Real Estate Internet Marketing

It All Starts with a Search [back]

With over 10 years combined experience providing custom solutions to Real Estate Brokers across the country, Absolute IM knows how to get your site ranked. Our team designed, built and managed the only SEO division in the entire Move, Inc. (formerly Homestore) network of companies, for over 2 years. Every one of our clients is now in the top 5 for their primary keyword searches.

In the ever growing Internet Market, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is essential for companies who are concerned with Search Engine exposure. An estimated 80% of online retail transactions begin with a keyword search. The search market has revolutionized the marketing industry, providing a level advertising saturation unheard of in any other medium. As of December 2007, Google has grown to approximately 60% of the search market, Yahoo has shrunk to 25% and MSN trails with <10%.

NAR reports that the percentage of potential U.S. home buyers using the internet as part of their housing search process went from 2% in 1995 to 77% in 2005. Real Estate Internet Marketing is critical for survival in today's market. The moral of the story is clear: If consumers cannot find your website, they will find someone else's.

Research has shown that users rarely go beyond the top 20 search engine rankings for a single search (Forrester Research Inc.). It is estimated that the top 10 results receive over 90% of search traffic. If a business's rankings for related keywords are lower than top-20 results, it might as well be invisible on the Web.

There are 2 ways through which a company or website can get Search Engine Exposure: "Organic Ranking", or "Pay-Per-Click" advertising. Organic Ranking is achieved through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to achieve natural positioning in the search results. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising refers to the sponsored links fields of the search pages, which enables anyone to purchase clicks/traffic with front page ad exposure for any keyword. Google, Yahoo and MSN follow similar strategies for ranking sites in the search results, and all offer PPC advertising.