What Would You Pay...

[HHI Golf Guy]

Here's a question for you real estate agents out there - what would you pay to purchase a web site with top search engine rankings in your market for your primary keywords?

Let's say the site ranks #1 or #2 on Google, #2 on Yahoo, and #9-11 on MSN for your top 2 keywords and has dozens of other top rankings for additional valuable keywords.

And let's say the site is a nice looking web site, has funnel points to capture leads, a place for you to add your featured listings and photos, a blog for your to post on, a drip email/contact management system, an MLS interface, and a few other items that make it a complete site.

How much would you pay for this site? If you decide to answer, please let me know the market you service.

[KaterinaGasset]

Are you talking about a website that belongs to an individual Realtor or is it a coop website with many different Realtors on it?
I would think the difference between the two of those would affect the price as one is much more valuable than the other. Thanks.

[HHI Golf Guy]

A custom site for an individual real estate agent.

[KaterinaGasset]

A custom site for an individual real estate agent.

I pay $150 a month for one of our sites. It is from the Craig Proctor system, success websites.
My problem with these types of sites is that googlebots look at some of these as duplicate content and will not give duplicate content a high quality score.

However, the upside is most of the work is done for you.

I think the most important questions to be answered is what purpose is your site idea used for. What is the goal of the site, what is the desired outcome.

If the agent is driving traffic to his/her online site through offline mediums than google ranking is not important.
If the agent wants organic traffic than page ranking is huge.
But no agent should ever depend 100% on organic traffic as google algorithms can change without a moment's notice.
You need to have a combination of driving traffic yourself to your website as well as getting organic traffic.
I don't see how someone can promise page rank for real.
Advanced access pages that were ranking highly in the search engines were being dropped in ranking left and right all of a sudden, so you never really know.

I think Realtors need to have more than one site.
I also think that Realtors need more education to know how to choose a good site and what constitutes a good site.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Nice speech, but you did not even come close to answering my question. If you want to talk about what you consider to be the purpose of a real estate web site, driving traffic from online and offline sources, or any of your other musings please start your own thread and don't hijack mine.

Again, the question is: In your market, what would you pay for an existing custom web site that ranked at or very near the top for all of the real estate primary KW's in that market?

Once again, assume the site has all the bells and whistles for MLS integration, custom listings, lead capture and follow up, etc.?

[KaterinaGasset]

I am sorry. I was not trying to 'highjack' your post.
I am new to this forum and I was only trying to be helpful.
No harm intended.

In our area with all the specifics you mentioned, I would pay $150 to $250 per month.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Fair enough. What market are you in?

FWIW, I'm contemplating seeding certain U.S. markets with sites, optimizing those site for a year, then selling off the sites at a profit. The sale would be a complete sale and transfer of the domain. I don't believe in renting out sites to people.

Since my SEO services alone start at $1,500 a month, I don't think that you and I are in the same ballpark when it comes to price :)

[KaterinaGasset]

Fair enough. What market are you in?

FWIW, I'm contemplating seeding certain U.S. markets with sites, optimizing those site for a year, then selling off the sites at a profit. The sale would be a complete sale and transfer of the domain. I don't believe in renting out sites to people.

Since my SEO services alone start at $1,500 a month, I don't think that you and I are in the same ballpark when it comes to price :)

Are you a Realtor in Hilton Head?
I look forward to visiting Disney's Vacation Club there in the near future.
Yep, I am out of your league. You are probably well worth what you charge.

I have to see results from what I am doing first before I go into the big time expenses. Been there, done that in 1999-2003 and never got what was promised to us, etc. I am sure you have heard it all before.

I am using Blackwater group and Compass for SEO and Placement services right now. I just started with them so I do not know how good or not they are, etc. Thanks for the info on your services.

I know a vendor who sells good sites that they charge $300 per month for and they charge a $3000 up front fee for the site but they are always doing more with the sites. Most of their sites will come up in the top 2 pages of google. Maybe that will help you in what you are trying to do.

[HHI Golf Guy]

My real estate license is not active. I do have partial ownership in a local brokerage here in the Hilton Head area. Instead I run a web marketing firm. Recently, one of my clients (a major publishing company) hired me directly (instead of my firm) as VP of Web Development and Marketing. In the past I had turned offers like that, but this offer involved ownership in the company if we meet certain hurdles.

As far as the idea I am floating, it's just another way to drive top line revenues without a huge investment. Domains are cheap, and we can do all of the design in house. There is a time factor involved with research and developing ad copy, and of course there is additional time invested in the optimization process.

We would not be seeding sites in small towns, but rather in larger metro areas or areas that sell high dollar real estate. If an agent can make $500k-$1M in annual commissions they should have no problem shelling out $25k+ for a top ranked web site.

[tarheit]

Even at 500k+ in comissions, I'd want to be sure a 25k investment would be worth it before dropping that type of money. I'd think you'd want to prove it's worth with more than just pr, and ranking for a few key words. Maybe when running them, refer leads to agents in your target area and keep track of them. It may help the sale significantly.

But it's not for our market. The average agent probably nets only 10k, and top agents are probably in the 100k range.

-Tim

[HHI Golf Guy]

I understand where your point of view, especially because you may not be familiar with our work.

A top ranked site is still a piece of junk if it doesn't provide an avenue for agents to convert prospects into leads. As an SEM, I cannot turn web surfers into leads - only a good agent can do that.

What my company does is optimize sites for rankings and optimize ad copy to target a specific buyer client demographic for the agent. This leads to far more conversions than a generic real estate web site that tries to appeal to every buyer type. Agents often carry over this targeted marketing approach and ad copy that we develop (and any agent branding we do) to their print media campaigns. I don't know of any other real estate SEO company that is actually a true marketing firm like we are.

This type of search engine marketing works, and it works very well. Even in this slower real estate market we have agents in different parts of the U.S. making a $10k-$50k off of web conversions each month. Of course, these agents are also experts at following up with prospects and converting those prospects into leads and buyer clients. A lousy (or lazy) agent with a top ranked site will always fall far short of the potential revenue generated by their web site.

As far as selling leads goes, forget it. Number one, as an SEM I cannot generate leads. IMHO, leads are buyers that the agent has qualified. I deal in prospects. And let's face it, most web site prospects are window shoppers - not buyers. So no, I would not feel comfortable selling those. It's alousy business model to run. And even if you eliminate the window shoppers, if the agent isn't on the ball they will get nowhere near a sale. Then the agent will complain that it's a lousy lead.

Once again, I'm just trying to get an idea of what agents think a top site is worth in their market. I already know that the overwhelming majority think a web site is worth only a few hundred bucks a month to them. That's not my target demographic anyway. I was hoping a few agents from the more competitive markets and larger would chime in.

[KaterinaGasset]

My real estate license is not active. I do have partial ownership in a local brokerage here in the Hilton Head area. Instead I run a web marketing firm. Recently, one of my clients (a major publishing company) hired me directly (instead of my firm) as VP of Web Development and Marketing. In the past I had turned offers like that, but this offer involved ownership in the company if we meet certain hurdles.

As far as the idea I am floating, it's just another way to drive top line revenues without a huge investment. Domains are cheap, and we can do all of the design in house. There is a time factor involved with research and developing ad copy, and of course there is additional time invested in the optimization process.

We would not be seeding sites in small towns, but rather in larger metro areas or areas that sell high dollar real estate. If an agent can make $500k-$1M in annual commissions they should have no problem shelling out $25k+ for a top ranked web site.

We are in that range in commissions and so are other agents that we work with however, they would all want to see proof before they would buy.
One thing to remember is most agents are not computer savy and are not
working their business online. Many of them do not see the value of running business online. In our area we still have lots of elderly ladies in the top realtor spots and they would not ever shell out that kind of money.

You would need to find the tech savy agents like you said in metro type areas like maybe New York or San Diego or San Fransisco and then have some kind of marketing plan to show them why and how this would benefit their marketing. Find a way to get into their heads and find out what is important to them. Maybe have a survey and send it out to them before you go through all that work.

Hope this helps. :)

[HHI Golf Guy]

One thing to remember is most agents are not computer savy and are not working their business online. Many of them do not see the value of running business online. In our area we still have lots of elderly ladies in the top realtor spots and they would not ever shell out that kind of money.

Since the NAR has reported that 75%-80% of all prospective homebuyers begin their search for a new home, then these agents will go by way of the dinosaur. While the top agents will do well because of their name and referral business, they will see their market share erode. When they "die off" (i.e. retire) there will be fewer agents with that type of marketing strategy to take their place.

In smaller markets, the "old school" marketing agent will probably always reign supreme. But in larger markets - especially those with rapid growth - they will have a much harder time competing.

Print marketing will always be a staple of the real estate industry, but if you look at the big players in real estate print media you will see that they are either starting web sites to go along with their print publications or enhancing their existing web platforms. That's where the money is for both the publishing companies and real estate agents.

Agents that don't grasp the power of the web - be it PPC, SEO, advertising on regional portal sites, and learning the proper way to integrate other media advertising with their web site - are going to get creamed by their tech savvy competitors. You can shake all the hands and kiss all the babies you want - but if you're in a market where growth and real estate sales are driven by out of state relocation you need the web to survive, not just thrive.

The little old lady from Pasadena is not my target demographic, so I don't give her budget a second thought. My business plan is not to flood the market with my work. My target demographic is the agent that wants to completely dominate their market - not just make a living. One of my clients told me a story that every time he goes to a local real estate function he hears people whispering, "That's the guy that's #1 on Google." He dominates his market and everyone knows that. I love that!

Look at this way - would you spend your time showing $500k houses to someone that was only qualified for $250k? Of course not. Would you write ad copy for a home in an age restricted community that targeted Gen-X buyers? Of course not. That's why I don't market to the little old lady in Pasadena - even if she is a top seller in her market.

Frankly, you're all reading WAY to much into the simple question I first asked - namely how much you would pay for a top ranked, custom web site in your market if the site had all of the tools to prospect leads.

I find all of the remarks like "prove to me it generates leads" to be humorous. If your site is ranked #1 for "your city + real estate" who do you think will visit your site, people looking to buy apples or people looking to buy homes? Of course it will generate prospects. But it's up to the agent to turn them in to qualified leads, buyer clients, and sales. Pick any 10 cities in the U.S. and email the agent that is #1 on Google for "city name + real estate" and ask them if they get any leads from their web site. MY guess is that they use the word "Yes" in conjunction with one expletive or another.

[Cash Home Buyers _ com]

Unfortunately this product would be extremely undervalued in the marketplace as a pure "sale", in order to maximize your sale you would need to offer follow -up seo and get paid based on it's performance in delivering leads/prospects. Otherwise the buyer is always going to be overly cautious, and you will therefore be underpaid.

My opinion, being in real estate but never an agent, i would think that in my market (Charlotte NC) the value would be about $50,000 purchase/first year and then $15,000/year maintenance there after, but you will work your *** off to sell it for half price at $25,000 and would find the meat of the market wanting to pay $10,000 with guarantees and would be a babysitting nightmare.

Scott

[HHI Golf Guy]

Thanks Scott. I think you're right in your analysis. One of the business models we prepared in evaluating this revenue stream was to undervalue the site and drive additional revenues through a 1 or 2 year SEO and maintenance agreement.

How's life in Charlotte? We have a new real estate print media publication (big, full color publication) and corresponding Charlotte portal (real estate/rentals/hotels/general info) web site scheduled for late 2008 or early 2009. I'm hoping that gives me an excuse to expense some tickets for one of the races at LMS!

[hollahovito]

on how much it is worth right now. how much monthly revenue would/does it currently generate, etc.

[Magill]

I will tell you from first hand experience that a high ranking website generates alot of business. The very day I hit #3 for google I got a call.

I would put at least 25% of my efforts to climbing the search engine ranks.

[Asida]

I think it's better if you concantrate on your business, and outsource the search enginge optimalization to other people or company, who's really experienced, and because this field is changing very rapidly, only experts will be able to keep up with the changes, and actually maintain your site on a high position on Google.

[kytine8888]

Better compare all the companies. And choose those with maintains high ranking site. And how much they offer. So nto just suggestion you will have.

[redtailmountain]

There is actually a website out there that supposedly can tell you the value of your website. It explains on the site what all it uses to value the site, but you just enter your website address and it computes what it is worth. I will see if I can find it this afternoon and I will followup with the link. You can probably google it as well.

[Pinehurst Real Estate Guy]

I would really like to see that site as well, seems interesting but completely subjective and unless it's free to use I'll just guess what my site is worth ~ to me.

[Good Neighbor Home Buyers]

Is the site you are speaking of for investors as well as agents?

[SMP]

but I think you're gonna have a hard time selling it to the majority. Sure there might be some big-wig agents that might go for it (maybe that's all you need), but I doubt the majority would pay that kind of money. IMHO of course...