Search Results for credibility

The Surprising Correlation Between Google +1’s And Your Real Estate Investor Website Ranking

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Now more and more getting those high rankings in Google for top search phrases as a real estate investor (wholesaler, flipper, rental property owner, note buyer/seller, turn key investment property seller, etc.) can be a HUGE reward… but it isn’t like it used to be to get your real estate investing company’s website ranked high. How SEO Used To Be For Real Estate Investors When I started getting really good at SEO (back in 2007) ranking my own websites high in Google because I didn’t have the money to pay for ads or to pay an SEO firm… it seemed kind of like everyone was gaming the system. All you had to do was stuff a page with the keyword phrase you wanted to rank for (“sell my house fast Portland”, as an example)… go buy a bunch of backlinks from bogus websites pointing to your website… and get your title tag right… and you were on your way to a better ranking. But over the years Google has been making updates to the way they rank our websites in their search results. The most recent big update came in October… that focused on websites building “spammy” backlinks. What these Google updates are doing is making people… including you real estate investors… go back to the basics and really focus on putting together great websites that the visitors actually want to go to and browse around… with great content (not sites with barely any content)… solid credibility… get good quality “votes” from other websites (backlinks) and bumps from social media (Facebook “likes”, Google +1’s, etc.). With that said… since our members generate over 100,000 visits to their websites per month now… and many of our customers have top rankings in some crazy competitive markets using our tools and training… we’ve seen some major correlation to ranking your real estate investing website high in Google to… Correlation Between Google +1 – Why It Matters So Much In Your Google Search Rankings and SEO We first started to see this strong correlation in many of the most competitive markets in the country for highly motivated sellers during our weekly LIVE Coaching Calls with our Pro and Content Pro members (these calls are FREE to Content Pro and Pro members). When a member would send through their website URL during the Coaching Calls and the search phrases they were going for… I’d do a quick “competitive analysis” there on the call and come up with a quick action plan for them to rank well based on what the websites in the top 5 for those phrases tended to have. And more and more this year… the number of Google +1’s a website has (or even just the fact that they had some) has been showing up as a strong signal in the websites that were ranking in the first 5 results in a Google result for sellers, buyers, tenants, etc. As an example… here is one of the top markets for motivated sellers and the top 3 rankings on page 1 vs. the top 3 rankings on page 2 and the Google +1’s they have. Note that since there are hundreds of ranking factors that Google uses… no single factor is the main differentiator. So you’ll see some of the ones ranked high have lots of Google + action… some have low Google + action… but the thing in common is all of the websites in the top 3 in almost every market we’ve searched has some Google + action happening. Top Results Houston, Texas – “we buy houses Houston” #1 – 410 Google +1’s #2 – … Continued

Real Estate SEO Tips: Everything Investors Need to Know in Under 3 Minutes

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Looking for quality Real Estate SEO Tips to help you generate leads? Congrats, you’ve found the best Real Estate SEO Tips out there… at least we think so. :) Search Engine Optimization can be super confusing. There is a ton of information out there, and most of it is contradictory or outdated. This video will help you break down in less than 3 minutes SEO tips for real estate investors. Real Estate SEO Tips (VIDEO): Real Estate Investor SEO Tip #1: Real Estate SEO Tip #2: Real Estate Investors SEO Tip #3: Real Estate Investor SEO Tip #4: Real Estate SEO Tip #5: Real Estate SEO Tip #6: Real Estate SEO Tip #7: Real Estate Investors SEO Tip #8: Want to get started? Get access to a free demo of the InvestorCarrot technology platform! Sign up now!Pssst… Carrot Members, don’t forget to register for this week’s Live Coaching Call <— click to sign up now Want to learn more about content marketing, lead generation and SEO? The majority of search traffic comes from page 1 – these terms are highly competitive, so it’s super-valuable to invest in good SEO in your local market. We can help you. Click to see Brittany’s story of going from zero online leads to multiple leads per day – and how she was able to quit her wage job to become a full-time investor working for herself.

14 Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Strategies

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Don’t make your real estate investor marketing tough on yourself! Just take it one step at a time. Today’s post will show you expected and unexpected strategies for real estate investor lead generation. As the real estate market gets increasingly competitive, the search for quality inventory becomes tougher every day. If you’re like most of our members, you’d prefer to have your phone ring… you don’t want to cold call people from a list, right? I’ve done quite a bit of cold calling over the years myself, and even though I’m pretty good at it, it’s way more work… it’s a whole lot easier to learn solid inbound marketing practices from others, then replicate them for yourself. My goal here of this blog is to take the best practices from others who are some of the best at real estate investor lead generation and bring them to you. Like a butler carrying a silver tray…. I want to serve lead generation techniques to you with style. :) We’ve shown you the not-so-secret formula for lead generation is simple: traffic & conversions. One fun thing to remember: traffic can come from anywhere. If you have a creative, fun or clever way to generate leads: do it! Don’t get stuck in “paralysis by analysis” — trust yourself when you think “hey, this might work.” Unique Strategies for Real Estate Investor Lead Generation The Expected: Google Search Optimize Your Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Websites Craigslist for Real Estate Investors Bandit Signs and Bus Stops Direct Mail Bird Dogging Develop Properties The Unexpected: Bing, Yahoo and “Off-Google” Search Optimize Yelp, Facebook… Everything Local Classifieds Flyers at Laundromats and Non-Profits Door Knocking with a “Down Payment” Turn Your Vendors Into Business Partners Develop Communities Expected: Google Search Definitely one of our favorite places to generate leads! A good chunk of our business comes from folks who search phrases like “real estate investor websites” online… then discover InvestorCarrot. They check us out, learn that we’ve got an awesome reputation… then start learning from us, launch a website, follow our training… and then get great results. Lots of our members are beating their competitors on the top Google keywords in their markets using our sites. It’s super cool to see. Our sites are written around some of the most frequently-searched keywords that generate >80% of the leads in most markets. We teach content marketing to real estate investors — so not only do you learn the top real estate investor keywords we use for our sites, our training teaches you how to generate leads from Google. Unexpected: Bing, Yahoo and “Off-Google” Search While Google gets about 66% of the traffic, they seem to get about 99% of the attention. That leaves almost a third of the traffic out there without much competition. PPC costs are usually way lower on off-brand networks (although the conversion rates are often lower too, it still often ends up being cheaper than Google). Expected: Optimize Your Real Estate Investor Lead Generation Websites You know that you should be optimizing your website, right? Optimization is critical to getting found on search. Fortunately, it’s super easy to optimize your Carrot site… we have the tools built right in, and we can help you rank high in your market. Unexpected: Optimize Yelp, Facebook… Everything Did you know that investors are using pages on other platforms to crowd out their competition in search, too? I’ve seen pages on Yelp, Facebook, YouTube, Zillow, blog sites, and other big platforms used to dominate top keywords in busy markets. This is a really smart strategy because sites like Yelp and Facebook already have a ton of authority, so it’s way … Continued

YouTube Real Estate Marketing Tricks: Video Optimization To Get Leads

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YouTube Real Estate Marketing doesn’t have to be tough, but if you want it to generate leads, you’d better optimize… we’ll show you how. Why use YouTube for real estate marketing? If a picture is worth a thousand words, a YouTube real estate video is worth millions. People can actually see you. They can hear you. A video gives people a chance to build trust with you. That trust is at the core of conversion strategy. Trust is what makes marketing work. People must have a certain amount of trust in order to make a purchase or fill out a form to get more info. They have to believe in you. That’s what makes video so great – it’s your chance to reach people, to connect with them, to inspire them to take action… to sell a house, to buy an investment… whatever you’ve got to offer, video can help you connect in a way that no other medium can do. Think of it this way… a great sales video can keep selling for years, while you’re kicking back with your feet up. So without further ado, here are the keys to getting great results from video marketing: #1 – Do your keyword research. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to research your keywords. You must make sure that you’re optimizing for keywords that are actually being searched in your market. People search on YouTube differently than they do in regular Google search. They often use different terms and slightly different phrases. So don’t assume that the keyword research you did months ago when you were thinking about optimizing your site is going to be enough for a good video marketing campaign. Unfortunately, Google shut off the tool that told us directly what was being searched on YouTube… best we can see now is what they provide in their Display AdWords Planner – you’ll need a free Google account to use the tool. Here’s what the Display Tool looks like: #2 – Use no more than 2 keywords per video For search marketing purposes, it’s way better to make a lot of small videos on YouTube targeting many keywords than to make one long one. Think about it… people are searching a specific term, so you want your video to be directly related to that specific term. Sure, you can optimize a generic video a bunch of times with a lot of terms… but that technique won’t get good results. Here are a few places where keywords might help: Remember, Google is very smart. They work incredibly hard to make sure that good results climb to the top of their searches… so if you concentrate on making really high-quality content and optimizing it, you’ll get great results from it. Don’t try to do too much with one video… make a plan to create new videos often. #3 – Focus on making a great YouTube Real Estate Channel Yeah, I know… you wanna just make one video, then call it quits. But seriously, don’t bother. Trying to make one video will make you nuts. You can’t say everything you need to say in 90 seconds unless you’re super focused on just one or two keywords. Either prepare to make video marketing a big part of your business, or don’t do it at all. If you’re gonna do video marketing on YouTube, you’ll want to set up a really great YouTube channel. That’s the goal… the top of the mountain you’ll want to climb. High credibility, high trust, high views… high revenue. :) Videos that are on a great channel go to the top of the rankings. Don’t stress … Continued

The #1 Skill Your Real Estate Marketing Should Include Right Now

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Does your real estate marketing tell a story, or are you just advertising? After all, stories are the most powerful tool of communication, in business and in life. Humans communicate best through stories. How good are your storytelling skills? Besides reading this post, what are you doing to develop those skills? If you’re like most of our members, you’re constantly learning and developing your skills. Most of our members joined because they knew we’d give ’em a website that converted way higher than the typical real estate investor website, but they didn’t really understand our highest value: teaching skills. Storytelling is one of the most powerful skills you can possess. You already know that marketing is an insanely valuable skill. Marketing brings leads, and leads bring revenue. That’s obvious. But here’s the thing that most people don’t get about marketing: it’s all about telling a great story. STOP! Before going further, take some time to listen to how Max Maxwell Leverages Online Real Estate Marketing and Inspirational Storytelling to Close 1 in 4 Leads Behind every great brand is a powerful story that most consumers never see. Companies like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola didn’t become household names because of their relentless pursuit of quality or their fantastic products – although those factors were certainly critical to their success. Companies become known for their stories. A great brand story is behind every powerful piece of marketing you’ve ever seen. Every great ad, every flawless logo, every iconic image was all carefully planned to contribute to the way that consumers view that brand. A powerful story actually creates the company’s identity, building up like thin coats of plaster, brushed on slowly, layer by layer to form a wall. Think about how many times you’ve heard of Nike, Apple, or Coca-Cola – way too many to count, right? Every time you heard that company’s name mentioned, it contributed to the story in your mind about that company. Your brand’s story can be that powerful. Sure, I know – you don’t have Coca-Cola’s marketing budget. But a powerful story travels, and it takes on a life of its own. A truly powerful story is one that can transform the lives of the people who hear it. But think about it… Doesn’t it transform someone’s life to get rid of a property that has been plaguing them with problems? What’s it like for someone to finally get the burden of a pending foreclosure off of their back? What’s it like for someone to finally get through probate? It’s a huge relief. It’s a life-changing experience. It is transformative. Tell that story. Make your story connect people with your business. Sure, we’ve done a lot of the hard work for you. When you launch one of our sites for Motivated Sellers, Cash Buyers and Private Lenders, or Rent to Own Tenants, you’re fully loaded with a ton of key components that help you tell visitors to your site a great story about your business. But if you want to tell a truly powerful story, you’ve gotta get personal. Here are some questions you should ask yourself when preparing to tell your most powerful story: What are the toughest problems facing people who are looking for help from my business? How can my business change people’s lives? How can my business impact my communities? Why am I the exact right person to help? What experience do I have that allows me to relate to the person I’m trying to reach? Those are really tough questions, no doubt. We’ve wrestled with them ourselves while building this business. There’s a … Continued

How to Create Custom Real Estate Reports for Lead Generation

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InvestorCarrot websites include some pretty cool Free Reports that will help you generate leads, plus you can create unlimited reports of your own to offer, too! Click the picture to sign up for Carrot right now, or keep reading to find out more about how to get great results from your Report Opt-Ins. Real estate marketing: should it be based on data or stories? The answer: Both. Reports are a great example. A good report is full of credible data, but it also tells a story. A great report builds credibility that helps you get better results in your future negotiations. So how do you use data to tell a great story that helps you improve your credibility? Just keep reading. ;) This post will tell you about the awesome Free Reports that are included with our sites to help you generate leads and conversions, plus I’ll let you know a few awesome tricks and tips to get even better results in your local market. First off, here’s what’s included in our sites: Motivated Seller Free Reports In Your System Selling To A Real Estate Investor (already inside of our motivated seller websites) 5 Ways To Stop or Avoid Foreclosure (already inside of our motivated seller websites) Free Investor Reports In Your System Passive Income Investing Report (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites) Private Lending Report  (already inside of our main company and cash buyer websites) If you’re already an InvestorCarrot Member, you can: Brand and Customize Your Free Reports If you want to edit / brand these free reports you can click here to gain access to the Microsoft Word document versions of these reports. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These reports are the property of Carrot and are only for the use of active / paying InvestorCarrot members. As long as you’re an active InvestorCarrot member you can use these all you want! If you’re not an active InvestorCarrot member and would like to use our free reports, see our pricing and plans and sign up for a plan that’s right for you. All Copyright violators will be pursued. Once you brand them… “Save As PDF” to save them as a pdf Upload them to your website(s) via the Media tab in your website dashboard Update the download link on the download page on your website to point to this new PDF file Save, and you’re done! If you need help just hit us up on support or LIVE chat! We’re here for ya! If you’re looking for an innovative way to stand out in your market, you should: Create High-Value Free Reports for Your Market You don’t even have to write these reports yourself. Most of the time you can find a decent blogger in your local marketplace who is willing to work for cheap… plus, they might even be a good partner to help you drive traffic and build your lists. You never know til you look, right? But what kind of Free Reports should you create? I’ll let you know a few ideas for content that will help you reach your target audience. Start with the end in mind. Who are you trying to reach? 1. Motivated Sellers. What types of situations can you help solve? There are countless examples of reports out there on what folks facing foreclosure, divorce, probate can do… so create one that’s specific to your market! Localize it… check out the rules and regs in your market. Interview a couple of brokers, attorneys, title company reps, folks from local non-profits… shoot, interview anyone who might be able to add a few great local tips and resources for … Continued

Video Marketing For Real Estate Investor Websites: Good Idea or Bad?

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Video marketing can generate huge traffic and great conversions, or… it can suck the life right out of your message. Welcome to another edition of the Carrot Test Kitchen… where we break down our recipes and show you how to create insanely great lead generation sites for your real estate business. Today’s post will tell you how to set up a great, low-cost video marketing campaign that (if it’s done right) can really help move your business forward. Fortunately, it’s really easy to add video to your InvestorCarrot site… and to get some great benefits from Google’s traffic at the same time. In this post I’ll show you how to add video to your InvestorCarrot sites, plus give you a great example of a video to watch right now… and tell you what *not* to do. First, why does video marketing matter to real estate investors? Video marketing is particularly important for real estate investors, because when you use it properly, it can really help to grow your business. Think of your video like an automated salesperson for your business… once you record that video, it can be played again and again to anyone who is looking for your services, day or night, on weekends and holidays… without the bother of an interrupting phone call, while eliminating the hassle of having to say the same thing again and again. A great video is more than just a commercial for your business – it builds trust for a great beginning to your relationship with a new client. A great YouTube marketing video sets the stage for negotiations by showing off your credibility and describing how you do business. A truly great marketing video helps the viewer to trust you, like you, and want to do business with you. On the flip side, a bad video can really turn people off. If you’re showing your potential clients a cheesy video that’s heavily scripted with obvious sales language, loaded with stock photography and drowning in clip art, what are they supposed to think about you and your business? To put it another way… If you never show someone your own voice and use your own face, how are they supposed to trust you? See, here’s where real estate investment is very different from a household product that’s advertised on the television. If you’re selling something like shampoo or root beer, you don’t have to convince the consumer that you’re trustworthy or credible… just that the shampoo will bring you that silky, luxurious hair you’ve been wanting, or that this root beer will deliver more delicious flavor than any root beer they’ve ever had. When you’re selling products, trust can really help… but it’s not essential. But when you’re trying to convince someone to let you buy their property or sell them an investment, trust is utterly critical. It’s everything. Without trust, you don’t have a deal. And yet I see so many real estate investment companies using these terrible little $5 videos they bought online, probably late at night after a few drinks… and now they’re probably wondering why no one is watching and why their business isn’t growing. Would you want a $5 salesperson to represent your business? In most big companies, the top salesperson is the second-highest-paid in the company… right after the CEO. Sales is the life blood of businesses. Without sales, there is no revenue, and without revenue, your company will die. Exactly why would you trust a $5 sales video with the life blood of your business? Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think you need to spend a … Continued

How Affiliate Marketers Can Use the Storytelling Secrets of Pixar to Make Money

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Quick Note – Our Affiliate Contest is Taking Off! There’s a few people leading the pack, but there’s plenty of room for you to jump in. Go check out the contest now – and if you’re not already an InvestorCarrot Affiliate, sign up here – it’s fast and free! You know Pixar is the ONLY movie company never to take a loss, right? All of their movies have been successes at the box office (although Cars 2 was kind of a dud, it still earned big $$$$). Their secret storytelling formula was leaked and tweeted out, and when we saw it… whoa! It’s pure gold for anyone who is engaged in affiliate marketing – really, content marketing in general. You know why? Storytelling is the key to successful sales. No matter how good of a storyteller you are, you can always be better. We’ve got a powerful video for you here… even tho the audio is pretty lame, the content is great. In the time it takes to watch an episode of the Office, you could be lining up the strategy that will make you thousands of dollars – and help you win some cool stuff in our affiliate contest. In this video you’ll learn: The exact formula Pixar has used to write every single movie they’ve made – (none of their movies have ever taken a loss – that’s a first in Hollywood) How to use Pixar’s character development tricks to create sales content that builds trust, credibility, and engages your audience more than ever before Fast, easy ways to get “unstuck” when you’ve got writers block and are struggling to put out that next content piece Why you should never ever try to make “perfect” content… and why you should always begin at the end to get the best results. You’re not already signed up??? Join our Affiliate Program now!  

[Real Estate Heat Map Results] Where Are Sellers Clicking On Your Real Estate Website

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This article is the first in our Carrot Test Kitchen series – it’s a series of posts that help you to dissect the secret recipes we use to generate thousands of leads for real estate agents and investors across thousands of websites around the USA. Are you putting lots of effort into building a high-converting real estate website to pull in buyers, sellers or investors… but not getting the results you want? There are two main problems that we often see on real estate sites: 1)   The site is getting no visitors, and 2)   The site’s visitors aren’t submitting their information. The first problem is usually solved with SEO content when: 1)   The site doesn’t have good content, 2)   The content is not optimized to reach the search terms that people in the local market are actually using, or 3)   The site’s competitors are ranking higher in a search. There are quite a lot of other tricks to boost traffic to your site, and we’ll be talking about that again real soon…. But today, I want to help you out with the second main problem we see: What are people doing on your real estate website? It’s critical that the design of your site is set up to actually convert visitors to leads. Although it’s utterly crucial, conversions are often overlooked when average people are putting together their websites. Too often they hire designers who are obsessed with aesthetics… rather than results. Those folks need to quit calling themselves marketing experts… because they’re artists. Most art doesn’t sell. It hangs there, looking pretty… but it’s not selling your business. Are you trying to create art, or are you trying to get real estate leads? Listen, I get in this argument with designers a lot… so please don’t send me a bunch of angry emails about how design matters… I know it matters. It’s just that it doesn’t matter if it’s pretty… it matters if it works. Like with my accountant – I don’t care if my accountant is pretty, I care about what happens if I get audited. When you’re setting up your real estate site, it’s not how it looks… it’s how it works. That’s the really cool thing about real estate heat maps – one of the many tools that we use at Carrot to test out our theories of web design… because we don’t even trust ourselves – we want to know that our system is built on proven data about what works before we commit your hard-earned cash – and more importantly before you shift the marketing of your business to our system. We know your business is super important to you… just like ours is to us. So what’s a real estate heat map anyway, and how can you use it to generate more leads online???  Back to the point, thanks… in this context, a heat map is a generated picture of where visitors to the website move their mouse and where they click on the page. Below I’m gonna put a few examples of a heat map that we generated for a user’s site, and give you a few key points on what works so well on this design. Brittany sent us a quick email after watching one of our webinars, asking for help getting more leads… we were able to double her conversion rate with just a couple of simple changes that I’ll get to soon. Check out these heat maps (the site is greyed out, with little points of light showing where people have lingered with their mouse or clicked – the … Continued