Over the past 4 years, we’ve grown Carrot from a fledgling “real estate investor website” software into the most effective tool for generating leads online for real estate investors. Bringing in more online leads than any other platform, climbing well into the millions of leads across thousands of active Carrot clients all across the U.S., Canada, the UK, and even some successful clients as far off as South Africa.
While our main clients are house flippers/wholesalers, land investors, and other investors looking for motivated sellers, cash buyers, and tenant leads… we’ve found the clients who consistently get an edge in this competitive market are the ones who are also real estate agents.
Why? Well for a few reasons.
Listing on the market is a viable solution for more sellers in up markets. Agent/Investors can turn more leads into income vs. discarding great leads that don’t perfectly fit just that one box.
Giving house sellers multiple options (list with us or sell to us) helps improve the close ratio and build trust with sellers.
Agents have access to data and tools that non-agents don’t.
In competitive markets that are cluttered with competition, you’ve got to do everything you can to avoid being caught up in the clutter of options.
Does Your Real Estate Agent Website Leave You Lost In The Clutter?
When you look at most real estate agents websites most of them tend to do the same things.
They have…
A pretty picture of you somewhere on the site
Local MLS listings
Fancy calculators and tools
… and a bunch of generic content for buyers and sellers not unique to your expertise as an agent
When buyers and sellers are looking at their options, if every agent they look at all has only the usual things on their websites (those things above) it’s the agents that build trust, authority, and credibility with content that win out in a competitive market.
Are you standing out with your website and content online or just becoming part of the clutter?
One lost listing per year from an underperforming website can cost you what? $3,000? $5,000? $20,000?
How AgentCarrot Can Help You Stand Out From The Clutter
Introducing Carrot real estate agent websites.
For years the way Carrot clients began to dominate their markets online started with a highly optimized website (for SEO and lead conversion) then amplified with our content marketing tools and training. We’ve been in the beta phase with Carrot for the past year and now we’re rolling it out of beta with a crazy exciting vision on how we’ll continue to improve how real estate agents and investors grow your business leveraging the web.
Now we’re bringing that same technology and strategy to real estate agents to dominate the online conversation in your own market. To leverage your own unique expertise to stand out from the clutter so you’re the best viable option for your ideal client in your market.
How does AgentCarrot help you do that? Let’s dive in and check out some of the ways AgentCarrot will help you save time and stand out from other agents in your market who are all doing the “same ol’ things”.
Beautiful High Converting Website Designs + Optional IDX
Nearly 60% of the 10s of thousands of leads our clients pull in each month are on mobile devices. So we’ve taken a mobile-first design approach… ensuring that your website not only looks beautiful and converts well on the desktop… but especially on mobile devices.
Beautiful Featured Property Listings
With AgentCarrot you can create Featured Property Listings to really showcase your best listings with any content you want to add. You’re never limited to what the MLS shows on a property when you create a Featured Property inside of AgentCarrot.
List MLS Properties With Our Optional IDX Add-On
Want to show local MLS listings on your site so buyers and sellers can discover what’s on the market? Excellent! Simply add-on IDX inside of your Carrot account starting at just $50/mo for most agents. All MLS listing content is housed on your website URL not on 3rd party URLs, which helps with SEO for those properties in Google.
Build Confidence In Your House Sellers
House sellers want just 3 things.
To sell for the highest possible price
With as little hassle as quickly as possible
To trust the agent they’re working with can represent them better than anyone else
The content you have on your website is key to building that expertise and trust. A robust “About” page, educational content (videos are best!), and a simple way for a seller to engage with you is critical. Just dive in and customize your content easily then leverage our content tools (below) to really stand out.
Stand Out With Content With VideoPost & Our Content Marketing System
The #1 way to stand out in a competitive market when almost every agent offers a similar core service (we can list or sell a house, here are our fees, etc.) is with content that builds your expertise and introduces your personality and core values to your clients.
If you’re struggling to win listings or buyers outside of your direct network of friends, family, and referrals it’s likely because you’re not standing out from other agents.
When your buyers and sellers are researching online you have a HUGE opportunity to get in front of them and build your expertise with content on your website optimized to rank well in Google.
Next time you’re out at a property or driving around with a client, pull out your cell phone and record a 3 to 5-minute video. Upload that to YouTube then simply paste the video URL into VideoPost in your AgentCarrot account. Then VideoPost will turn it into a written piece of content for your website.
Automate Weekly Content With Our Content Marketing System
Google LOVES robust written content and your buyers and sellers are searching online every day looking for answers to their questions before they make those big housing decisions. But writing content can take time and sometimes it’s hard to come up with ideas on what to write about.
The AgentCarrot Content Marketing System was the first automated blogging feature to launch in the real estate market in early 2014 and we’ve built that out for agents as well.
Simply select from our professionally written content each month, schedule it, and publish it. Now when buyers and sellers visit your website there will always be content written to educate and convert site visitors into leads.
Manage Your Leads
Carrot has always focused on being the best in the world at helping real estate professionals attract and convert more visitors into leads. But this past year we’ve started adding resources to help our clients better manage their leads inside of Carrot. Our simple Lead Manager will help you keep track of your leads and where they are in the process.
You can add notes, bring in your team members to collaborate, and see important property info such as where it is on Google Maps and Streetview plus the latest sale information from Zillow for quick reference.
Or integrate with dozens of systems through Zapier so AgentCarrot can help you capture more leads and you can use your current systems to manage those leads if you wish.
We have major updates we’re already working on for 2018 to make the Lead Manager more and more robust.
Track Your Progress
As you drive traffic to your website you can leverage our built-in stats or if you want to, can integrate with Google Analytics.
Then see where every lead came from with our LeadSource tracking. To take it even further and drill down on what’s working with your paid marketing with our Campaign Tracking Links tool.
Leverage Our Expertise
As you dive in and leverage our tools to build a beautiful real estate agent website and stand out with content, you can turn to our training and team to guide you through to success. From our weekly LIVE Coaching Calls every Tuesday (included in all AgentCarrot memberships) to our online training programs, and our amazing support team you’ll never be left hanging.
Our weekly Coaching Calls can help you stay on course and always have a plan that you or your team can execute.
What’s Next For Carrot Real Estate Agent Websites
While real estate agent websites is a new product here at Carrot, we’re not new to helping high-achieving real estate professionals cut through the online clutter and generate more leads online. Millions of seller, buyer, and tenant leads have passed through our system and we only plan for that to get even better for our InvestorCarrot and AgentCarrot clients.
But we’re excited as heck about our vision for Carrot over the coming 12-24 months.
We’re going to…
Further build out the functionality of our lead manager and follow-up systems
Innovate more content marketing tools to help you stand out from the crowd
Build out training specific for real estate agents that put you at the cutting edge of online marketing
Test and hone our designs and Lead Conversion Process for our websites
Test and innovate how you and your clients use Carrot mobile devices
… to help you save time and cut through that clutter in your market as a real estate agent.
Here at Carrot, we feel every high-achieving real estate agent should be an investor and every high-achieving investor should also be an agent (or align with one). So we’ll continue our focus on helping you earn an amazing living in real estate with less time and create a business of purpose along the way.
Last but not least, we want your feedback.
We understand we have a long way to go and are nowhere near our ultimate vision for AgentCarrot. If you see anything we can improve or a wishlist, or simply want to give us feedback… please don’t hesitate to send it our way.
If you’ve ever run a successful SEO campaign before, you’ll know that building high-quality backlinks to your site is critical. If you want to win organic search traffic via SEO, you need to be sure that all 3 pillars of your campaign—technical SEO, content marketing, and backlinks—are executed on correctly.
It’s easy to use an off the shelf platform like Carrot to ensure your site is technically sound, and it’s relatively simple to write and publish high value content to your site. The biggest challenge most people have involves link building.
While many methods are highly complex, and others feel uncomfortable or unethical, one stands out as a clear winner.
You can earn backlinks from some of the highest authority websites without having to write long articles, building an extensive network of industry influencers, or speaking on endless numbers of podcasts.
In my experience, this single strategy wins out against the rest, bringing the highest ROI of all link building methods, landing links in key media outlets and major publications such as Forbes, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Yahoo Finance.
In this article, I’ll explain the HARO link building process, and how you can use HARO for your real estate SEO campaign.
Introduction to Help a Reporter Out
Help A Reporter Out, or HARO for short, is a simple platform that connects journalists and content producers that with expert sources, to give their content more credibility, and deeper insights.
Every day, hundreds of HARO queries are sent out from journalists, asking experts to provide input into their content. Most of this input is in the form of a quote, but it can also involve TV or radio interviews as well.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was founded by Peter Shankman as a service for journalists to connect with people who could be relevant sources for their reporting. HARO was later acquired and is currently part of Connectively. In 2024, Peter Shankman launched Source of Sources, based on the original HARO model. Qwoted is another popular tool for connecting journalists with subject matter experts. You can follow the guidance below to connect with journalists via the platform of your choice.
Why You Should Use HARO for Link Building
Building links with HARO outreach involves finding journalists looking for relevant sources for their articles. Unlike other forms of outreach (like guest posting), these journalists need a source, and they want to hear from you.
In exchange for your valuable quote, they will credit you, typically with a dofollow or nofollow backlink to your site.
Yes, that’s right. SEOs like yourself can use HARO pitches to secure backlinks from websites with tons of link equity, for free!
Your quotes are often syndicated in other publications across the internet, shared on social media, and included in other related press mentions, all of which can boost the power of your links further.
It also helps with improved brand visibility as both your personal and business name become cited sources. This adds trust when potential clients or sellers look to find an agent, agency or investor to work with.
The end result is, you get hard-to-get links from credible news sources, bringing traffic from the journalist’s article, a high-quality backlink to your website, better search engine rankings to your content, and most importantly, more leads for your business.
Other Benefits of Using Help a Reporter Out
As I mentioned above, backlinks are just one of the many benefits. Many people think of this practise as “HARO SEO”, but the benefits really don’t end there.
While I’ve had my fair share of success through SEO, I’ll be the first to admit that the industry can have a limited view of things at times.
Many of the articles you’ll be mentioned in includes multiple experts from your industry, meaning you get to “rub elbows” with respected experts from the property, or finance industry.
This gives the added benefits of:
boosting your personal credibility,
improving your brand’s reputation,
getting exposure your LinkedIn or X profile,
giving you an icebreaker to introduce yourself to experts in your field…
“Hey Brian, I noticed we were both quoted in this article. I like what you had to say about the impact of rising interest rates. Want to hop on a call to talk this over at some point?”
developing another traffic source for your website—referrals—clicks from people that read the article you’re mentioned in, who later click through to your site
How To Register With HARO
Getting your first backlink starts by dropping what you’re doing right now and jumping over to HARO. Select “I’m a Source.”
Scroll down and click the “Subscribe Now” button.
Once you fill out the form with your company’s information, you’ll be registered to receive three emails a day with a list of authors looking for contributions to their articles. It’s that easy!
How To Get Your First Backlink With HARO
Great! You’re getting the daily HARO emails, but what now?
To begin with, you need to start filtering. You’re going to get a lot of queries that simply aren’t a good fit for your business, or your own personal experiences.
Focus on Relevancy
The trick is to focus on topics that directly relate to your area of expertise, like real estate, mortgages, investing, personal finance, or possibly something relating to your personal business experience.
By focusing on opportunities that request real estate agents, you have an unfair advantage against those who do not have this experience.
This narrowed focus will give you the highest chance of being published and receiving a backlink.
Below is an example of the kind of pitch requests you should look for. After checking out the website, you’d see that it is a credible site for homeowners and potential home buyers that is run by a mortgage brokerage.
This means that the site has content that would be relevant to your brand and website. The requirements for the person making a pitch is that they are a real estate professional–a perfect match for your situation.
Sample HARO Query
Researching the Query
You may well have the knowledge to write a response immediately, but in many cases you might need to get some supporting info first.
Even if you can answer the query based on your past knowledge, there’s still some other info that you need.
Consider:
who is the target audience of this content?
what sort of article does the journalist typically write?
what sort of style and tone does this publication like to publish?
what length of response do these types of queries typically require?
Just because you’re a subject matter expert, doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be included. If you want to earn HARO links, the best way to succeed is by giving the journalist exactly what they want–a “copy/paste” response.
Write a Valuable, but Readable Pitch
Once you have your shortlist of queries and your research completed, it’s time to write your pitch for each query.
Reporters receive hundreds of responses to each query that they send out, and often they have multiple articles on the go. That’s a lot of emails, and every response will be judged swiftly.
Make sure your response stands out!
A quick, catchy title is a great way to make your pitch stand out in the author’s inbox.
Take the time to write concisely, using easy to read language and proper grammar—this will show respect for their time (and avoid confusion).
When putting together your pitch, make sure that it is short and to the point. These authors receive a ton of pitches and don’t have the time to read through every one. They’re typically looking for short, bite-sized pieces of information that they can quote in the form of a paragraph.
Get Personal
Remember, you’re a human, and the journalist is as well. Don’t just copy and paste in the same response to similar queries, be sure to tailor your pitch to their needs.
Where possible, speak from a past experience that you had, and if relevant, speak to one of your qualifications, or achievements. The more of an expert you are, the more like you are to be mentioned.
If they ask for responses under 100 words, give it to them! Similarly, don’t make it hard for them to credit you! Usually that means making sure your personal name, title/role within your company, company name, URL and any social media profiles are listed in your email.
In your pitch, make it as easy for the author to give you a backlink. In your signature, include a bio, a link to your website, a link to your logo, and a link to your headshot.
Be aware that HARO removes any email attachments like logos or headshot must be included as a downloadable link.
How To Get the Best Results From HARO
In order to truly contribute to the growth of your business, your efforts on media platforms like HARO can’t be a one-time thing. And if you’re going to sustain this effort month in month out, you’ll want to see results.
In addition to everything I’ve listed above, you’ll also want to:
Respond quickly: many reporters have tight deadlines. If you can give them the answer they need quickly, you’ll get featured. But even if they do have a few extra days, remember that they’ll receive hundreds, or even thousands of responses. You don’t want to be on the bottom of the list.
Provide evidence: if you’re referencing a specific statistic or trend, try to reference the data, survey or report in your response via a link. This shows that you’re not making it up but you’ve actually done the research to back up your claims, which is hugely beneficial to the journalist’s work.
Use a spell checker: it goes without saying that your response should be error free. Simple tools like Grammarly can help with both grammar and spelling issues. While most queries will come from USA, from time to time journalists will be seeking comments for Australian, British, or Canadian publications as well, so you’ll want to check your responses against their local spelling as well.
How Will I Know When My Pitch is Used?
Some authors are kind enough to notify you when the article has been published, but most publish and then quickly move on to the next article.
It’s worth seting up Google Alerts to track whenever your name or your brand name has been mentioned.
If you have the budget, then there are additional paid services like Ahrefs Alerts and Brand Mentions that also monitor publications for mentions of your brand.
A Real World Case Study
There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors among marketers, so I encourage you to take guidance from people that actually walk the walk.
Organic search traffic from Google, or “SEO” has been a key traffic source for each of my businesses to date, as well as my personal website. Below you can see different HARO backlinks highlighted in red.
These are some seriously high-authority links that are difficult to get using any other method.
Through “domain authority” and “domain rating” aren’t perfect metrics, they do give a good idea of the power that these links bring.
When I, or my team work to earn these links we typically exclude any sites below DR40, unless it’s highly relevant to the business we’re representing. You can imagine the type of impact using HARO can have on your Google rankings, and organic traffic.
Not only do you get high-quality links, but these are in-content, editorial links from real websites that get a heap of Google search traffic themselves—just what Google wants to see in your site’s backlink portfolio.
How much work does this take?
Like any link building strategy worth pursuing, building quality backlinks through HARO requires effort and consistency. This used to be an unspoken secret, where wins were easy, but it’s not the case anymore.
It’s no surprise that I run an SEO agency, Dialed Labs, which runs HARO SEO campaigns for multiple clients month in, month out. Yes, we offer a link building service, but given the nature of this strategy, it’s more of an online PR campaign.
It’s amazing where some of these responses end up sometimes (even in printed newspapers or magazines)!
The sheer volume that we deal with allows us to collect a large amount of data on this strategy.
In a typical year we’ll help send around 20,000 responses on behalf of our clients through media platforms such as:
Featured
HaB2BW
HARO
Profnet
SourceBottle
Based on our latest data, we expect to convert 14.27% of these responses into published links. That is, 2,854 links.
14.27% might sound like a low success rate, but it’s actually typical among even the best HARO link building service providers.
If you’ve been using SEO for some time, you’ve probably discovered the value (or cost) of a high authority backlink that also brings referral traffic.
I genuinely believe this is one of the best value methods of link building for one of the highest ROI forms of digital marketing (SEO).
Let’s Recap!
If you want the greatest success through this method:
Respond quickly: Those that respond within the first hour have the best chance at being used as a source.
Build your credibility: If you have a special certification, degree, or license that makes you stand out among your peers make sure you put it in your bio. This additional credibility could be the deciding factor of whether or not a reporter decides to use your pitch.
Be creative: Think outside the box. Reporters are looking for pitches that make their content stand out.
Use a catchy title: Don’t just use a generic subject line like “HARO Response” when sending in your pitch. Make yourself stand out in their inbox with a subject line they can’t help but click on.
Be patient: It can take weeks or even months for an article to be published.
Don’t give up: Just because you haven’t heard a response doesn’t mean that your pitches are being ignored. Most authors don’t reach out until the article has been published, which can take weeks or even months.
Now get out there and give it a go—and good luck on the backlink battlefield.
What if I told you that, by adding one element to your real estate website, you could increase your conversion rate by 10%?
You wouldn’t have to increase traffic and you wouldn’t have to do more marketing. You’d just have to add one dead-simple thing to your homepage.
And boom. 10%.
Would you do it?
If you’re like most real estate agents (72%), you’re already dissatisfied with the number of leads that your website generates. So I’m going to safely assume that the majority of you would welcome a 10% increase in your website’s conversion rate.
Sure. 10% isn’t huge. But it’s something. And in an industry where one deal can equal tens of thousands of dollars, 10% often separates the wheat from the chaff.
Where, though, am I getting 10% from?
Well, it’s an estimate. This little trick probably won’t double your revenue or change your business completely, but it’s a simple way to increase your conversion rate in very little time.
And who knows? For you, it might make all the difference.
Interested?
Here’s what it is.
The Best Real Estate Websites For Lead Generation Have This In Common: The “Call Us!” CTA
That’s right. That “Call Us!” CTA in the upper right corner of the page drives leads and converts visitors.
If you don’t have it on your website, then there’s a good chance that you’re missing out on about 10% of your potential lead generation.
But you don’t have to take my word for it.
As they say, “the proof is in the pudding.” So let’s talk about the pudding.
Proof that the “Call Us!” CTA Works on the Best Real Estate Websites for Lead Generation
44% of website visitors will leave a company’s website if there’s no contact information or phone number. Dead. Buried. Gone.
And you and I both know that the moment they leave your website is the same moment they go to the competition’s website. When that happens, your part in their story is over. In fact, 73% of buyers say that they would use their real estate agent again in the future — they’d even recommend the agent to a friend.
Once someone’s gone, they’re gone — and so too are their recommendations.
Naturally, you can’t afford to lose website visitors (and their friends) to the competition for such a silly reason. If having this “Call Us!” CTA really makes a difference, then you damn-well better include it on your website — especially when you consider that it’s only going to take about five minutes for you to add.
But in case you don’t trust the stats I’ve already presented, maybe you’ll take better to our own (Carrot’s) data from nearly 4,000 websites across tons of different real estate niches (wholesalers, rental owners, house flippers, and agents).
First of all, we found that 91% of people who become leads on these real estate websites convert on the same exact day of their first visit to the website.
This means that high-value people who visit your website want a solution right now. 91% of the time, ideal prospects aren’t on your website to browse around and come back tomorrow.
They’re on your website because they want a solution… and they want it right now.
In fact, prospects are so ready to take action that the vast majority of our customer’s leads come from the home page.
Which means that they visit the website and become a lead before even clicking anywhere else. They take action.
But what does that have to do with the “Call Us!” CTA?
Well, put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. If you visit someone’s website looking for a solution to your problem or wanting to get in touch with a realtor, the last thing you want to do is dig around their website looking for contact information.
And the very last thing you want is to come across an email or a form like this.
No. You want to call someone right now and schedule a time to talk further.
Additionally, we found that the average time-on-page for the “Contact Us” page across these real estate websites was a whopping one minute and twenty-nine seconds.
Which is pretty damn significant for a page that usually has nothing more than a phone number, email, and/or contact form.
Or consider, from this heatmap of one of our customer’s websites, how much attention the “Call Us!” CTA receives.
Plus, since 52% of home buyers use an iPhone during their home search, a lot of prospects literally have their calling device right in front of them when viewing your website.
“On many websites, the contact information is buried at least five links deep, because the company doesn’t really want to hear from you. And when you find it, it’s a form or an e-mail address.
We take the exact opposite approach.
We put our phone number (it’s 800-927-7671, in case you’d like to call) at the top of every single page of our website because we actually want to talk to our customers. And we staff our call center 24/7.”
And while you might not be the owner of a company that sells shoes online, the point is the same — business people that make it easy for prospects to contact them are far more likely to turn visitors into leads and leads into deals than those that make it difficult. Statistically, 50% of buyers work with the company that responds first.
This means you want to make it as easy as possible for prospects to contact you; the “Call Us!” CTA does exactly that.
How, though, should the rest of your website support this CTA? It’s to that question that we turn next.
How the Best Real Estate Websites for Lead Generation Set Up The Supporting Elements
In the end, your website should be phenomenal at only two things.
When someone first arrives at your website, they will want to know if they can trust you or not. They’ve never met you in person and so your website is the only thing they have to reference.
If it doesn’t convince them that you’re trustworthy, they’ll leave. If it does, they’ll contact you.
End of story.
In the digital real estate world, it’s really that simple.
For that reason, the majority of your website should be dedicated to building credibility with your visitors. You want them to know that they can trust you and you want them to know that as quickly as possible.
How, though, do you get someone to trust you when your website is the only thing between their decision and your business?
Well, there’s a nearly endless amount of elements that go into building trust with your website — “Website credibility judgments are 75% based on overall aesthetics” — but here are four of the more important ones.
Does your website load fast? If people have to wait too long, they’ll leave and go somewhere else.
What is the first thing that people notice when they land on your website? Does that element build trust for your business? If it doesn’t, then consider making this element something that does.
How clean is your real estate website design? If your website is cluttered with random information and difficult-to-decipher CTAs, then people won’t trust you and they definitely won’t stick around.
Is your website easy to navigate? Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep your navigation bar intuitive and your CTAs clear. You want people to know what’s going to happen when they click something on your website and you want them to easily navigate where they want to go. Avoid vague and unhelpful navigational terms on your website.
At Carrot, we’re relentless about doing all four of these things for our customers so that they don’t have to worry about it.
If you want to do it yourself, though — or you’re just curious — then check out how we guide website visitors from trusting the real estate expert to taking action.
Here’s how we do it on our real estate investor websites.
Since the best thing that your website visitors can do is contact you, the rest of the website should work to get them to a point where they’re ready to call you or email you.
The only hesitancy that committed prospects have about contacting you is that they don’t know who you are, they don’t know if they can trust you, and they don’t know if you can help them.
Other than the “Call Us!” CTA, every element on your website should work to convince them they can trust you and you can help them.
Then, and only then, will they dial your phone number.
Conclusion
The “Call Us!” CTA probably won’t be the most interesting part of your website’s design. It won’t be the prettiest or the most compelling. But that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.
In fact, that little “Call Us!” addition to your website can make an estimated 10% difference in your conversion rate. Now, you know why it’s important and how to support it on your website.
Because in an industry where every sale is worth tens of thousands of dollars, 10% can make a big difference.
And in the case of the “Call Us!” CTA, about five minutes equals +10%.
What do you think is the most important element on a real estate website for generating leads and converting visitors?
Land is hot right now. I was talking with one of our Carrot members recently and they’re seeing a really great opportunity to sell land all across the country. So, we worked with them to create a Land Sellerwebsite system here at Carrot! Here’s how it works…
Introducing Our New Land Seller Websites for Motivated Seller Lead Generation
Over a few-month period, we researched and tested websites in some select markets to create our first version of a performing-based land seller website that you as our Carrot members can access and set up in your accounts.
We’ve kept these land seller websites simple… but effective. We’re actively testing the sites, for instance, and will be adding elements that help increase conversion rates each and every month.
We’ve taken our proven design with what we call the “Lead Hero” that we have by default on all of our websites (but you can turn the Lead Hero on or off with the click of a mouse if you want) and built that into the land seller websites as well. We’ve found that when we have a Lead Hero on our customer’s homepages… the homepage conversion rate increased across the board.
Plus… we’ve built in the Conversion Boosters that are baked into all of our Carrot real estate investor websites that improve opt-ins, engagement with website visitors, and credibility.
Designed For Results
When most people start building their first website, they care about one thing and one thing only: how pretty does the website look?
Over the years, though, we found that results matter more than looks. In fact, that’s all that should matter in the design of your website.
Then, once we find things that work, our design team takes the baton, creating elegant and clean formats while at the same time retaining the current conversions (or ideally increasing website conversions even more!).
The Content
Like all of our website content packs, the content is professionally written by people who know SEO, website conversion, and real estate strategy inside and out.
The mistake most people make when building their real estate website is that they underestimate the power of content. Words on pages can make or break the results of your website in search engines and how well your website performs once a visitor arrives.
Every page on this new land seller website in our system is written with four factors in mind:
Search Engine Optimization – We’ve done extensive research to find out what motivated land sellers are searching on Google to find the land buyers. Then we’ve built those keywords into this content strategically and we customize it with YOUR CITY automatically when you create your website in our system. This and our other SEO elements help your website have a better chance of ranking higher in search engines to attract more motivated land sellers.
Lead Conversions – If you’re able to get land sellers to your website but they aren’t giving you their information, your website isn’t doing its job. Content and pages are made to convert. That way we position our opt-in boxes, the words on our calls to action, the “eye direction” elements that make the visitor’s eye go to the parts of your website that matter — it’s all built into our land websites.
Customized and Customizable – While your website will be 100% ready to roll from the second you launch the website in your Carrot account — just like any of our websites within the Carrot system — you can customize anything about your content that you want to. We actually encourage our members to add some twists to their website content to make it feel personal to you and what your business does. Plus, we’ve automatically customized part of your website content with your company name, contact info, and the city you invest in. So website visitors will know they’re on a trusted, LOCAL investor website.
Credibility Boosters – Credibility is huge when generating leads in any business. The ideal way to build credibility and trust with your motivated land sellers is by making your website feel like you’re a real person. There is an “About Us” page already created for you that you can customize if you want to, plus we’ve integrated some trust symbols into your websites to help increase trust on your pages.
One of the big reasons our members LOVE Carrot so much is the quality and effectiveness of our website content and how much time they save by just leveraging our content and our writers rather than spending a painful amount of hours writing the content for their own website.
NOTE: All of our website content is Copyright Protected and for the use ONLY for active Carrot members, and may not be copied in all or part on another website. Any Copyright infringements will be taken seriously. We appreciate you being cool and playing by the rules.
The SEO
Just like our other websites, we’ve done the search engine keyword research to find out what motivated land sellers are actually typing into Google. Then, we’ve built our content and pages around those phrases that people are already looking for.
Plus, we make this even easier for SEO novices to help your content rank higher with our Carrot “SEO Assistant.” If you can read a traffic signal, you can optimize your pages for the search engines with our SEO tools.
The Lead Capture Process
One thing we’ve discovered in our years of lead generation experience (over 1,000,000 real estate industry leads and counting) is that the majority of your website visitors won’t convert (give you their information) immediately because they need a bit more information to trust you and give you their information.
Because of this, we’ve built in multiple places for your website visitors to engage in the content and convert as a lead when they’re ready.
And like all of the pages we create, they’re all based on the continual testing we’re doing to increase the effectiveness of our pages in converting website visitors into leads.
How To Launch Your Own Land Seller Websites To Attract Motivated Sellers With Carrot
If you’re a Carrot member, you can get your own Land website up and live in a few seconds.
Select the new “Land Seller” website in the “Create A Website” list.
Name your site and click “Create Your Site”.
That’s it!
Now you can log in and customize your website, attach a domain to it if you want, and get to work!
Not An Carrot Member Yet? Join Below!
If you’re not a Carrot member but want to leverage our tools, our system, our marketing knowledge, and our support to help you generate more leads to your real estate business… awesome! Simply take a demo or click the link below to get started!
A great real estate agent website design can help you form a good impression on prospective clients. It can also help you nurture your leads and get more deals.
Studies show that 90% of homebuyers use the internet during their journey to buy a home. Therefore, it is essential to provide a good user experience and help your website visitors easy access and navigate your website.
Currently, there are 1,576,668 NAR members, so we all know there are millions of agents packed into the clutter.
As The Balance points out, “20% of agents do 80% of the business.”
Of course, that isn’t surprising. When someone uses an agent once, they aren’t very likely to change. 70% of house sellers, for instance, said that they’d use the same real estate agent again in the future.
This means real estate agents that get the business first keep the business.
But how do you ensure you get to the client before the competition?
Two words: the Internet.
Why Do You Need a Real Estate Agent Website?
It’s easy to think that you don’t need a website. You might have been in business for years and have had some success.
But that doesn’t mean you should limit your marketing strategies to offline exclusively.
In particular, every real estate agent needs a website for some reasons.
Online marketing will save you time and money during the lead-generation process.
SEO leads (Search Engine Optimization) tend to be higher quality because they’re inbound leads – when your prospects come looking for you rather than looking for them.
Online and offline marketing strategies work best together. Our highest-performing members at Carrot use both in harmony rather than one in exclusion.
Build your authority and credibility. Your market has dozens of other agents, so you must stand out from the clutter. Having a high-performance, personally optimized website can get you there.
So, you know that you need a website for your real estate agent business, but you might be new to online marketing with a website.
There are so many options and low-end platforms that you’re not exactly sure what you need for your real estate agent website.
So let’s dive in!
Real Estate Agent Website Design
As mentioned above, 90% of homebuyers use the internet during their buying journey.
And that makes sense. MLS browsing options, virtual tours, and housing photography make the web the perfect place to browse for homes and even choose which agent to work with.
The best real estate agent websites build authority, load fast, are SEO optimized, and communicate with visitors. Those are just a few things you must consider when designing your website or using a real estate agent website template.
But before diving into the nitty-gritty, let’s review a few real estate agent websites: non-Carrot and Carrot.
First, Sheerin Feizi.
Besides being a beautiful website, a few noteworthy things about Sheerin Feizi make it stand out.
The “Quick Search” option is most noteworthy at the top of the page.
When people visit your real estate agent website, they only want to do one of two things.
Browse listings.
Get to know you as an agent to determine whether they want to work with you.
Ideally, you want to let them do both of those things easily. And in the case of Sheerin Feizi, the “Quick Search” bar allows visitors to dive right into browsing through listings.
So too, does Sheerin Feizi’s “Featured Properties” section closer to the bottom of the page.
Scroll down a little bit further, and, as you’ll notice, Sheerin Feizi then aims to support the visitor’s second potential goal: to learn about the real estate agent.
Take Townsend Realty Group as another example of a real estate agent website that caters to visitors who want to learn about the agent or browse through listings.
You’ll notice a “Meet Us” button below for visitors seeking to sell or buy a house.
Townsend Realty Group encourages listing browsers, house sellers, and agent vetters to go straight where they want.
The best thing your website can do to help visitors is… well, get out of the way.
People who visit your website usually know what they want to do. And the faster you let them do that, the better.
Like Sheerin Feizi from the previous example, Townsend also builds credibility and authority with their “Meet Us” page.
Again, the website is accomplishing just a couple of simple goals.
When people want to browse listings, let them.
When people want to learn why they should work with you, guide them.
Mostly from conversion tests we’ve run here at Carrot, but partly as inspiration from the best in the business, we create real estate agent websites that accomplish those simple goals.
The benefit is that you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to design a website and don’t have to try to create one yourself.
As you can see from the above image, this website follows a similar pattern to those we looked at earlier.
First, it builds rapport with visitors by saying, “Roseburg’s #1 Independent Real Estate Brokerage.”
Then, it allows people to easily choose whether to buy, sell, or learn more about G.Stiles.
Finally, the page finishes with trust-building testimonials as proof that the visitor should work with G.Stiles and a bio that exudes professionalism and friendliness — two sought-after attributes of any real estate agent.
The point?
Your website needs to allow people to do two simple things:
Search listings.
Decide whether they trust you.
You can, of course, create your website.
Or… we can do it for you. The choice is yours, but we’d love to work with you if you think it fits.
7 Real Estate Agent Website Design Elements You Need To Dominate The Competition
Now, we’ll discuss seven things you can do — Carrot member or not — to help your website perform as you want.
1. Build Credibility The Moment Someone Lands On Your Website
Buying a house is one of the biggest decisions that people make in their life. People want to work with someone they can trust.
A study by Trulia revealed that people consider honesty and credibility among the most important factors when choosing a real estate agent to work with.
Here are three ways to immediately prove to visitors that you are trustworthy.
Video Content
Authentic Photos
Compelling Testimonials
Video Content
Nothing builds credibility quite like video.
Not only does it prove that there’s a real person behind the website, but it also is a remarkable way to engage new audiences.
Publish a video on your homepage that talks a bit about who you are and why people can trust you. Of course, don’t say, “This is why you should trust me.”
Instead, build rapport with your audience by talking about some of your accomplishments, why you love helping people, and how you got into the real estate industry in the first place.
What is your end goal? Make them feel good about choosing to work with you.
Homes By Krista — a real estate group in Brentwood, California — does this on their website.
Here’s the actual video so that you can watch it for yourself.
Try to keep it under five minutes — people have terrible attention spans — and, ideally, make it as short as possible without losing quality.
You want to convince people you’re their area’s best real estate agent. But you want to do that as quickly as possible.
Authentic Photos
People don’t just love videos. They also love photos.
And, generally speaking, the more authentic the photos, the better.
What do I mean by authentic?
Well, authenticity comes in many different forms. You might, for example, publish a photo of yourself in the middle of the job. Or you might take a picture of a real customer signing real papers.
Those photos don’t just communicate that you know what you’re doing (which builds trust), but they communicate that you’re a hard worker and people like you.
Here’s an example of this from G.Stiles.
And another example. Here, G.Stiles puts their team mission over a personable photo of the people in the group.
Remember this: when taking photos, authenticity beats fakery every single time.
Of course, there’s a balance. You don’t want to freak people out with a photo of you just getting out of bed. But you do want to come across as friendly and professional. Above all, though, you want to come across as a human.
For that reason, avoid stock photos at all costs.
Compelling Testimonials
Before people work with you, they want to know that others have worked with you and been remarkably satisfied with your service.
That gives prospects the confidence they need to give you a call or opt-in to your online form.
Testimonials are the best way to give them that confidence.
As well as how Homes By Krista does it with a video testimonial…
If you’re looking for a real estate agent, you can trust to help you make one of the biggest decisions of your life; those testimonials work wonders for building credibility.
In effect, they say, “All these people love me. You will too.”
How, though, do you get great testimonials?
Well, here are six questions to ask your testimonials:
What obstacle would have prevented you from buying/selling your home?
What did you find as a result of working with you?
What specific feature did you like most about your service?
What are the three other benefits of the buying/selling process?
Would you recommend my real estate services to others? If so, why?
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Asking those questions will help you land remarkable testimonials.
However, consider including more than just the testimonial on your website.
You won’t always be able to find each of these elements, but when you can, add them.
A picture of the person who gave the testimonial — Check Facebook or other social media platforms. Maybe even check your email if you conversed with the person in your inbox.
First and last name, whenever possible — Don’t do things like “Lucas J.” or “Samantha G.” if you can avoid it. And definitely, don’t just use first names.
The person’s profession — Add a quick one-line bio about who they are and what they do. Maybe even hyperlink this to their website to add another layer of realism.
For example, we have most of these elements on our website testimonials.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself,
People should just trust my testimonials without all of that extra effort.
Unfortunately, though, people are wary of trusting anything online. As you already know, there are a lot of liars in the digital space, and they ruin the game for the rest of us.
You must add extra elements (Image, bio, first and last name) to your testimonial to show people you are trustworthy.
2. Increase The Speed Of Your Website
You want to design a website that destroys the competition.
In terms of page speed, that means a couple of things.
First off, if your website is too slow, it’s easier (and faster) for visitors to exit your URL and go somewhere else.
You don’t want people to do that.
But there’s another problem with slow load speeds. It not only surges your website’s bounce rate but also hurts your Google rankings.
If you want to design your website, do these things to increase your load speed.
Optimize images.
Clean up code.
Use fewer plugins on your site.
Reduce the number of redirects you’re using.
Minimize HTTP requests.
Reduce server response time.
3. Use Real Estate Agent Website Builder With IDX
Once, prospective homebuyers had to jump around to different listings to browse through houses.
Or, they had to find a cohesive MLS website that delivered all the listings simultaneously.
However, Internet Data Exchange (IDX) is changing how homebuyers browse through listings.
Instead of jumping from website to website, visitors can view listings natively on your website with IDX. This further means that they don’t have to leave your URL to browse through houses.
The best part is that you don’t have to do anything to update these listings. With IDX, they update automatically.
Of course, IDX integration is more of a maintenance strategy — since other real estate agent websites have it, you should too. Still, most people search for listings on Zillow or Realtor.com.
It encourages people to browse around your website’s listing options instead of going elsewhere to do so.
It gives you a way to encourage email list opt-ins. With IDX, you can offer email updates about recent listings relevant to their preferences.
It also allows you to choose properties to feature on your website easily. With a pool of automatically uploaded properties, you’re just a few clicks away from featuring ones you think will sell.
With IDX, you won’t only stay in line with the competition; you’ll get ahead by featuring remarkable properties, growing your email list, and encouraging people to browse your website instead of bouncing.
4. Leverage A Design That’s Built To Convert
When people land on your real estate website, you don’t just want them to browse, and you don’t just want them to trust you.
Here are two things you can do to build that website.
Mobile Optimization
The Buying Process
Mobile Optimization For Real Estate Agent Websites
The average American owns 3.6 internet-connected devices. And 36% of Americans have a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
This means that people don’t just browse your website on their laptops; they do it on their phones.
Why is this important?
Because if your website doesn’t adapt to the device people use to browse, they will have difficulty navigating your website, get frustrated, and leave.
Over 60% of Carrot’s leads are monthly from mobile devices.
This is why we’re so intentional about making our member’s websites mobile-friendly.
Just paste your website and click “Test URL” and you’ll see the results and mobile screenshot on the right.
If your website isn’t mobile responsive, it needs to be.
The Buying Process
When someone visits your website, where do they look first?
It’s an important question to ask and a difficult question to answer. Where people look can impact how many leads you generate and how many of those leads you convert.
Of course, everyone will look in slightly different places. But, by and large, we here at Carrot have found a system to the madness.
In fact, for our real estate investor websites, we found that people go through these stages.
Problem aware
Solution aware
Vetting/verifying
Decision
Testimonial
And when people visit investor websites, they either want to sell their house as fast as possible or learn about the investor before working with them.
Which is exactly in line with how we’ve designed our real estate agent websites.
As you can see in the screenshot below, we help the eye travel from the most important CTA — “Homes For Sale” — to easy ways to learn more about the agent and what they offer — “New Construction,” “Our Reviews,” “Compare,” “Areas,” “Our Team,” and “Resources.”
And that system isn’t just hot air and mirrors. Instead, it’s based on vigorous conversion and heatmap testing at Carrot.
For instance, here’s proof that the “Meet the Team” section is important.
And similar proof about the “Featured Listings” tab.
Then, we cater to the immediate needs of the visitor.
And finally, we allow people to navigate where they want to go easily.
You’re welcome to use the same system on your website.
Remember, since it’s your website, it’s your job to guide the visitor. Think about it like having a guest over to your house. You wouldn’t invite someone into your house without telling them where to hang their jacket, take a seat, or get a drink of water.
Your website should follow similar rules.
When someone visits, show them where to go to do what they want. Then, more people will convert, and fewer people will bounce.
5. Consider Using This Real Estate Agent Website Template
Knowing where to start when designing your real estate agent website can be a real pain.
Often, having a tried-and-true template to work from isn’t just easier but more cost-effective. Therefore, I will walk you through how our templates at Carrot flow.
You are, of course, welcome to design your website that follows a similar flow. Otherwise, we’d love to work with you.
When someone first lands on your website, they should see a quick explanation about what you do and why you’re awesome. At the top of every real estate agent Carrot website, we encourage putting words to those two things.
Then, we give you a place for featured properties so that people who want to look at houses easily can.
From there, the rest of the homepage should work to build credibility around your real estate business. This is why our Carrot members use testimonials…
And descriptions like this…
Put more, your homepage should flow similarly to this:
Briefly tell people what you do and why you’re awesome.
Give them a simple method for taking action.
Explain in more detail why you’re awesome (testimonials).
Finish with a CTA.
6. Streamline The Real Estate Lead Generation Process
Yes. Your website needs to convert.
But your website’s management system should allow you to streamline the lead generation and follow-up process easily. Here are two ways that you can make that happen.
Use Notifications
The back end of your website needs a system to send notifications when you generate a lead.
After all, the faster you follow up with prospects, the better.
Consider that salespeople who contact a prospect within one hour of generating the lead are seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with the prospect.
Sadly, only 37% of companies respond within an hour. This is probably why 8% of salespeople land 80% of the deals.
Don’t be in that 63%.
With notifications, you can follow up within the hour and give yourself the best chances of turning a lead into a deal.
If you’re a Carrot member, you can go to your website dashboard, click “Forms” and then “SMS Notifications.”
Then click “Add New.”
Finally, select a form, enter your phone number, and choose which information you want the notification system to send you when you receive a new lead.
You don’t have to check your website for leads constantly. Instead, the software will notify you when you generate a lead, and you can contact them immediately.
Which means you have a better chance of landing the deal.
Create Genuinely Helpful Content
In the real estate world today, many people are putting out a lot of content.
But you don’t want to be another blind content machine. Instead, you want to create content that helps people make meaningful decisions.
Why?
Because creating genuinely helpful content builds rapport with the people who visit your website. If you help them, they’ll probably want to work with you when the time is right.
Remember, you’re trying to show your audience you know your stuff. But you don’t want to say so outright. You want to build a relationship with your audience and prove they can trust you by creating content that centers around their concerns.
Consider content like this, for instance.
It might sound counterintuitive, but the more you help your audience (genuinely), the more they’ll trust you and the more willing they will work with you in the future.
Your content needs to build a trusting relationship between yourself and your prospects. With that, you’ll generate more leads than you would otherwise.
7. Design A Real Estate Landing Page For Each Location
Here’s what you don’t want to happen. You don’t want people to navigate your website and leave because they don’t think you manage deals in a specific location… when you do.
Therefore, your website needs multiple landing pages to dominate the competition if you work in multiple locations.
Usually, when people search for real estate agents, they search based on their location, such as buying a house in Acworth, Georgia.
And if you want to rank on that page, you need a dedicated landing page for each city you operate in.
One location page might look like this:
This will help your SEO results — making your real estate website rank for high-commitment searches. But it will also ensure that when someone searches and finds your website, they won’t leave because they’re confused about where you help buy and sell houses.
At Carrot, we offer our customers an easy location landing page feature.
We allow our customers to quickly create multiple landing pages that look identical, except for the location they advertise.
This ensures that you never miss out on a lead for such a silly reason as not marketing the correct location to each prospect.
Conclusion
In reality, 20% of real estate agents do 80% of the business.
This also means that 80% of real estate agents do just 20% of the business.
You want to land in the former category. But to do that, you will need a website that drives leads, converts visitors, outranks the competition, loads quickly with IDX integration and has location-based landing pages.
At Carrot, we help thousands of investors and agents generate leads and build their businesses monthly.
And we love it.
If you want to focus on building your business and leave website design up to us, consider working with us.
If you want to design your website, the same rules apply. Use this as your guide to creating a website that ranks in Google, drives passive traffic, and generates leads.
The best real estate websites for agents offer the ability to build lead-generating consistency, financial predictability, & growth-hacking momentum for your real estate business.
We’ve seen countless Agents use websites to boost their branding and credibility, increase website traffic, and capture qualified leads.
You might be looking for a real estate website provider, or could be a current Carrot member who’s exploring ways to use the platform, I reviewed some of the best real estate agent websites, some powered by Carrot, and found 10 noteworthy trends that can increase your online lead generation.
And keeping up with those massive changes can be difficult. In today’s real estate world, you don’t just need a website, you need one of the best websites.
Since all of your competition is online, just being online isn’t enough.
You need to stand apart from the hundreds of thousands of results that Google generates with any given search and you need to have a website that pulls leads and converts visitors.
Of course, that’s easier said than done.
Here they are…
10 Things The Best Real Estate Agent Websites Have in Common
The reason is simple. If people don’t have to leave your website to view listings, they will spend more time on your domain. This means that when they find a house they love, they’ll contact you instead of the competition (because they’re on your website already).
This is what IDX looks like in action on one of our Carrot members’ websites.
Simple and informative. Townsend Realty Group uses a real estate website designed by the Carrot team. Their website showcases the company’s well-designed logo, along with several engaging property images from the company’s catalog of listings via IDX.
With IDX, visitors can search for houses natively on your website rather than having to leave and go to Zillow or Realtor.com.
And the more time people spend on your website, getting to know you and your business, the better they’ll remember you when they’re reading to buy a house.
However, no matter how good the IDX on your real estate website, people still go to third-party listing websites at some point.
Zillow, for example, has 160 million monthly users. 50% of visitors to Zillow are planning to buy or sell a home. And there are even two million real estate professionals listed on Zillow.
You can’t compete with that.
Still, though, IDX is worth having because some people will stay on your website to browse listings.
The G Team are active agents in Roseburg, Oregon. They offer innovative solutions to address their audiences. Rather than only having bulk listings and content for their properties, the G Team has created specific pages for their niche audiences.
Here is an example of how they target North Umpqua River Homes with a specific page as well as specific content.
The G Team offers another reason that you should consider using IDX.
Namely, because it allows you to easily choose featured properties for your front page.
With IDX, you don’t just give visitors the ability to search your website for homes, you create a simple system for featuring homes that you think will sell quickly and with a high profit margin.
All you have to do is go to the pool of IDX-generated listings and select the ones you want to feature.
And as you probably know, no home sells better than a featured home.
2. High-quality Pictures And Videos
As I looked through some of the top real estate agent websites on the Internet, I couldn’t help but notice that each had stunning visuals.
As it turns out, real estate website design and professional photography are a match made in heaven.
If you want people to buy a house, then you have to make it look good.
And one of the best ways to do that is by using remarkable videos and photos for your house listings.
In fact, according to one study, listings with professional photographs saw 139% more clicks and sold for anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000 more than expected.
Really, that’s no surprise.
When a house looks beautiful, people want to buy it. Homebuyers spend 60% of their time looking at listing photos and homes with high-quality photos receive a 47% larger asking price per square foot than homes without high-quality photos.
Even if you pay a photographer $500 or $1,000 to take photos of the house, that investment is well worth it.
3. Compelling House Descriptions
Above all, you’re a salesperson.
Your job is to sell houses to people who want to buy a home in your area. And you want them to buy from you whether your relationship started offline… or online.
For that reason, the top real estate agent websites have remarkable, emotionally charged, enthralling descriptions of properties.
They don’t just put something like, “Hey. Here’s a house for sale. It’s nice. Buy it.”
Instead, they use powerful language and compelling… well, sales copy.
For the first example, I’ll use one of Carrot’s Concierge real estate website service websites, Krista Mashore and her team have built an authoritative website for home buyers and sellers in and around Brentwood, California. Her website is full of useful local content, including an informational blog and community pages for each of the areas in her market.
Krista uses a very detailed description of her properties…
See how the description evokes an emotional response with words and phrases like “PRIVATE FEEL,” “low maintenance tropical landscaping,” and “NO rear neighbors”?
You want to do the same thing with your descriptions. Here’s another example from the same website.
This illustrates an important point. When writing the description for a home on your website, your primary goal isn’t to give all the specs or drown people in detail.
You want to flatter them. You want them to feel as though they’ve found the best house on the market and they would be silly to pass it up.
“When writing your listing description it is important to mention the qualities of the property that stands out over and above the competition. For example, if all the competing homes have a two car garage and yours has a three car, this is something you would want to emphasize.”
In other words, point out the good and don’t mention the bad — at least, not yet.
There will come a time when you have to mention problems with the house, but that time is not right now. First, you want people to fall in love with the property. Then, and only then, will they forgive its flaws.
Finally, if you really want to make your product description shine, consider this study by Zillow.
In the research, Zillow observed over 24,000 homes sold and found that these 15 words were within the descriptions of homes that sold for more than expected.
On the left is the word analyzed and on the right is the average percentage increase of what the home sold for (relative to what realtors expected it to sell for).
Luxurious — +8.2%
Captivating — +6.5%
Impeccable — +5.9%
Stainless — +5%
Basketball — +4.5%
Landscaped — +4.2%
Granite — +1% – 4%
Pergola — +4%
Remodel — + about 2%
Beautiful — +2.3%
Gentle — +2.3%
Spotless — +2%
Tile — +2%
Upgraded — +1.8%
Updated — +0.8%
When appropriate, consider tossing some of these words into your descriptions to give them a better conversion rate and a wider profit margin.
4. Easy-to-access Contact Information
It might seem like an overly simplistic element to your real estate agent website, but the trend is undeniable:
The best real estate websites for agents make it easy to contact the broker.
This element on your website is so crucial that I couldn’t avoid mentioning it.
All of the best real estate agents are doing it. Let’s take a look at the next Agent Carrot website before looking deeper into their contact call-to-action.
For the Kelly Kingston team, impact begins with their company logo: the K built into the roofline and chimney silhouette send a strong message about what they specialize in. Their area pages within the website’s main navigation menu expand on their theme by drilling down listings in their target areas of Oklahoma City, Midwest City, Bethany, Yukon, and Edmond.
Kelly Kingston Homes makes it easy for visitors to find different options to contact them from the homepage…
How about that 61% of internet users won’t return to a website if they had trouble accessing it on their phone — and that 40% of those frustrated visitors go to a competitor’s website instead?
If you didn’t, now you do.
Clearly, mobile browsing isn’t a thing of the future, it’s a thing of right now.
This means that your website absolutely must be mobile-flexible.
The best real estate agent website templates on the internet aren’t mobile-responsive because they’re ahead of the times; they’re mobile-responsive because they’re in line with the times.
In other words, mobile-responsive is now par for the course.
If you’re not sure whether your own website is mobile responsive or not, you can use Carrot’s mobile responsive tool to find out.
Just type in the URL of your website and click “Start Test.”
On the left side, you’ll see what your website looks like on an iPhone, and on the right side, you’ll see what your website looks like on an iPad.
If it doesn’t adapt to each device, you desperately need a new website.
All of Carrot’s real estate agent and investor websites are automatically mobile-responsive.
This is important for several reasons.
It helps your rankings in Google (because Google hates ranking un-mobile-friendly websites), makes visitors more comfortable with browsing your page on their smartphone, and even increases your conversion rate — conversion rates on mobile are 64% higher than on desktop.
If your website isn’t mobile-responsive, then you need to fix it as soon as possible.
6. Have Clear CTAs
Imagine this.
Someone visits your website and browses through a few house listings. They find one they love and they want to visit the house in person because they’re considering buying it.
But there’s a problem.
They can’t figure out where to go on your website to make that happen.
It might seem like a silly and unlikely situation — but rest assured, it happens.
When real estate agents design a website with unclear navigation, people leave before they even spend thirty seconds trying to figure out where to go next.
In fact, the average human attention span has been compared to that of a goldfish.
For that reason, the best real estate agent websites guide the visitor with clear and easy-to-find CTAs.
Buttons like this…
And this…
But, you’re probably wondering, what makes those buttons so clickable?
Two things.
Copy clarity
Visual clarity
First, let’s consider copy clarity.
What do I mean by “copy clarity”?
I mean having button text that is clear — button text that answers the question, “What happens when I click this?”
When HubSpot tested the button copy on one of their own CTAs, for instance, they found that “See demo” outperformed “Test it out” by a whopping 82% (from 2.47% conversion rate to 4.49%).
Why?
Because no one knows what “Test it out” means — so fewer people are going to click it. “See demo,” on the other hand, is clear. I know what’s going to happen when I click that button and thus I’m more willing to click it.
In other words, clarity converts.
And not just in terms of button copy, also in terms of button color (or visual clarity).
Consider, as a bad example, if you were trying to buy something from this website. Where would you click?
Yeah… I’m not sure either.
Nothing immediately stands out that I should click and there are so many different things going on that I have no idea where to start.
The point is, the best websites for real estate agents make it blatantly clear what they want visitors to do.
And button color is a great way to add visual CTA clarity to your website.
HubSpot did another study where they analyzed the color of a CTA. In this study, the red button converted visitors 21% more than the green button.
Why?
Well, take a moment to look at the green button example. How much other green stuff is on the page?
As you can see, there’s enough green on the page for the button color to blend in. Sure, you can still see where you’re supposed to click. But it doesn’t immediately pop out.
Now consider the example with the red button.
Clearly, the red button immediately demands your attention.
But not because red is better than green. In this case, the red button draws your attention better because there’s very little other red content on the page. This means that you immediately notice the big red button.
The green button, on the other hand, blends in and is less visually outstanding.
The best real estate websites for agents have clear CTAs that stand out visually. That’s a trend you should consider mimicking.
7. Write The Perfect “About” Page
It seems like a no-brainer. Still, some real estate agents forget to include an “About” page on their website.
However, as you might’ve guessed, the best in the business don’t.
Here’s one example from Kelly Kingston Homes…
And another example from Krista Mashore…
That similarity among the best real estate websites for agents is no accident.
Here’s a heatmap test we ran on an agent website, which shows just how many people are clicking the “Meet The Team” tab.
And on our website, people aren’t making one of the biggest buying decisions of their life: purchasing a home.
On your website, they are. Imagine how much more important the “About” page is when visitors are trying to make a decision of that magnitude.
Much bigger.
People want to know who they are working with — and when they’re buying a house, they really want to know.
In fact, our own research revealed that the “About” tab is the third most-clicked page on real estate websites, regardless of the type of realtor.
This means that you should take a little extra time to think through your “About” page and make sure it’s a shining illustration of your company values and industry expertise.
One Carrot client — The G Team — puts their company vision, for instance, at the very top of their “About” page.
Above all else, The G Team wants to build trust with the people who visit their website.
You want to do the same.
And since people are visiting your “About” page regularly, it’s a great place to do that.
8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The best real estate agent websites are the ones that show up first in Google under a relevant search.
In fact, you could argue that Google results are the biggest indicator of a great real estate agent website.
If it ranks in Google under relevant keywords, then more people click it, visit it, and, more than likely, buy from it.
Just consider that 44% of home buyers purchase a home that they found online or that 93% of all online experiences start with a search engine.
However, Google offers a lot of competition, even for the little town of Roseburg, Oregon — 766,000 results, to be exact.
With all that online competition, it’s probably no surprise to find out that 72% of real estate agents are unsatisfied with how many leads their website generates.
If you’re in that category of discouraged real estate agents, it’s alright. At Carrot, we understand.
We help tons of our client’s websites rank in Google. In fact, it’s part of every single package we offer. If you want a website that generates passive traffic consistently and pulls in leads, give us a call — we’d love to help you out.
And if you’re unsure about whether you should work with us, consider that if you type “buying farmland in Roseburg Oregon” into Google, the top-ranking result is — you guessed it! — a Carrot customer website.
There are tons of different pieces to SEO, but one of the ways that we help our clients rank in Google is by encouraging them to put their target keywords front and center on their website.
Like this, for example.
Why is this so important?
Because Google uses the title of each page on your website to determine what the page is about. If you put the topic at the… well, top, then Google will have an easier time knowing where to rank your website.
When prospects land on your website, there’s one thing that you need to do above all else: build trust.
If the person lands on your website and doesn’t trust you or, worse, thinks you’re a spammer, there’s no way they’re going to work with you.
In fact, the most important factor when choosing a real estate agent is honesty and credibility.
And one of the best ways to build trust with your audience is by proving to them that you know what you’re talking about.
How can you prove you know what you’re talking about?
By starting a blog and posting consistently.
If you do, you’re in good company.
Here’s G.Stiles…
And Krista Mashore…
The point is, a blog on your website can work wonders to build trust and credibility. It’s an easy addition to your website that can make a massive difference. You can also consider creating real estate infographics rather than blog posts or videos if you’d prefer.
What, though, if you don’t know what your content should discuss?
No problem. Simply ask yourself this: What are the most common questions that your prospects and customers ask you?
10. Glowing Testimonials, Case Studies, And Reviews
The final thing that the best real estate websites for agents have in common is glowing testimonials, case studies, and reviews.
Remember, your number one goal is to build trust with the people who visit your website.
In many cases, that alone will determine whether people work with you or not: do they trust you?
And perhaps there’s no better way to build immediate trust than with testimonials, case studies, and reviews.
In fact, 88% of people trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations from friends.
This is why the best in the business regularly use these elements.
Here’s one from Ellen Pool…
And Krista Mashore…
And The G Team…
Just how important are these reviews and customer-based ravings?
Well, one study found that brands that inspire highly emotional experiences — for which case studies are remarkable — see three times more word-of-mouth than their feeling-less counterparts.
People trust reviews and testimonials inspire customers to share your business with their friends.
Copyblogger recommends asking these questions of happy customers to collect remarkable testimonials:
What was the obstacle that would have prevented you from buying this product?
What did you find as a result of buying this product?
What specific feature did you like most about this product?
What are three other benefits of this product?
Would you recommend this product? If so, why?
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Conclusion
Today, it’s not enough to have a website. You need to have one of the best real estate agent websites in the digital world — or, at least, in your local area.
If you don’t have a great website, then you won’t rank in Google, people won’t trust you, and you will probably lose leads.
On the other hand, if you use a website with IDX integration, high-quality visuals, compelling listing descriptions, mobile-responsive design, clear CTAs, a thorough “About” page, SEO, a trust-building blog, and glowing testimonials, then you’ll not just drive deals through your website, you’ll be among the best in the business.
How’s the old adage go? “If you want to be the best, copy the best.”
Every year, the real estate market changes. And sometimes, it changes faster than you thought it was going to. 20 years ago, agents and investors didn’t have real estate websites — they relied on the talk of the town and coffee-shop conversations to generate business.
Of course, that is still partly true today, but with a twist: If you’re not online … then you’re behind the curve and you’re likely losing a steady amount of potential business.
Not because you suck at your job, but because people can’t find you where they’re looking: online.
That, though, is just one example of how the real estate industry is changing. That doesn’t mention constantly fluctuating inventory and interest rates or technological advancements (like drones and 3D house walkthroughs).
Clearly, you have a lot to keep track of.
To help, though, here are five real estate market predictions that we here at Carrot and some of the top real estate investors working with us are expecting to see.
1. Inventory Will Increase Slightly
Over the past few years, the U.S. has consistently broken the record for lowest inventory.
For instance, Forbes reports that, in 2010, inventory sat just under one million, at 967,604. The most recent count puts that number at 653,347.
As you already know, that low inventory means you need to be careful with your investments. It drives the cost of homes upward with bidding wars and the number of opportunities downward.
Fortunately, there’s good news on the horizon.
Samantha Sharf, Forbes columnist, continues…
“The general consensus is that inventory will pick up slightly. The biggest reason for this modest optimism is that the current situation is unsustainable. Prices cannot rise faster than wages forever. Plus, life events will eventually force reluctant sellers off the sidelines.”
And she’s not alone in her prediction. Danielle Hale, the chief economist for Realtor.com, says,
“The majority of the year should be challenging for most buyers, but we do expect growth in inventory starting in the fall… We expect the relief to start in the upper tiers, and it will make its way down to the lower tiers.”
The beginning of the year likely won’t see much change, but, by the end of the year, here’s to hoping that inventory starts on an upward slope — even if it’s slight.
[cta offer=”seoagents” color=”red”]
2. Renting Will Become A More Popular Option
With the cost of housing surging in certain areas, we’ll likely see an increase in the portion of people who choose to rent instead of buy.
“In the nation’s top 50 markets, half of the housing stock is now considered overvalued, based on market fundamentals, like income and employment.”
When the price of housing moves upward, more people, generally speaking, look to renting options rather than buying options.
This, of course, depends on your location and requires that you understand the place where you invest. Overall, though, expect renters to flood the market.
Jason Bible, real estate investor in Houston, says that he’s going to try and get his hands on as many rentals as he can this year.
“We buy over 100 houses a year and this year I will buy as many rentals as I can get my hands on. In fact, I am going to buy some of them at 100% retail with a 20% down loan.”
In fact, technological advancements are a big part of what makes keeping up with real estate trends difficult.
Don’t expect those innovations to slow down.
Alex, one of the marketing leads here at Carrot, recently bought a home and he signed practically every document on DocuSign rather than in-person.
Additionally, millennials — one of the first tech-savvy generations — are buying more and more houses each year. By 2025, they are expected to form twenty million new households.
Still, though, about two-thirds of millennials haven’t reached the average home buying age of 32.
So we can expect the millennial home-buying trend to continue through the next few years.
And as you might have guessed, millennials aren’t just comfortable with technology; they prefer it.
This means that we’re going to the rapid adoption of apps and online tool like virtual tours, digital contract signing, and even decentralized house visits.
4. Interest Rates Will Increase By About .25% or .5%
The more that interest rates increase, the fewer people we’ll see buying homes — which would further incentive people to rent instead.
Unfortunately, interest rates are still going to rise this year. However, they probably won’t rise too significantly.
That’s not because they aren’t primed to, however. But, as real estate broker, Richard Haynes, predicts,
“Mortgage rates will rise by 0.25%, and possibly by 0.50% if things get crazy… If rates go higher than that, the Fed will step in and reinvest more principle and buy up mortgages to lower rates and get them under control.”
More than likely, an interest rate increase of .25% or .5% won’t make a remarkable impact on the number of buyers. Of course, that percentage has the potential to cruise higher.
Daniil Kleyman, a real estate developer from Richmond, VA, and owner of RehabValuator, says, “Rates are going up for sure, and probably significantly.”
No one can know exactly what’s going to happen. But rates are going to rise and the federal government will probably step in to balance those rates out once they climb too high.
5. Investors And Agents Will See Greater Competition
Overall, agents and investors have seen remarkable success during the last few years.
The economy has continued on an upward slope and unemployment has steadily decreased, which has encouraged people to spend more on housing.
In the south especially, sales are booming and expected to grow 6% rather than 2.5% — the national average.
Because of that lucrativeness, though, agents and investors will probably see a massive burst of new entrepreneurs entering the space and trying to claim their slice of the pie.
“This will be the year that we see many enter the market for the first time as an investor following the wave of hype of the nationwide real estate cycle.”
That cluttered trend means that you’ll see more competition.
Fortunately, that competition probably won’t be nearly as experienced as you are — that is if you’ve been an investor or agent for quite some time.
Which further means you shouldn’t have much trouble competing.
Still, according to our own data that we pulled from our thousands of Carrot customer spread across the U.S., lead generation is up — meaning the market is hot — but conversion rates are slightly down.
Take sellers, for instance. In past years, the number of online sessions to their websites increased by a whopping 85%. Similarly, they generated 65% more leads.
Their average conversion rate, however, went down by about 10%.
Why?
Well, even though there are lots of opportunities in the real estate industry, there are an increasing amount of people who want a piece of that opportunity.
Which means your prospects have more options than they did last year. And with more people flooding in to claim their slice of the revenue, conversion rates are softening a bit.
It’s also worth mentioning that agents will experience competition from another source. Namely, from technological advancements that threaten to either change or outright destroy their profession.
Online tools like Zillow, Matterport, and Dotloop are working toward doing what Uber did to taxis or Airbnb did to hotels.
They are moving the service of agents online, which has two noteworthy benefits for the consumer.
“Unfortunately, [agents] are on a downtrend. Zillow is finally gonna start taking a small market. But this is again the beginning of the end of Agents. They still have five to seven more good years. Also, flat fee companies are gonna eat a lot of market share.”
It’s unlikely that real estate agents will completely disappear over the next decade, but it’s equally ignorant to assume that nothing will happen to the profession.
Over the coming years, agents might fall into a more advisory role for high-end homes. Or they might become the much-needed experts for first-time homebuyers.
Whatever the case, agents face competition from technology and investors face competition from ambitious entrepreneurs.
What All Of This Means For Agents And Investors
Okay. Now you know what to expect. But what does all of that mean for your real estate business?
How should you be prepared to adapt this year and in the years to come?
Well, the good news is that the majority of real estate leaders expect this year and next to be phenomenal. So, despite any discouragement, you might feel toward upcoming trends, the overall picture is promising — for agents and investors alike.
What is important to recognize, however, is that, as the real estate market becomes increasingly crowded, you need to stand out from that clutter.
If your website doesn’t convert or build credibility like it should, or if it doesn’t load fast enough to rank in Google, or demand attention, then you’ll have little chance of success in 2020 and beyond.
At Carrot, we help beginner and top-level investors and agents drive traffic, pull leads, and land deals.
We encourage our customers to use video testimonials like this one from Nexus Homebuyers…
And as you can see, below, Nexus Homebuyers doesn’t stop with one.
Remember, this is the first thing that people see when visiting your page. Use it to build credibility and trust as fast as you can.
More than likely, the person landing on your website has a few other tabs open as well — browsing through their options.
You need to stand out as the best and most friendly.
For investors and agents, alike, having a “How it works” page can help to eliminate your prospect’s fears and make them more comfortable with giving you a call.
If you want to learn more about how Carrot can help you stand apart from the rest of the crowd, you can go here and read all about it (we’d love to work with you :-) ).
“This means that we need to: (1) make sure we have enough cash on the sideline to capitalize on the market when it does change, (2) do less — or no — long-term projects so that we don’t get caught in the market shift, and (3) wholesale more and close on less, so that we are taking on less risk.”
For the changing market, that’s advice worth taking to heart.
Also, a side-note worth discussing is the current lucrativeness of the real estate coaching industry.
Since so many new agents and investors are entering the real estate scene, those newbies need people to teach them.
If you’re an experienced investor or agent, then you might want to consider leveraging this trend and starting your own online course. This could generate another source of income to supplement your real estate work while not taking a ton of extra time.
Said another way, if you want to get into the real estate coaching world, now’s a perfect time.
Every investor and agent will adapt to the changing real estate environment differently. How you do it is, naturally, your own choice.
Above all else, though,
Build immediate credibility on your website.
Adapt to unexpected shifts in the market.
Avoid long-term projects.
Leverage technology rather than avoiding it.
Real Estate Market Predictions for 2020 and Beyond
Each year brings new developments to the real estate world.
Some of those, you anticipate. Others, you don’t.
But one thing’s for sure. The real estate world will change. And if you’re not ready to adapt to it, then your business will suffer.
If, on the other hand, you build credibility on your website to stand above the cluttered market, consider leveraging rental properties, and utilize technology that can increase your business’ success (like drones and 3D tours), 2020 will be a great year.
Best of luck this year and, please, let us know how it goes and if there’s anything we can do to help you.
And what do you think? Are there any trends we missed? Or do you think any of our predictions are wrong?
Let us know your opinion in the comment section of this article.
Our team grew (again) and continues to be the innovators of our industry
… and more!
Here we go!
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Leads … You’re Crushing It!
You guys made another forceful charge in 2017. With over 270,000 leads coming in this year (when you DON’T count phone call leads… which we can’t track in Google Analytics currently) you’re pulling in more PPC, SEO, and social media online leads as a collective group than any other real estate investor lead generation platform… by far. Keep crushing it!
52% via Mobile Devices
Which States Converted More Leads? Well…
9 Major NEW Features Launched
Carrot Keyword Ranking Tracking
Another Core Value of ours is “Consistent Improvement and Innovation“… and both our members and Carrot continued to push this value. In addition to the features, we released in 2017 to help our clients spend less time hassling and time more time focusing on their business …
New Innovative Features we rolled out in 2017 include (but not limited to)…
Carrot’s VideoPost Feature – Turn Your Videos Into SEO Content In Minutes…
Enjoy :-)
We’re Building a Following for the CarrotCast Podcast
We had many amazing comments about the CarrotCast come through our Awesomeness channel this year. Here’s just a couple …
I’m hooked on CarrotCast! The latest interview with the entrepreneur from Germany… was pure awesomeness. A lot of helpful tips about real estate as well as good advice on balancing family life. Keep up the great work!
Tucker C
P.S. you’ve built a great company, you should be very proud. I listen to your carrotcast pods and really appreciate what you guys do. Nice to have a customer focused company in the industry, and your culture is admirable. Cheers!
William W
It’s awesome because once you know the formula of how to do this, its just do it again and keep going and going and see how you can grow it.
Brian Rockwell
Your first month of online marketing typically is going to be one of your hardest and least productive because you’re really cutting new trail everywhere you go.
Kiley Newbold
I knew from my background that once I did the work, it would keep returning a benefit to me over and over again. Today, I’m reaping the rewards.
David Brown
When you’re confident with whatever it is, you expect the result. You’re not hoping for it – you expect it. So you can say “hey, here’s what we’re going to do and you can just lead.” I think when you’re starting out, your confidence is more like you’re not sure what to do, and I think that is picked up on.
Gary Horton
If you want to stay busy in life but never accomplish anything, then stay busy. But if you really want to accomplish and be productiive, then you need to make that investment and find help.
Adrian Nez
During times when the real estate marketing is going good, don’t lose your focus on the business fundamentals. Feasting and blindly following a business path can lead to destruction.
Trevor Mauch
Anything that’s worth doing is worth sucking at, first. I think that’s a Gary Halbert think that he said. And, you don’t start writing and immediately build an audience. It takes time. I tell everybody, if you won’t write for one then you won’t write for a 1000.
Ryan Fletcher
Over 500 “Doses Of Awesomeness” From Clients
Changing Their Businesses And Lives!
We LOVE those! And those are just the ones we get each week… not counting the hundreds that happen that we never hear about!
The Carrot Support Team sends out an email chat every 45 seconds.
World-Class Net Promoter Score
One of the most effective ways to gauge the happiness of your customers and how good or bad you’re doing with the “Net Promoter Score”. It’s basically a question that asks how likely you are to recommend Carrot to a friend or colleague. With hundreds of responses in 2017 the majority scored us a 9 or 10… leaving us with an impressive NPS of 69.1%.
Now to put that into perspective… here is what some of the most respected companies in the world have scored for their NPS:
As part of our core set of values, we’ll continue to strive in 2018 to make our clients excited, happy, and successful, and to change the way people expect companies to serve them in the future after they experience the service the “Carrot Way”.
We Added Over 1400 New Subscribers and Accumulated Over 114,000 Views and Climbing!
Two Carrot Team Retreats + Growing Our Team…
CarrotCamp 2017!
CarrotCamp was unlike most events. It wasn’t a workshop or seminar, nor was it a retreat. It was an immersive experience where we did a deep dive into the campers world. We unplugged and got out of the office and into nature, and worked with our team to get massive things done to uplevel marketing… all the while building relationships with other high-level real estate entrepreneurs that will hopefully last a lifetime.
Campers Edward Beck, Jeff Milligan, Tang Nguyen, Tim Oppelt, and Kyle Doney discuss what they enjoyed, struggled with, and how Camp benefited them both personally and in their businesses.
This blog post took us 80% LESS time to create than a normal blog post… because we did it with the assistance of Carrot’s new VideoPost tool. See what VideoPost is, and how it can be a game-changer for your content marketing in 2017.
We’re insanely excited to announce a brand new feature. We’ve actually been using this process to cut our content marketing time down by 80%, increase our traffic, and help our clients do the same.
I’m going to walk you through this new feature that we call VideoPost, what it helps you do, and how we came up with this content marketing method to automate and make your life simpler.
Introducing Carrot’s Automatic Video Transcription… VideoPost’s
VideoPost helps you turn simple videos into powerful written content that Google loves in just minutes vs. hours. 3/4 of this blog post was created with our VideoPost feature, saving us over 60 minutes vs. writing manually. Let’s dive in to see how you can start using VideoPost today.
(click to play video, OR read the article below)
VideoPost came about by us trying to solve our own problem a year and a half ago.
As you know, it takes time to sit down and craft content or it takes money to hire it out to have someone else do it. Content and SEO are our number one source of leads here at Carrot, but it’s also the number one source of leads for our Carrot clients.
We know that content marketing is effective in the real estate market, but can we put out great content with less time and energy?
So we asked the question…
How do we make it so it’s so simple and easy that you want to do content every single week?”
Especially when you’re in competitive markets, one of the best ways to crack through that clutter and to gain an advantage is to build credibility and your expertise.
And the best way to do that is through content, except most people don’t have the time to do written content.
VideoPost Simplifies All Of That For You – An Example: G. Stiles Realty
G. Stiles is the largest independent broker in Douglas County, Oregon… and an AgentCarrot client. See how they used VideoPost to streamline their content marketing…
Let’s say you’re in a small town like Roseburg, Oregon. This is actually one of our AgentCarrot client’s G. Stiles, and they were having a tough time with their content marketing strategy as well.
We went to them and we said…
“Hey, go out on site and film a short 3-8 minute video walking people through some information that’s going to help them and be useful for them in that scenario.”
One of their specialties is in farmland and in some other agricultural-type properties, so they went there, filmed the video, and then uploaded it to YouTube.
We then had the video transcribed word for word and made a blog post for them (this was before our VideoPost feature, so it took a bit longer).
Here’s Denny’s Three And A Half Minute “On The Job Content” Video
We Then Turned The Video Into A Content Rich Article That Google Loves
This particular example was long before we created VideoPost to automate the process.
We then manually submitted it to a transcription service, brought it back, copied and pasted it into their blog, bolded a couple of things for readability, separated some of the paragraphs, put a link in there, and then we put a clear call to action at the end of it.
Less than five minutes of editing in total. About 30-45 minutes to submit the video for transcription, pay for it, get it back in a Word document, bring it to their Carrot site, and manually remove the weird formatting that can come from copying and pasting content from Word documents. (again, today, VideoPost automates most of this and brings the process down to less than 5 minutes).
Then we used our SEO tools here in Carrot to make sure it was optimized for search engines for the phrase “buying farmland in Roseburg, Oregon” and all related phrases in the area.
The Results?
Within weeks, this blog post started to climb in the rankings.
As of the time I recorded this video, their blog post from this process is ranking over big websites like LandWatch, and Land and Farm, and Zillow, and LoopNet, and Realtor.com, all from a little piece of short video content.
Now, is this particular search getting tons and tons of searches per month? The answer is of course not, but as a part of a cohesive strategy to really go in there and swarm and dominate your market, you want to be going after the most competitive search phrases of course, but also you want to cast a wider net with these more niched down search phrases.
If you do just one video post per week, over the course of a year that’s going to be 52 new pages on your website to potentially rank in front of your best prospects.
You will cast a wider net out there to grab more searches, build more expertise in your market, become the leading expert in that market to where everyone knows, likes, and trusts because they see your information everywhere they go.
How Do We Automate This And Make It Simpler With VideoPost?
It takes under 3 minutes to create a VideoPost in your Carrot account, then edit it as much or as little as you want (we suggest basic edits to make it visually more easy to read with sub heads, that’s it!). If you’re a Carrot member already simply…
1. Log in to your Carrot website and click “New Post”, then VideoPost…
2. Confirm the transcription purchase and click Start Transcription!
By automating your transcriptions into our VideoPost format, it saves you 15-45 minutes vs. having to manually use transcription services. If you value your time at just $100/hr… that time savings alone is worth $25 – $50 to you. If you value your time higher, your savings are even larger.
The average VideoPost should be 3 – 8 minutes long, meaning a cost of only $3.75 – $10 per content piece. Compare that to $30 – $75 to outsource to a writer, VideoPosts are a huge time savings and direct money savings every time you use it.
3. Within 24 hours (usually within several hours) your VideoPost is complete and ready to publish
Once your VideoPost is complete, with your transcription added, your post created in our VideoPost format (title, intro paragraph, video, transcription, and call to action)… we’ll email you your new post for review and you can then make any edits to the post you want. No more logging into transcription services and copying & pasting transcriptions… that’s a waste of time. VideoPost does it all for you.
How To Get Extra SEO Juice From Your VideoPost
How well Google ranks your VideoPost depends greatly on the content in the video and the small quick tweaks you can make inside of each VideoPost.
To make sure to squeeze all the on-page SEO juice out of this VideoPost here are a few things you can do…
Make sure when you’re recording your video, you know which types of searches you want to go after in Google… then use those words in the video. If you’re going after “Portland Oregon river homes”… you’ll want to make sure to say those words. You have to remember to say the things that you’re showing in your video.
Go through and format the post so it’s nice and easy for a user to read (this will help with bounce rate). No one wants to read a wall of text.
Find some key areas to add <h2> and <h3> tags.
Can you link to other content you have done on your site?
Make sure to include a call to action at the end (how do they contact you if they have questions or want an offer?)
And last… make sure to use our Carrot SEO Tool to dial in the content for a specific search phrase.
Dial in the SEO on your VideoPosts with the Carrot SEO Tool whether you’re an SEO expert or not.
VideoPost vs. Manually Using Transcription Services
When we were doing this process the manual way… we submitted it to a service called Rev.com, then we had to manually do every other step to get the content from Rev.com into our blog editor. This still took us 30-45 minutes to do. Yes, better than 1-2 hours to write an article, but still too long for most people to fit in on a weekly basis.
Now, with the VideoPost feature, this is only going to take you as much time as it does to film your video, log into your Carrot account, paste in a URL, and click a button – we do the rest.
We go out and get the transcription and then notify you when the transcription’s inside of your account ready and formatted in our special “VideoPost” format.
VideoPost Automatically Structures Your Content Flow Properly
Once our system gets the transcription of your video back, we automatically build it into our VideoPost format for you. First, your SEO optimized blog post title, then a short summary of the video, next your video, the transcription, then a simple call to action. All automatic.
This step alone will save you 10-15 minutes. What will you do with that extra time? Get a workout in? Call a prospect and land a deal? Meditate on the day and get clarity? You can do whatever the heck you want while VideoPost does that part of your content creation for you.
How Much Will You Save With VideoPost? And What Can You ADD To Your Marketing Efforts?
VideoPost will enable you to do more content, do more robust content, get your brand, your face, your content in front of your prospects so you build up that expertise with your market.
It’s going to save you hundreds of dollars per month when you just do one blog post per week.
If you do one video post per week, that’s 52 new pages on your website over this next year.
That’s 52 new chances to cast a wider net to get in front of your prospects. Every single time your prospects search different things in your real estate market… like “buying farmland in Roseburg, Oregon”, they’re going to see you over and over again. It’s going to add up in their mind that…
“Man, this person, this company is a really reputable company, they’re an expert.”
Not Sure What To Make Videos About?
That’s the easy part. You’re already creating hours of content every single day… you’re just not documenting it so others can get value from it. But here are some ideas…
On The Job Content – next time you’re out in the field, whip out your cell phone and document the situations you’re in, and answer your prospects questions
Testimonials – ask a recent seller or buyer to allow you to film them and ask them about the process
Case Study– this is similar to a testimonial but maybe you just talk through the process
Market Trends & Updates – find a report online and share your expertise or opinion about it on video
About Us – make a video about how your company was started and who you want to work with
At the end of the day, just be useful and valuable for the people that you can best help. Answer their common questions in videos, educate them on things they’re searching for, and have fun with it!
Now it’s time for you to dig in and launch your first VideoPost!
Already a Carrot client? Sweet! The VideoPost feature is ready to use… just hop into your Carrot account and put it to use!
As you dive in and use VideoPost, please send us feedback on ways we can make it even better. There are things on our roadmap already for adding more power and simplicity to VideoPost, so we’re excited to make this one of the most useful tools in your content marketing arsenal in this next year.
![[NEW] Motivated Land Seller Websites](https://image-cdn.carrot.com/uploads/Featured-Image-71.png)
Land is hot right now. I was talking with one of our Carrot members recently and they’re seeing a really great opportunity to sell land all across the country. So, we worked with them to create a Land Seller website system here at Carrot! Here’s how it works…
Just like our other websites, we’ve done the search engine keyword research to find out what motivated land sellers are actually typing into Google. Then, we’ve built our content and pages around those phrases that people are already looking for.
Every year, the real estate market changes. And sometimes, it changes faster than you thought it was going to. 20 years ago, agents and investors didn’t have 
Samantha Sharf, Forbes columnist, continues…
And she’s not alone in her prediction. 
Jason Bible, real estate investor in Houston, says that he’s going to try and get his hands on as many rentals as he can this year.
That’s not because they aren’t primed to, however. But, as real estate broker, 
Dan Walters from 
Edward Beck from 
“This means that we need to: (1) make sure we have enough cash on the sideline to capitalize on the market when it does change, (2) do less — or no — long-term projects so that we don’t get caught in the market shift, and (3) wholesale more and close on less, so that we are taking on less risk.”
