From sunny Spain!

[wolfgangbrand]

Hi

I am a online marketing professional living in Marbella Spain, originally from Germany. I recently entered the real estate business together with a partner. We sell property on the Costa del Sol with a focus on commercial property. I am also running another property website related to luxury property in Marbella.

I post you the links in about 15 postings.....be patient!

Regards

Wolfgang Brand

[EricRE]

Looking forward to seeing the site and glad you decided to join the real estate forum here. Hope you are having fun with your real estate career so far!

[wolfgangbrand]

Hi Eric

Thanks.

In Fact not much changed for me really. I am doing the marketing part of the business whilst my partner is doing the selling and listing of properties.

I am a a marketing (SEO) specialist and did SEO for several real estae sites in the past. The difference is that I amdoing it now for my own venture.

Regards

Wolfgang Brand

[Torontocondoandhome]

That is a perfect place to sell I would Imagine.. beyond the locals you also have foreign investors that would like to purchase property especially in your area.

[wolfgangbrand]

Far from Perfect

The area had several big real estate and briggery scandals in the past. Marbellas image of the shiny glamorous City of the South has benn tarnished by currupt politicians and numerous detentions of people involved in money laundering for the russian mafia.

Plus the current state of Spain, which suffers his biggest economical crisis since Franko makes the Spanish market completelly uninteressint.

Its the foreigners that we place our bets on. In Marbella with luxury vill

[Torontocondoandhome]

So don't sound like a guy that is the glass half empty.

I am sure you can see the silver lining to living and selling in Spain.

Truth is many markets worldwide are hit, some worse than others, but this is also the time when people make the wealth they can retire early on, as well as two generations after are retired at the same time. Great deals on now..

[wolfgangbrand]

Good Morning

Don't get me wrong I dont want to sound negativ. All I am saying is , that its not easy. If I would not believe, that it is possible I would not have started this.

Also we are hitting two markets here.

One is the market for luxury estates in Marbella, that is a rather difficult one as I explained. On the flip side of the coin is that you only need to sell one or two of those villas per year and you can make a decent living on that.

The other market is commercial property all along the Costa del Sol. That could be the leasehold for a little bar untill a 5 star hotel. So if the big stuff doesn't go, we might be selling some bars and restaurants.

For that is always demand, as many people especially from England have this dream to live where others go on Holiday.

So you are in Canada? Where about? I have a friend near Winnipek.

Regards

Wolfgang Brand

[TeamAguilar]

So you are SEO professional eh
Welcome to the forum
Teach us the major tricks and tips to optimize our site too

[wolfgangbrand]

Good Morning (here at least)

I even tell you the best "trick" of all: share your knowledge!

Write interesting unique content about the property business and invite users to comment on your content. That attracts links naturally, makes the site interesting and gives users a reason to come back.

Here the typical mistakes I have seen real estate agents doing on their sites:

1. Too much hype! A website is not a sales pitch. (exeption: landing pages)
2. Too much design! A website is not *** either, you don't have to seduce poeple.
3. Vague or outdated information or worse: only information availble is how great you and your company are
4. Search facility/property database not search engine friendly
5. Fear of negative comments from users. Not everybody loves you - deal with it.
6. Page titles comprised of Company name only
7. Spam in meta tags or keyword stuffing on the site
8. Starting a site with "Welcome to our agency"
9. Incomplete disclosure notice
10. Putting content behind frames or in flash movies
11 Poor writing style.

That list should keep some of the members here rather busy :-). Now here comes marketing for the really brave! First of all blogs are more effective than websites. This is crucial to understand. Todays users are not looking for glossy magazins or corporate brochures online. They look for multiple opinions and want to participate, it's called web 2.0.

There is one way that gets a blog really busy. I mean serioulsy busy:

Start a war! A little pice of juicy gossip about that company or this person there, then make sure everybody involved knows about it. Trust me there will soon be links from all over the world wide web.

Regards

Wolfgang

[wolfgangbrand]

Sorry,double posting. Please delete