Part 1: Traffic Sources

So you’ve been using different sources to drive traffic to you real estate website but you are not seeing the results you’d like. What could be the problem? Well it could be several things, but one of the culprits could be bad traffic. I know it sounds strange but not all web traffic is created equal. It has different levels of quality depending on the source of said traffic.

For example, you can send a ton of traffic to your real estate website by just increasing your budget and maximum price per click charge on Google. Now this will undoubtedly send more traffic to your website, but it might not be the clicks you are looking to get.

Let’s say you are paying for the keyword “San Francisco Homes” on Google and you are trying to drive quality traffic to your residential real estate website. When using that keyword term, a consumer could be looking for anything from a convalescent home for her parents to new home construction which your website may or may not have.

So that is why vertical search engines such as Roost.com are a better alternative to use for sourcing residential real estate traffic. Because the traffic that uses Roost.com is already searching for property information, they are much deeper in the real estate sales cycle than traffic from sources that serve a much broader audience.  Another great factor about working with a vertical search engine is the fact that the consumer can be deep linked to the details of a specific property instead of throwing them on your home page and forcing them to do a search all over again. This allows them to more easily find the information they are looking for and hopefully provides them with a better image of the broker providing the information.

So pay close attention to where your traffic is coming from and make sure it’s the traffic you really want.

(Coming up – Part 2: Lead Capture)

Derek Overbey
Sr. Director of Partnership Strategy
Roost.com
derek.overbey@roost.com
Twitter - @doverbey