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The Best Real Estate Websites For Lead Generation Have This Simple Element In Common

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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 I’m not going to splice words, here. This is the trick. (Image Source) 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. Talk about an ROI. 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 … Continued

[NEW] Motivated Land Seller Websites

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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… 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. See for yourself … Investor Land Seller Website Sample The Design 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. Our Carrot real estate websites are built from the ground up based on research and test data to produce great results. PLUS, we’re continually testing elements on our websites to find out what works the best and how website visitors interact on your website (buyers, sellers, private lenders, tenants, etc.). 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 … Continued

7 Real Estate Agent Website Design Must-have Features

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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. Offline real estate marketing is as powerful today as many years ago. Door hangers, open house fliers, and community events are worthy offline real estate lead generation ideas. 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 … Continued

10 Best Real Estate Websites for Agents to Generate Leads

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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. Why? Because starting in 2019, 93% of home buyers started looking for properties by browsing the internet. 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 1. Real Estate Websites with IDX The first is simple but worth mentioning. Real estate agent websites with IDX tend to pull in more traffic, leads, and revenue than their listing-less counterparts. 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). But what exactly is IDX? IDX is a website integration that allows visitors to browse and search for MLS-style listings on your website. The best part, though, is that, with IDX, you don’t have to update your listings manually. IDX will do it for you automatically. It’s low maintenance and crazy effective. This is why we include IDX integration within Carrot’s real estate agent website design. 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 … Continued

5 Real Estate Market Predictions (And What They Mean For The Agent And Investor)

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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. 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. CNBC reports that, “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.” You might want to consider doing the same. 3. Home Buyers Will Be Even More Tech Savvy The real estate market moves fast. But the tech world — driven in large part by social media, a mobile-first culture, and ecommerce trends shaping the future … Continued

EP 81: 2017 Carrot Year-End Review – Looking Back On An Accomplished Year

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As with 2016, 2017 was a banner year here at Carrot and our customers. Here’s a brief snapshot of some great things that happened in 2017. It was an exceptional year for our Carrot members and another year of HUGE growth for our team and company. With the intention of amplifying our members and “Add humanity back to business and help people regain more precious time for the things that matter in life.” Let’s recap some of the cool stuff in this quick post! Watch the CarrotCast 2017 Recap with Trevor and Chris Listen to the CarrotCast 2017 Recap with Trevor and Chris 2017 Carrot Year-End Review Carrot members crushed lead generation  9 awesome new features released The CarrotCast Podcast continues to inspire Customer Success team worked their tails off 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 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)… Advanced marketer plan Keyword ranking tracking Stats V2 Lead manager sessions (merging) App cluster upgrades (hosting) AgentCarrot And here’s one of the coolest/most effective marketing features for our members that we launched just last week … Check It Out: Carrot VideoPost Transcription 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 Top 10 CarrotCast Episodes of 2017 EP 56: [Case Study] From Junior High School Teacher to $80k/Month Investor in a Competitive Market. How Brian Rockwell Uses Patience and Planning for His Success 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 EP 31: Facebook Marketing Tips for Real Estate Investors + Agents w/ Kiley Newbold 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 EP 43: An SEO Master Breaks Down How He Closes 2-3 Real Estate Deals A Month From SEO In A Competitive Market w/ Dave Brown I knew from my background that once I did the work, it would keep returning a benefit to … Continued

NEW: Announcing VideoPost – Turn Your Videos Into SEO Content In Minutes…

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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 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 He recorded it of him on the farmland giving tips and talking about buying farmland in Roseburg, Oregon. 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, … Continued

EP 74: How April Acquired 40+ Units and Flips 10+ Houses Per Year in Pennsylvania w/ April Crossley

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Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below! Sellers will call and say you know I have 10 letters on my desk. So of those 10 letters what makes you stand out? How are you personalizing that letter? And, how are you connecting with that seller like no one else is? That’s what I think about when I create my marketing. April Crossley April Crossley has almost been with Carrot from the beginning. April shares how she has grown her business and made the leap into real estate full-time after leaving a high-paying medical career. She also reveals how she’s now built up her portfolio of rental properties to dozens of properties. Also, find out her direct mail strategy and how she leverages her online real estate investing with Carrot to amplify her business. Listen, enjoy, and check out more CarrotCast episodes at carrotcast.com. Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast Listen in to learn how April combines her online real estate investing with direct mail to acquire 40 + units and 10+ flips per year. 1:15 – Who is April Crossley? Where is her real estate investing business located, and what does her team look like? 4:15 – Breaking down her whiteboard notes and schedule structure. How she stays on task. 8:15 – What was that “aha” moment when she decided to shift from a high-level healthcare career to real estate investing?  14:00 – Viewing risk differently. How April sees risks differently than most people. Also, how long it took for her to feel safe to leave her job? 18:00 – If she had kept her medical license, would she have slipped back into that career? 20:00 – Breaking down her business model. What does her mix of rentals and flips look like right now, and why does she have that strategy? 24:40 – In a competitive market, where is she finding her properties? Online and offline? 25:50 – April’s direct mail strategy. What types of messages does she put in her letters? She gets creative and puts much thought into the message and design. 33:35 – How she builds credibility with her prospects. 38:45 – What made her feel like she needed a web presence? How is having a website helping her investing business? 41:20 – Why building credibility in real estate is so important. 45:10 – What she is seeing from her online leads. Has she seen a difference in quality or closure rate between her online vs. offline leads? 46:45 – How did she get such high SEO rankings, and what was involved in that process? 49:05 – What advice would she give to a student who has decided to start investing but is very hesitant? How would she get them to push through? 51:45 – What advice would she give someone who needs to start a website for online real estate investing? Find more about April Crossley on Facebook @Lazy Girl Real Estate Investing

4 Most Important SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate From a 10,000 Foot View

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There is a lot that goes into search engine optimization, but in actuality, there’s only really a few things that will move the lever for you. The things that will be important and help you get results. That’s what we’re going to focus on in this post. We’re trying to give you the action items and the understanding of how it works and what you need to do to actually get results. Watch the Video or Read the Post Below From a 10,000-foot Point of View, What’s the Most Important Part of SEO? First of all, there are four main parts of SEO. This introduction is all about really getting your head around what SEO is, how it works if you really want to learn the craft of SEO. SEO Ranking Factors for Real Estate #1: URL First of all, you’ve got what’s called the URL factors. The URL is your domain name. That’s things like how long your domain name has been owned by you. How long the website’s been up online. Those are things that matter. The site structure of the website. Is the website set up correctly with your URL? That’s something we’ve already built into Carrot. If you have a website outside of Carrot, that’s something you might be concerned about. There’s a bunch of other things, like site structure, like I said, domain lifespan, search engine friendly URLs. All of that stuff except for domain lifespan is built into Carrot to make your life easier. As your website stays online longer, it ages, and Google likes it. Here’s a screenshot of a website. Klamathfallsapartments.net. That’s the URL. I have owned that domain for several years, and if I was to go up a different website that Google felt was very similar as far as optimized in content, and my URL was owned for let’s say 10 years, and this one was brand new, I would definitely get a boost and some sort of credit for having a domain that has been owned and up and online longer. The longer that you own the domain, the more authority that Google will feel that your website potentially has. That’s one factor to always keep in your mind. That if you just purchased a domain, and you’re just attaching it to a new website, you’re going up against other websites that have been around for longer. We can definitely accelerate the process of ranking well using what we’re going to teach you, but some part of the equation may be that your domain might just need to age a little bit to get that ranking up. Be patient with some of the things. Make sure that you recognize that if you’re not seeing your ranking crack through and you’re doing everything else right, and your website is new, it may be domain age is part of it. You want to keep a nice, simple URL structure. That’s a good thing. Complicated is a bad thing. This is the way that we have it built out in our Carrot websites already, so if you’re a member, you don’t have to worry about this. If you’re not a member, if you have another website platform or you built one yourself, this is something you’re going to want to pay attention to. A simple URL structure will be something like: yoursite.com/sell-my-atlanta-house, or yoursite.com/how-it-works. On the flip side, something that’s complicated that Google doesn’t like is too many forward slashes in your URL: your-site.com/sell/sellingyourhouse/boston That’s just not a very friendly URL. Google doesn’t like that as much. Or having weird characters in your … Continued