customers with multiple MLS ID's to show off and give their customers access to all of their listings in all of their MLS's. Now our southern Massachusetts clients can feature their listings from the South Shore, the Cape and Islands, and beyond - all on the same Sequoia real estate website design.

To learn more about the Sequoia platform and how we can make your new custom real estate website look great and perform better than you ever thought possible, call or email us today! We'll be happy to talk, or to give you a live demonstration of the technology that makes Sequoia the best real estate software platform on the market today.

Real Estate Website Q&A Tuesday: SEO and Sequoia 10/5/2010

For today's installment of Q&A Tuesday, where we discuss Frequently Asked Questions we receive from clients or potential clients regarding our Sequoia real estate website platform, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about website optimization. We are constantly being asked about search engine optimization and how our Sequoia websites can help our clients in their search engine marketing efforts.

Here at Boston Logic, we realize the importance of search engine marketing and optimization for your real estate business. Search engines are the way most people find information and services they want- and if your website is not optimized, it is less likely that potential clients will find you.

Even if you've never heard of Search Engine Optimization, a Sequoia website will make optimizing your web presence easy!

Q: How will switching to a Sequoia website help me with SEO?

A: The Sequoia platform was designed specifically with search engine optimization in mind! Sequoia is a cutting edge website platform that integrates the most advanced real estate website features enabling leading-edge marketing campaigns- and we're constantly improving it! Whenever there is a Sequoia system upgrade, your site is upgraded automatically, so your website will always be using the best technology in the real estate industry.

Q: I don't understand SEO. Will I still be able to benefit from the SEO features of a Sequoia website?

A: Yes! With a Sequoia website, adding important Meta Data (such as Page Titles, Page Descriptions, and Keyword Tags) to your website pages and creating custom URLs (essential elements of a well-optimized page) are as easy as filling out a field on a form! You don't have to be an SEO specialist or know HTML to improve your search engine ranking! Simply fill out the fields provided as you create your pages!

Adding Essential SEO Elements to a Sequoia Website is EASY!

Adding Essential SEO Elements is EASY!

Q: Is there support available if I need help with my SEO?

A: Yes! Your Sequoia website comes with a very informative Users Guide tab you can access from your Admin dashboard. We are constantly adding easy-to-follow demos and step-by-step instructions to the Help Section of this blog, and articles on SEO best practices on our blog at RealEstateSEO1.com.

Here are a few suggested links to help get you started:

Real Estate SEO is a Process

Optimize Your Site to Get More Traffic and Leads

Simple SEO for Your Blog

Q: I heard that using Social Media could help my SEO; how do Sequoia websites integrate with popular social sites?

A: You heard correctly! Utilizing social media sharing and social media websites are integral parts of any good search engine marketing strategy. We are constantly upgrading our system to keep up with social media trends.

Sequoia websites also give you the ability to add Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn icons to your website's footer that link to your profile pages on these social media sites. Setup is easy! Simply copy and paste the URL of your profile page into the 'Social Media' fields on your 'Configuration' tab from your Admin dashboard, click 'Save' and your icon links appear automatically!

The more ways you give potential clients to connect with you, the better! We can also help you set up MLS and rental property searches on your Facebook Fan Page that connect to the property searches on your website, and help you set up an RSS feed from your blog to your social media profiles!

New Sequoia Real Estate Website Feature: Type-Ahead Search Forms 8/27/2010

We've recently introduced another great Sequoia broker web design feature - type-ahead search forms!

Now instead of scrolling through lists of towns and neighborhoods when performing a search, setting up email updates, and creating pages with search forms, all you need to do is start typing the name of the town or neighborhood.

Once you do, the system will automatically provide a list of all towns and neighborhoods that match the characters you have entered- for example, typing B-O-S will give you Boston and all Boston neighborhoods. Keep typing to make the list smaller until you see what you want, or just scroll the list and click on the choice you want to make. If you make a mistake while making a page, or want to remove a town or neighborhood, just click the "x" to the upper right of the place name.

This feature gives Sequoia web sites for realtors two great benefits. First is, of course, the ease and simplicity with which users can perform searches, and agents can set up pages. Second, pages with search forms on them now load much faster, since your browser doesn't have to load the list of towns provided by your MLS. Both of these improvements make the user experience of your Sequoia site that much more enjoyable, and will contribute to increased lead traffic.

This is just one of the many features we have recently introduced for the Sequoia platform - part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining Sequoia's position as the highest-quality real estate website platform in the industry.

Read more of Sequoia's Latest Feature Upgrades available on our Websites for Realtors.

New Video About the Sequoia Platform!

Related Links:

Warren Residential New Real Estate Site Launch!

Related Links:

New Sequoia Feature Launches: 3/7/2011

Related Links:

New Sequoia Site Feature Launches: 2/21/2011

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A "Guarantee" that's Worth it's Weight in Dirt

Related Links:

New Sequoia Site Launch: Maxfield Real Estate 1/14/11

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Boston Logic Grows with Rhode Island MLS Integration! 12/30/2010

Related Links:

New MLS Databases Now Integrated with Sequoia: LINK and LINKMV 10/26/2010

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Real Estate Website Q&A Tuesday: SEO and Sequoia 10/5/2010

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New Sequoia Real Estate Website Feature: Type-Ahead Search Forms 8/27/2010

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