Tag: agent reputation

Historical Content Retention(HCR) With Real Estate Websites You Own

Many of you know my stand on website ownership vs renting your real estate website. It all boils down to owning your online assets and the SEO value of your Historical Content Retention(HCR).

Blogging needs to be a real estate agents best friend. In a perfect world, you are blogging on a WordPress website you OWN at least twice a week, if not every day. As long as you stay with WordPress, you can always upgrade to new sites and the content you created will will stay intact with any images, videos, dates and the URL it was indexed on.

As a real estate agent actively blogging, if you are renting your website that has a blog and you choose to buy a new real estate website, you may end up throwing away the historical SEO value of your prior active blogging. And in fact, every time you change websites, the search engines have to re-index your new site and this can lead to essentially starting over with a blank slate in the search engines.

I was with one of the first companies that brought WordPress to real estate. Ease of content creation, maintenance, SEO attractiveness and blogging was and still are strong points with having a WordPress real estate website. Then about 4 years ago, new companies started offering cheap monthly rental websites with blogging technology. So many of you created pages and pages of content over a period of years and at the moment you choose to go with another site, you are told there is no easy way to import your prior content into your new site.

But you thought your website was built in WordPress and you just purchased a WordPress website. The site may have been built with the same base php technology, but if your dashboard does not look like this, you are out of luck.

So if you buy a WordPress real estate website and you want to bring over your months or years of content from a site that does not have this backend, you will have to manually reenter your posts. Your valuable history will be gone. All of this content including the images will have to be re-indexed. Not a good scenario.

All I am asking you to do is think about where your content is being posted. Do you have full control of that asset? Is your content exportable if you change site providers? Will your historical content retention be up to date?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to talk you out of your amazing PPC or Paid Leadgen website. All of these leads you are paying for have to go through that vendor’s online process, some of which are off the hook. I am just advising you to think about placing your unique personal content within a technology you own and control.

Agent Reputation is starting a new season with a new marketing platform

Last night we launched our new online marketing platform for the real estate industry which you can access from our homepage.

First and foremost, I have to thank Jim Marks, the former owner of Virtual Results, for hiring me as his marketing director in 2011. Though I had quite a bit of marketing experience under my belt, this was the start of my journey into the real estate industry. I became a “road scholar” traveling with Jim on all of his speaking engagements at Xplode, PNC Mortgage and Inman Events including the original Agent Reboot.

I was fortunate to learn from Jim and also from many of the real estate marketing influencers you all know today. So I have to give a shout out to:  Jay Thompson, Chris Smith, Matt Fagioli, Tom Ferry, Joe Sesso, Bob Stewart, Steve Pacinelli, Anu Kumar, Bodilyn Jolly, Molly McKinley, Dale Chumbley  and Eric Stegiman.

In 2014, Sean McCrory, the founder of Agent Reputation, saw the need to help real estate agents, teams and brokerages in obtaining and publishing positive reviews. Our Reputation Marketing system has been very successful with a 90+% retention rate over the past five years. Just over three years ago, clients asked us to find them a web design option. We found nothing that would meet their needs as we would recommend, so we opened our own shop.

We started out quietly. Not ringing our own bell too much with our sites. Never self promoting in the various social media groups.  We wanted to analyze statistics, consumer experience and conversion. As we developed we were getting referrals from some of the top coaching and marketing businesses in the industry. Our referral business was so large, we never had to spend a dime on advertising.

As we evolved through technologies we developed, marketing and technology companies approached us to integrate their products into our websites. So a huge shout out to IDX Broker, eMerge, IMAX CRM and Displet.

We build semi-custom real estate websites our clients own outright. All of our sites include an IDX, Reputation Marketing, a CRM, an  email marketing system and content marketing. We are offering an online marketing solution second to none in the real estate industry.

Please spend a few moments checking out our website.

Realtor reviews from Yelp and Facebook now showing up in Google Business pages

We ran across an exciting addition to the Google Business Page boxes that appear in the upper right of Google page one search results for for businesses that have created or claimed their Google business page. You have heard me say, “If the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should probably pay attention to it”.  This is why we promote the use of Google reviews as a primary source of your online reviews. Based on the image below, you will see in addition to the Google reviews, you will see Facebook and Yelp reviews are showing up in the Google business box section called “Reviews from the web”.

From a perspective of the importance of having online reviews, the fact Google has added Yelp and Facebook reviews to their business box is quite telling. From what we can tell, the reviews are being automatically pulled and placed in the Google business box and is not a direct feed based upon some official data pipeline between Yelp, Facebook, Google and others. Here is a short video I did explaining it.

In a prior blog post where I wrote about stats that came directly from Google regarding the fact 49% of your prospects want to trust you along with this latest addition of Yelp and Facebook reviews shows me now it’s more important then ever to take control of your online reviews. Please reach out to us for a free demo on how we can manage all of this for you.

 

Why some Realtors think Yelp is harming them – Stats and Algorithms

First off I want to give a shoutout to Matthew Bushery at Placester.com who recently wrote a great article on Yelp.

Today’s post is inspired by a Realtor I spoke to this afternoon as I was going over their reputation report. Other then their awesome Zillow reviews, the Google footprint was a bit weak. And their Yelp page showed 7 reviews with a 2-Star average rating. There were “18 other reviews that are not currently recommended” below the line.

This always upsets companies or business professionals reviewed on Yelp. Using this image below, I will lay out a response that will hopefully help you to understand a bit more about how Yelp works.

When I Googled this Realtor, the 2-star Yelp review was staring me in the face. I know they felt harmed by Yelp for hiding 18 5-star reviews and publishing four 1 star horrible reviews. Setting aside the fact they will never be able to terminate their Yelp account, I wanted to offer some insight.

Two of the negative reviews stated the reviewer actually had completed real estate transactions with this agent. I had suggested that if these two reviewers were making this up, the agent could ask their broker to write a letter stating they never had clients with these names which could be submitted to Yelp for review.

On or about 9/16/2012, this agent or somebody representing them sent out an e mail to a mix of prior clients, friends or family letting them know they established a Yelp account and they were asked to leave you a 5 star review.

Starting on the 16th and continuing through 10/24/2012 a total of fourteen 5-star reviews came in to Yelp. That is unnatural and is a big red flag. Then when you see that most of these reviews have had zero activity in the past three years, based upon their algorithm and tracking, Yelp assumes they asked all of these people to leave them positive reviews which is against their guidelines.

The “zero friend/one review” accounts under the line, most likely signed up to leave them a review and then immediately left that review, never to be heard from again on Yelp. Yelp tracks that. You simply cannot ask non-Yelpers to leave you reviews or they will be buried.

Now IF any of the inactive Yelpers became active, there is a chance this activity might get the reviews after 10/24/2013 published

I was going to suggest getting an additional letter from the brokerage or providing transaction documentation tied to each name of those below the line for submittal to Yelp, but if it was within the dates I mentioned, it probably wouldn’t matter because so many reviews came in within such a short time-frame. You might be able to do this with the three reviews from 2014/15 and get those upgraded.

They have all of these reviews from 2012, most of which don’t count. Six from 2013. Two from 2014 and only one this year. This shows they had a push in 2012 and then sat back to allow natural review postings which is why these four one star reviews are published along with the reviewers Yelp activity.

A correct strategy at the moment the client is doing the happy dance, for all transactions moving forward, is to mention you are building your online reputation and to find out if they are active online reviewers. It really would not take many to push you up. But they have to be Active Yelpers.

They want active Yelpers to be motivated to find the vendors they do business with and leave honest reviews on their own. You also can’t just sit back “hoping” you get reviews. You have to be proactive. You need a plan. We have that plan.

CJ Hays @area51testpilot #CJ4marketing

Thoughts on Inman News Article re Online Agent Ratings

On August 6th, Inman News published an article called, “Online agent ratings may be inflated, but they’re still valuable”, written by Teke Wiggin, Technology Writer for Inman. The article seems to be focused on Zillow reviews. I will go point by point.

“Realtors have become restaurants” is the name of my seminar, so when I saw the opening paragraph of the article stating that consumers were using third party review systems for restaurants, hotels, and product purchases, I was pleased to anticipate the body of the article.

YES, consumers are using third party review systems like Yelp, Trip Advisor and the like to look at the credibility of vendors or products. However, while a foodie may use the Yelp app via their phone to look for a quality restaurant, the majority of consumers are first using the search engines to look for (Google) the name of the business, business professional or product. Consumers are Googling Realtors.

What do they see on page one of the search? Do they see gold stars? Do they see only Zillow? Do they see a Realtor’s Yelp account? Does the Realtor have a Google business page? Do they have Google ratings? Seriously, when a consumer Googles a real estate agent, they had better see multiple review systems in place. Having reviews across multiple platforms increases the credibility of the business professional.

A statement is made in the article that online agent ratings may be inflated. What does this mean? The article seems to tie this statement to the fact that Realtors are only asking the really happy consumers to leave reviews, thus skewing the online rating of the agent. Yes, if you as an agent are guiding ONLY your happy consumers to leave you positive reviews on Zillow or elsewhere, then a consumer may not be seeing an accurate representation of your integrity and professionalism. With that said, most consumers won’t realize this.

Another statement reads, “The reason why negative reviews are few and far between may be because many people who aren’t thrilled with an agent’s performance don’t feel the need to broadcast their disappointment”. I totally disagree. You have heard variations of actions consumers will take depending on their satisfaction with a product or service. They might tell a few people if they’re happy, but they will tell the whole world online if they are really upset!

The question is whether or not the agent is tech savvy enough to have third-party review technologies in place, other than Zillow or an internal survey based system. Yelp can be a little intimidating for agents that don’t know how to use it correctly. You can embrace Yelp to your advantage. I have clients getting 10 solid leads a week from Yelp, but that is for another day.

Google Business is also a huge factor. It is safe to assume that if the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should probably pay attention to it.

When I had first read the headline that “agent ratings may be inflated”, I thought the article had to do with the fact Zillow reviews can be gamed. And in fact, there are methods to game almost every review system with the exception of Yelp. As a former Fraud Examiner and having worked many online fraud cases, a number of odd agent reviews were brought to my attention which I investigated. I saw review numbers that did not add up.

I know, for instance, when we load a client’s customer list into our CRM, which sends out an email asking them to click on a link to leave an online review, we will get a 25% return. That 25% does not come easy. There is an entire trickle system in place to get the customers to leave their online reviews. I then compare the percentages I am aware of to numbers that seem excessive. When I see rating numbers that are equal to or even exceeding the known transactions of an agent, the red lights go off. I know how it is done.

If you are a Zillow client and you focus on Zillow for your lead generation, then by all means focus on your Zillow reviews, as you will stand out within their marketing system. Same goes for Trulia and Realtor.com. But please open or claim your Google and Yelp pages. I may not click on your website or Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com page to see your reviews.

Internal vs External Online Reviews for Realtors

“Realtors have become restaurants”. This means consumers are Googling realtors like they would a restaurant, looking for their online ratings and reputation. People want to go to major directories that they trust and rely on everyday for reviews about products or services before they buy. What your prospect sees in the first 5 to 10 seconds in the search engines is EVERYTHING.

Things have changed for realtors online. Back in the day (not long ago), realtors, teams and brokerages dominated the organic search results. Most of the consumer property searches were taking place on realtor or team websites. Now they are using Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin and Trulia for their searches. Even longer ago, the consumer was spending more time on your website reading your content. Today they are looking for houses. They want to see that you have testimonials, but the majority are not actually reading them in detail. In fact, when I was in the real estate website business, we would always have a testimonial page that had a two sentence snippet with a button that said “read more”. Nobody ever clicked on the read more link because they just want to know you have testimonials.

We know realtor reviews are important. We knew this over a year ago when Sean McCrory launched Agent Reputation. Many clients later, the subject is coming up more and more at real estate technology events and national franchise meetings. Reviews were discussed at the T3 Summit and T3 experts released a report on realtor reviews. Placester published an infographic from survey results. I agree with most of the results, and I get the fact that when you are paying Zillow for marketing, it is wise to have as many Zillow reviews as you can get.

I have also heard, “Regain control from 3rd-party review sites”. It has been suggested to use an internal survey system to create internal ratings and reviews that people can see when they go to a realtor’s website. I love surveys to help the agents learn how to better serve their clients. We have surveys, but that is not the focus of this post. Some of the “teachers” out there are promoting INTERNAL reviews because everyone is scared of BAD reviews. They are scared that somebody might go sideways on Google or Yelp. That is OK, providing you have enough GOOD reviews. Having no reviews can be just as bad as negative reviews. People want to see reviews on a major directory that they trust, before making a buying decision. Surveys have shown that if you do not have at least 6-10 positive reviews, many potential clients will not trust your service.

A very high percentage of your prospects, especially listing prospects, are Googling you. What they see in the first 5 to 10 seconds, on page 1 of the search results, is everything. There should be 5 gold stars everywhere and not just the review systems provided by the likes of Zillow and other real estate vendors. It is pretty safe to assume if the largest search engine in the world has a review system, you should be paying attention to it. All realtors should have verified Google business pages so that you have an opportunity to get on the Google 7 Pack (that just came back for residential realtors).

Most agents know they need to focus on agent online reviews. However, as an agent, you need a method to facilitate getting the third-party reviews. We do that.

Let’s get back to the subject matter. If I just want to Google you, how am I seeing your internal reviews? Do I have to assume they are on your website and then go to your website and then click on a link to see them? What if you don’t have a website or are using the free site your franchise or broker is providing you? What the search engines see is more important than your INTERNAL system.

If you have one, how really satisfied are you with your reputation vendor? Are they facilitating your reviews out to the third party sites like Google Reviews and Yelp? Are you in the Google 7 Pack? Call us for a free testimonial commercial.

 

Agent Reputation – Online Reviews

Recently our Director of Marketing Chris “CJ” Hays, was invited to do a live interview with talk show host Danny Vegas, on WCBM. CJ talks about reputation marketing, and the importance of online reviews when it comes to generating more real estate leads. If people are going to list their home with you they need to trust you. Online reviews are like recommendations, and they need to be on the right websites, and highly visible.

Watch The Whole Interview Here