Advanced Access Blog

Did you know that through hosting your own real estate website, posting regular blog updates, and communicating with social media, you aren’t just slapping words on the Internet? It’s true! Each and every word you put out on the Web is gelling with the rest to create an online brand for you and your real estate business.

The content of your website and the phrases in your Facebook statuses aren’t just arbitrarily constructed works of text – together, they form the image of you that your clients and prospective clients see. You and you alone have the power to make that a positive or negative appearance.

Before you put something on the Internet, ask yourself these questions:

How will this be perceived by my clients?
How will this be perceived by my prospects?
How will this mold the image of my business?
How will this mold my image as a real estate agent?
How will this mold my image as a person?
How would I perceive someone else that would post this?
Will this effect my search engine optimization? If so, how?
Will this help me generate leads?

If you’ve been planning to post something that could possibly result in a negative reaction, do yourself and your business a favor and just let it go. Discerning your online posts may be daunting at first, but it will get easier as you do it more often.

What does your online reputation look like? Is it strong or could it use a little work?

Homes.com wants to hear from you!

Homes.com is dying to know what you think about is going on in the real estate industry with home values. Do you think home values will go up or down this year? What about your home’s value — will it change? Because you’re in the thick of the real estate industry, your opinion matters the most!

Just for taking the time to fill out this short survey about home values in 2012, you will entered for a chance to win $100! It will be the easiest hundred bucks you ever make.

Your input can help Homes.com have a better understanding of home values this year. The survey closes in a few days, so go ahead and take a few minutes to fill it out and register to win $100. Thanks in advance for adding your input!

Some real estate agents don’t give a lot of thought to their domain names. They just put their own name or broker name into a browser window and leave it at that. However, the truth is that your domain name could actually be hurting your business and/or your search engine optimization. Thankfully, the super-smart Geeks over at GeekEstate have put together a list of things to consider when deciding on a domain name.

1. Your name and then some. Since domains are pretty cheap these days, you should go ahead and reserve YourName.com. You can redirect that to your blog or your real estate business website if you’d like, so that existing clients can find you that way. However, think about your prospects: they’re more likely to find you by searching for terms related to the area in which they’d like to buy a home, so making your domain name something they’d be searching for will help tremendously (“Tallahassee Homes” or “San Diego Real Estate,” are some good examples.)

2. Stay local. It’s extremely important to keep your real estate website local, in the same way your business is. By putting your city name in your domain, it’s more likely to be found by potential home buyers that may not otherwise meet you. This also helps your domain describe to the world exactly what you and your website are all about. The more descriptive you are, the better.

3. Keep it short and sweet. When choosing a domain, keep in mind that less is more. The longer the domain name is, the more likely it is that your clients will either forget it or misspell it. Ignore this rule if the name of your town is really long. You can’t help that. However, if that’s not the case, shorten it.

4. On spelling. If you need to spell your domain name over and over to someone, chances are it’s too complicated to spell and should be changed.

5. Double letters are a no-no. If you have your heart set on a domain like, say, www.indianriverrealestateexperts.com, keep in mind that the double letter effect can be confusing to your visitors. Try to avoid this.

6. Don’t be dashing. Even though putting hyphens in your domain name may give you a marginal advantage concerning search engine optimization, they don’t really help your site visitors out. Hyphens aren’t very common, so it’s possible your customers would just completely forget to use them. Again, since domains are so cheap, you could purchase both domains so that you can get the benefit of both the SEO and helping your clients.

7. Dot-com rules. As much as we’d love to tell you that domains like dot-biz and dot-net are equals to dot-com, we can’t, because we’d be lying. However, there’s evidently a shortage of dot-com names, so snatch yours up quick.

If your domain name needs a change, don’t hesitate to contact us at (866) 518-1571 or support@advancedaccess.com.