News

Today, we’re going to veer away from talking conversion, Facebook, analytics, blogging, SEO, and social media. You know, that geeky stuff we always talk about.

Instead, we’re going to bring you a story that will touch your heart.

Jackson, a 9 year old yet to reach middle school, was recently diagnosed with potentially terminal GBM brain cancer (more info) and is undergoing undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical treatments fighting for his life right now.

Let that sink in for a few moments. What were you doing when you were nine? Probably not undergoing melanoma cancer treatment for recovery. Chances are good you didn’t have a care in the world, and were busy chasing girls around at recess, building tree forts, playing with your doll house, or shooting hoops with your dad.

We became aware of Jackson’s story from Lauren Johns at Your Coach (she’s Jackson’s godmother). And the entire team here at Virtual Results all pitched in to help in a way that we know how – building a website, FightOnJackson.com, for their family to keep their friends and followers abreast on the latest developments in Jackson’s fight.

Here’s a message from Jackson’s mother Lisa:

I sure hoped we could have connected a different way. Perhaps on the playground or at a PTA meeting or on a golf course, or in the aisle of Pavilions, wondering together why the cost of raspberries is so high (and how much our kids love ‘em so we buy them anyway!)

That’s the way we should have met.

I don’t want to start with this, “On February 17th my son’s name “Jackson Reece” and “cancer” were uttered in the same sentence and our world went upside down…” But it’s hard to think of anything else at this moment.
So here goes … first, I want to thank you for taking the time to read my words. It’s a first for me to “blog” … be patient with me friend.

My child has been diagnosed with aggressive, terminal GBM brain cancer. My son, my beautiful, kind, generous, smart, athletic, first born son is in the battle of his life right now.

There, I said it.

To read the full story, CLICK HERE. It’s heartbreaking.

If you want to help support the family, you can find out how to do so on the support page. And if you just want to let Jackson know you are thinking about him, that’s okay too — you can do that on the Shoutout to Jackson page.

Stay strong Jackson. Don’t ever give up!

— The Team at Virtual Results

Today, I’m pleased to bring you our first edition of Virtual Results Client Q&A. I get asked quite often by our current clients what other agents using our websites that work are doing to drive traffic, and starting this series is one way to help connect our clients with each other and share learnings. First up is Durrell Thomas, who can be found at AtSanMarcosHomes.com. Durrell is as driven as they come. I’ve hung out with him a few times down in Southern California, and his thirst for knowledge is undeniable. While he knows he doesn’t know everything (yet), he’s invested heavily in learning and using the technology tools at his disposal.

The following are a few questions he answered via email; there are certainly some great ideas he’s shared for you to implement as part of your overall marketing strategy.

Q: First of all, I know you recently went independent and opened your own brokerage. What led you to going that route?

2009 National Association REALTORS Convention in San Diego is where the seed was planted to open a local Real Estate Brokerage. During one of the break out sessions Sherry Chris was talking about the Brokerage of the future. It felt like she was talking to me. Over the last year and half, I have been mentored and nurtured by some of the best people on the planet.

BIG Thanks to everyone who touched my life: San Marcos Real Estate Company is a seedling in the real world of real estate. Once again I am having fun in real estate hanging out with family, friends giving and sharing. The difference this time is pride of ownerships. I am Proud to be a REALTOR, Broker, local business owner. Live work and Play in San Marcos, man that feels so good say.

Q: Why did you choose WordPress as your website platform of choice?

During the 2009 National Association REALTORS Convention in San Diego I met this guy at one of the after hour real estate sessions. You know the ones, where science is dropped all over the place and by morning you wonder dude where do I start? I quote “Do not be a silo of information share what you know to the world” I said how? He said WordPress. Than he went on explaining the why and how super fast. My head was spinning. In the morning I remembered share all, use wordpress. That person was “Jim Marks”.

Why I continue to use wordpress is because it is easy to use, no phone calls to make if you want to change the theme, or layout or add a page or menu item. No secret computer language to make a change or add content.

Q: How has the Virtual Results Predesigned Websites that Work platform worked thus far for your new brokerage?

That’s an unfair question. You guys at Virtual Results gave me a brand new race car to test drive on the Google racetrack. I found the gas pedal, and a bunch of switches – so far so good.

On Content: With the trifecta of real estate information all packaged under one hood this site can puts out tons of content. Trifecta includes Diverse IDXpress no I frame here. able to make a property page for each listing. Altos Research with answers the question how’s the market and where is the market going. and Market Snapshot which answers the question what’s your home worth and what did my neighbor house sell for?
Now this trifecta of information can be sliced, diced and purred than shared in a wordpress blog post /page.

On Performance: When you handed me the keys to the site you gave me the standard disclosure, It will take six month or so before you see any traffic or ranking, something about the Google sandbox and learning curve of the desktop controls of the wordpress site. Did not want to wait six months so I hit the gas pedal and figured I would learn about the controls along the way. RANKING in 3 months

Every week I am learning something new about the control panel, which helps the performance of the site. This is all valuable information to understand so when I bring in a professional mechanic to start turning the wrench on this beautiful machine watch out!

Q: I know you’re on the leading edge in terms of innovating marketing ideas. What are some of the things you’re doing online that are working in terms of putting you in front of more potential clients?

Right now just the basics, Good content that is keyword focused, Daily syndication of blog post and pages. Sign up and complete three online directories profiles a week. Ping each profile weekly. Commenting on other blogs, only on topics that I enjoy commenting on.

Current page rank for highly competitive keyword San Marcos Homes for Sale :Google 15 : Yahoo 26 : Bing 96:. This ranking bring in 30 visitors a day and two leads which turned into one listing.

We have 28 keywords that we wish to rank for some have no traffic, so we are creating the interest which will bring the traffic.

At the three month mark, Weekly press releases, for 12 weeks. Than re-syndicate the press releases, Local vendor start adding content to site, going forward each month has a loose theme based on related trending topics. Tip look at the grocery store magazine rack for global trending topics

At the six month mark, we will add offset online marketing call to action pages for new business, which will capture people early in the buying cycle. Run local online contests to build the data base for social and professional online hubs.

We will also bring a team of talent on board for online asset optimization. Online assets include however not limited to the following; Press Releases, images, video, PDF, Landing pages, Social syndication.

Then wash and repeat for the next group of keywords.

Q: What type of content are you creating that is leading to conversion opportunities?

Due to the age of the site (2 months old), the first year focus is on having a good base of evergreen content. Evergreen content is basic information related to real estate, Escrow, Title, Insurance, Loans, community profiles, etc. With the evergreen post, we will build a 101 series based on the general information and hyper local information ex Homebuying 101 – Buying a new home Santa Fe Hills.

The content that brings traffic is the trending topics from TMZ, OMG,Digg, Twitter, Sunset, Real Simple, Reader Digest, Handy man,and google alerts etc. ex. Digg had a recent hot topic on “New generation of Solar energy” So four post related to Solar energy 1. New homes built on Solar power, 2. Learn how to get your old home solar ready. 3. Why solar will not save you money 4. 5 Extreme Solar homes.

The hook that bring conversion is the “what is in it for me”, So we have partnered with local merchant, to offer discounts and coupons on their services, Window replacement, Heating and Air, Local Green Energy company, Moving and storage company. At this stage in the game a lot of offline social faceworking leads to online conversion.

One of my online goal’s for 2011 is to cross market with 25 local core businesses that people use who buy my product.

If you want to be the next client highlighted, shoot me an email. You already have the email address…

Our focus is making our predesigned websites that work platform better by the day — and, as I said two weeks ago when we added a Coldwell Banker color scheme, additional color schemes are part of that process. For the RE/MAX agents out there (we know there are a lot of you), don’t worry, we just added a custom color scheme sporting the famous RE/MAX red and blue just for you! Ric & Pamela Dizon are our first clients using the RE/MAX color scheme, so head over to their site, LaPalmaHomeFinder411.com, and take a look.

There are now 14 color schemes available on the predesigned websites that work (PDW) platform. So, no matter what your color preference, we have something to suit you. And if not, just ask us about a custom color scheme.

For our current clients, remember you can easily change your color scheme at any time by navigating to your Virtual Results theme settings menu in your dashboard and selecting a new color from the “Color Scheme” drop down.

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are two primary components that lead a particular site to rank well for specific keywords: “onsite” SEO and “offsite” SEO. Both are important. Without solid onsite SEO (landing pages, internal linking, alt tags, depth of content, etc), any offsite SEO efforts you undertake are going to be minimized (best case) or completely wasted (worse case). But without offsite SEO efforts (aka link building), it’s not going to really matter how good your onsite SEO is — your site still won’t rank well without external links pointing back at your domain. Virtual Results helps our clients with both onsite and offsite SEO. Below are two charts from a client site showing the change in traffic and leads since we did some ONSITE SEO work (we haven’t done any off site work for them) a few months back.

Traffic is trending up and to the right.

Leads more than doubled. This chart doesn’t include phone calls either, just leads via the IDX.

Which direction are your traffic and leads trending? If they aren’t going up and to the right and you want world class real estate SEO help, let us know. We’re not hard to reach…

As of yesterday morning, San Diego’s newest real estate brokerage, Real Living Lifestyles, has a brand new real estate brokerage website from the team at Virtual Results. However if you would like to talk to an actual person and not just look at a website then you should do some research and find the best licensed residential land brokers.

The site features a wealth of information to satisfy buyers and sellers in the greater San Diego area, as well as agents who may be looking to join their rapidly expanding team. It’s a delicate mix to satisfy those diverse audiences, but we feel we’ve struck the right balance. This site is just the beginning, with many improvements to come; however the launch of their fantastic website celebrates the success of their official move yesterday from being Windermere Exclusive Properties to Real Living Lifestyles.

As part of our synergy with Real Living Lifestyles, we are offering a special discount on our predesigned websites that work platform (PDW) for Real Living Lifestyles agents who are seeking to revamp and improve their web presence in 2011. Starting today, and for the NEXT 90 DAYS ONLY, Real Living Lifestyle agents can get a PDW for a special introductory price! We even have a specially designed Real Living color scheme for you to use if you wish, or you can choose from any of the other 12 color schemes currently available. Our first Real Living Lifestyles example is Kurt Maier’s brand new site, seen at KurtMaier.com. If you’re an agent with Real Living Lifestyles and interested in getting onboard with your own predesigned website that works, please get in touch with us or talk to your Marketing Director, Erica Liodice.

Real Living Lifestyles agents, brokers, and staff — welcome to the Virtual Results family! We’re thrilled to have you.

If you are a brokerage from a different area and want your own full brokerage site or would like to offer the best real estate websites available to your agents, let us know; we’d love to speak with you about the full range of services we offer.

Our very own Jim Marks spoke at WordCamp Phoenix back in January. The topic was “SEO Tips for Realtors”.

The video was just posted at WordPress.tv. Here’s the 30 minute presentation for your viewing pleasure:

What is the true value of your website to your business? Sure, there is some branding value and consumers expect every professional to have a website — but if your website is not producing leads and clients for you, what’s the point?

We happen to know a thing or two about real estate websites from years of building websites that work and monitoring analytics on them, and are willing to give you a few pointers to those with a desire to improve their web presence. Without a solid underlying site structure to build upon, any off site SEO effort is going to be wasted.

If your website is not performing, and you want to better understand why, click here to get your free website critique courtesy of the team at Virtual Results!

Get Your Free Critique

We receive a wide variety of WordPress questions over and over from our clients, so I’m going to start addressing them here. This morning I received the following question:

What is the difference between a category and a tag on my wordpress site?

I don’t personally use tags when I write blog posts because it’s essentially just another form of categories to organize the content on your website for your readers. Using one category (or a couple) works just fine for me. Here is a great video by Matt Cutts at Google (he KIND OF knows what he’s talking about) addressing this question as well:

Additionally, I’ve added a page to our Help Center titled “WordPress Questions, Answers, Videos, and Resources” so that our clients have one easy place to find all these questions, answers, videos, and resources from external sources.

What other WordPress questions do you have?

As you may or may not know, Virtual Results acts as the internet marketing department for agents, teams, and brokers around the country. The goal of any business website should be to produce leads for you to turn into clients. As part of our consulting services, we do 100% unique content creation, craigslist posting, full blown World Class SEO, monitor analytics, A/B testing, and just about everything in between (full range of services outlined here).

Last month, the website of one of our consulting clients produced 132 leads in one month. Yes, that was 132 leads in one month!

How many leads has your website produced lately?

If we don’t produce results, go ahead, fire us. The ROI needs to make sense, but if you and your team are able to turn phone numbers and email addresses into clients, we’re confident it will. We only work with one consulting client in a given market, so contact us today if you’re looking to take your business to the next level and for a bit of extra promoting you can consider ordering custom printed tags.

From the start, our focus with our predesigned websites that work platform has been to build the best real estate WordPress platform possible; page layouts and colors are one of the things necessary to achieving that goal. The latest addition to our platform that we’d like to share is a new Coldwell Banker color scheme. There are now 12 different colors to choose from as well as 3 search box variations, and varying other home page layout options. We have several Coldwell Banker clients, but Debbie Vertucci, a Coldwell Banker agent in Irvine, is our first client using this new color scheme.

For the brokers reading this, if you want to provide the best WordPress sites to your agents — websites that work — we’d be happy to design a custom color scheme for your agents as part of a brokerage package. If interested in discussing further, we’d love to speak with you.

We’ve got a number of other great additions in the works. Stay tuned.