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November 27, 2012 | Comments : 0 Recommended this article: (0)

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Zillow Inc. (Z - Snapshot Report) announced an agreement to acquire HotPads – a rental and real estate search site. The purchase consideration of this deal, which amounts to $16 million, will be paid in cash. The acquisition is projected to close by year end, subject to customary closing conditions.

San Francisco-based HotPads is a reputable real estate website and also has five mobile applications for smartphones. The company was launched in 2005 and currently has 19 employees. The company will be merged into the Zillow Rental Network after the acquisition and will continue to operate from San Francisco.

HotPads has significant web traffic, which will substantially boost Zillow’s prospective clientele. The site recorded about 2.8 million visitors in October 2012, of which almost 70% viewed listings for homes or apartments available for renting. Thus, the acquisition is expected to boost Zillow’s rental business.

Moreover, HotPads caters primarily to the younger population, who are at the starting-point of their real estate life cycle. Thus, the acquisition will make Zillow more appealing to this client base. Moreover, HotPads’ engineering team is well-versed with the online search habits of clients, which should help Zillow attract more clients.

Both the above-mentioned companies share the goal of providing people with adequate means and information to hunt for a suitable home. Toward this aim, Zillow is trying to enhance its rental offerings. Apart from HotPads, the company has acquired various other entities to widen its portfolio of marketing and business services for local professionals.

Earlier this month, Zillow announced its plans to acquire Mortech Inc. – a company that offers software tools required in the mortgage industry. Last month, the company purchased internet and phone-based shopping platform – Buyfolio. Before that, in June, Zillow purchased RentJuice, which formed the basis for the creation of Zillow Rentals.

Apart from inorganic growth, Zillow also tries to innovate and offer new services to its customers. For instance, the company launched a free marketplace and product suite for rental professionals last month. The product offering includes listing on the Zillow Rental Network, which is the largest web-based rental network.

Zillow currently carries a Zacks #3 Rank (short-term Hold). We maintain a long-term Neutral recommendation on the stock. Peer Market Leader Inc. (LEDR - Snapshot Report) also carries a Zacks #3 Rank.

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13 Easy Steps to Optimize your Website for SEO | RISMedia

By Marci James  Print Article

Social media marketing may be hot, but online search is still king. That makes it imperative for real estate professionals to have a website that finds itself at the top of major search sites like Google and Bing. If you do not show up at the top, you are missing an opportunity to drive qualified traffic to your site and the chance to be discovered by potential new clients.

So what can you do to make your website search-optimized? If you are tech savvy or have a WordPress site, you will find most of the tips below can easily be accomplished without help. If you are not tech savvy, simply ask your webmaster for help. With this list in hand, you and your webmaster can make your site a search magnet!

1. Submit your website to as many major search engine directories as possible. There are hundreds of search engine directories. Most are free, some charge a fee. Use only the free ones; they work just as well as the paid ones. This process can get time consuming, but it’s worth the effort. Free Web Submission is a tool that you can use to help you with the process.

2. Choose a URL that includes keywords. Instead of a short URL, try a longer URL that includes keywords. Keywords are the main terms clients will type in to a search engine as they look for the information you have to offer. That could be your name, your city’s name or the obvious, terms related to real estate. Use this guide of keywords that are great for SEO to instantly make your site more searchable.

3. Every page on your website should have a unique keyword phrase that is included in the title, tag, body, and meta description. I recommend that you choose one keyword phrase for EVERY page of your site. That keyword phrase should be in the page title, the page text, the page tags, and the meta description for that page. The meta description should include keywords and phrases, but should NOT duplicate the page title. If you do not know how to do this, check with your webmaster.

4. Write a lot of text content for your site. Include those chosen keywords and phrases in your writing, but write for your audience, not for SEO. Depending on your area of expertise, you could add a page for every neighborhood or community you work within. You could then write a page for buyers, a page for sellers, a page for short sales, a page for foreclosures, a page for the first-time homebuyer, or a page for relocation, etc. The more content you have, the more searchable your site will be.

5. Write about HOT topics! Google gives priority to fresh/hot content. So if there is something exciting happening in your community or in the news, try adding the keyword associated with the topic to a page or post on your site. You could write a review of a new bestselling book or movie that is playing at your local theater. Or write about a big event that is occurring in your town. Whatever it is, make sure you stay topical and relevant!

6. Create pages with formatting – headings, bullet points, lists, bolded text. Google loves formatting because formatting makes a page easier to read. Check out all the formatting in THIS post! And in my opinion, formatting makes a page easier to read as well!

7. Optimize all of your website images for the web (72 dpi). Google gives priority to images that load quickly. If you upload super high resolution images, you could be hurting your SEO. Also add an ‘alt’ tag with your keywords to every photo on your site.

8. Use outbound links. Outbound links are hyperlinks that you create within your text. There are two types of outbound links: Outbound links that go to your own site and outbound links that go to other sites. I recommend placing two outbound links to other content/pages on your site on every page of your website. Also include at least one link to a website other than yours. Linking to other high-ranking sites is a great way to increase your SEO. The search engines give your site extra SEO juice when you link it to other high-ranking sites. When you add the link, be sure to add it so that the link opens in a new window. That way, visitors will not be leaving your site.

9. Use Anchor Text. The text that you highlight for an outbound link is called “Anchor Text”. In No.1 above, “Free Web Submission” is anchor text for the link it points to. Anchor Text is given LOTS of priority by search engines, so choose your anchor text carefully, using lots of great keywords and phrases.

10. Incorporate your blog into your website. If you have a blog, it should live on the same URL as your website. That way, your website benefits from the SEO your blog posts create.

11. Add a social sharing plug-in to your site. Include the Facebook Like button, Facebook share, Google+ share, and Twitter share buttons on each of your website pages. You may want to include Linkedin as well. This will encourage sharing of your content. Each time a page is shared, it creates a backlink which increases your SEO. Plus it’s really fun to see your site being shared by visitors!

12. Create a Google Analytics account and place its tracking code on every page of your website. This is very easy to do in WordPress, by simply adding the Google Analytics Plug-in. Study the analytics on a regular basis and change your techniques based on what’s working and what’s not working. You should see your site steadily rising in search engine rank.

13. Consider adding a good quality SEO plugin to your site. If you have a WordPress site, some great plug-ins include All in One SEO, Platinum SEO, and SEO by Yoast.

There you have it. If this feels overwhelming, just take it one step at a time. Try submitting your site to the directories. When you’re comfortable, take one page of your site and optimize it with a Keyword Phrase that you add to the title, body, tags, and meta description.

Once you start, you’ll begin to understand the process, and see that it’s really quite simple. Go for it!

Marci James is the Director of Social Media and Marketing for Obeo.

View this original article on the BHG blog, Clean Slate.

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Copyright© 2012 RISMedia, The Leader in Real Estate Information Systems and Real Estate News. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be republished without permission from RISMedia.

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Real Estate Website Mockup | Graphic Design | User Interface / IA

Project Description:
Hello Freelancers,
I need a 3 page mock-up (Home Page + 2 Child pages) of a real estate website that is aligned to our primary business of a Builder & Developer of Residential and Commercial properties. Need someone who can work with me to understand the requirements, and come up with a concrete and professional design with excellent color combinations of the future state look and feel.
I have few examples of other websites for real-estate and development that I can provide to convey the idea. He should also do research on the websites of other major real-estate players in India like http://www.total-environment.com/
http://www.unitechgroup.com/
etc.

I JUST NEED THE MOCKUP AS OF NOW.

Once this mockup is done satisfactorily, I will award the contract for building the whole website. Furthermore, I also need websites for my other firms in coming few months, so looking out some quality work and longer working relationship.
But for now, I just need this mockup.

Looking forward to hear from you. Kindly let me know your previous work in similar domain as well.

Thanks
Raghu

Skills required:
Graphic Design, User Interface / IA, Website Design

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Real Estate Website Promotion is Easy | Start Up

You are a Real Estate agent, real estate broker, or real estate web advertising for your business, you know how important it was to provide a real service. Local national and international real estate information on the Internet in search of a large number of people simply can not be ignored.

In the field of search engine marketing experts allocated a part of – at the same time you understand the best real estate advertising on the internet, master even the most difficult cost to buy, or perhaps the most mysterious.

Most doctors are very specialized skills, such as search engine marketing experts as mysterious and difficult to master in their field who do not have a fixed interest rate. But, in fact, is not that mysterious. No one in the local market will be able to dominate the search engines. Take it for a bit, and some hard work is all public knowledge.

Contact your real estate website to get a good position and principles are very simple and straightforward. They apply to any website, search engine marketing and real estate websites, it’s actually very easy to implement these policies, the same policies. Many real estate agents simply do not understand their work properly, because the local real estate searches in the search engines as well have given up trying to score.

But think about it for a minute. You “Real estate Phoenix” or “Banff real estate” or “Halifax real estate” or “Fort Lauderdale Real Estate” for Google in search, allowing you to page a week for the same real estate agent or agents when a week later, they How do I? What’s the magic formula they use real estate advertising on the website, or they have paid to the highest level?

Now before you answer that question, how did you know that Google assigns different websites, you can ask for this position. They have a computer online – pull names from a hat and a big? A few insiders know about their secret use of the rules?Of course not. Google in particular – in all the major search engines, whether it’s valid and what they are looking for. You “Real estate Phoenix” or “Real Estate Ottawa,” a term well-made if, in fact, you have to do all the planning for the Phoenix (or Ottawa) about the good information on your site, build your home page to focus on is the search path.

Search engines like content carefully. It has been shown that the term should be high on your site, the search for “real estate Phoenix” If you have a lot of content they consider appropriate.
That is fair enough. Real estate agents are market-focused than about Streat below and all relevant information is available, then you are chasing, you must have come up in the search engine rankings. This does not mean it?

That does not mean that you should not try. This simply means that you have to be patient and work hard. A closer look at his site and refocusing on your site by creating interesting and valuable content, and balance. Attention: The name of the game. By offering a variety of things that you can provide a specialist, “Calgary Real Estate” on the “expert,” it crystal clear.

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The Ultimate Home Buyer Guide to Real Estate Websites

Shopping for a home has never been easier, thanks to the likes of Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn (they helped invent the Internet). Home buyers can now quickly navigate online real estate listings and databases without the pain of blindly drifting among real estate agents ready to pounce.

Yet with the onslaught of real estate-related websites, a new problem has emerged for home buyers: deciding which site to use.

In the interest of helping buyers new to these home search tools, Movoto Real Estate stacked up the competition to shed some light on the many online real estate moguls.

After examining each website’s strengths, weaknesses, and usability, we awarded one company from each category as the online real estate all-star. Read on to find out Movoto’s top picks.

In the online real estate marketplace, there are three main types of sites: real estate search engines, online brokerages, and what Movoto likes to call “Brick and Mortar,” or real estate companies that existed pre-Internet and have since added online services.

Real estate search engines: Offer listings and public data for individual properties–whether on market or not; include websites such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Homefinder.comOnline brokerages: Provide information from a variety of sources about available properties and send potential clients to partnering agents; include Movoto Real Estate, Redfin, ZipRealty.com, and NeighborcityBrick and Mortars: Franchise of real estate offices with online services; include companies such as Century 21, RE/MAX, and Coldwell Banker

Look no further than our handy sortable graphic tool to find out how the major players compare.

The Home Buyer’s Guide to Real Estate Websites By Movoto Real Estate

In the Online Brokerages Category…
Top-rated brokerage website Redfin stood out with innovative and user-friendly functions such as:

The ability to choose an agent directly from the listing pageUp-to-date information on upcoming open housesThe option to select favorite homes or “x-out” less favorable properties (with an account)Website design that is incredibly easy to for first-timers to understand

In the Online Real Estate Search Engines Category…
Real estate marketplace Zillow impressed us with its extensive listing features, including:

Its signature home valuation tool, the ZestimateThe ability to compare public facts with combined facts for a more complete property descriptionA property-specific monthly payment calculatorContact information for an actual agent

In the Brick & Mortar Category…
Franchise company Century 21 blew its competitors off of the map with its selection of data and user tools such as:

Efficient calculator tools on refinancing, renting vs. buying, and affordabilityDetailed information about nearby schools, including a parent ratingEasy-to-understand demographic bar graphsLocal weather averages

The Movoto blog is a service of Movoto Real Estate. If you’re looking for a new home, keep us in mind. We have up-to-date real estate listings and local agents throughout the country. When you want to take a break from browsing homes, you can keep coming back to read awesome blog posts like this one.

Kristin Crosier is a staff writer for Movoto and a recent graduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also enjoys editing (oddly enough), and has a Minor in Professional Editing.

View the original article here

New Treads in Real Estate Website Designs Middle East

8 things that make the latest generation of real estate website designs stand head-and-shoulders above their 2008 antecedents.

The business of real estate is changing and so too is the technology used by agencies to get their message across to clients and prospects. This is particularly true for real estate websites, which have seen significantly improved over the previous years.

Unlike the website of the 2008 era, the new real estate websites are focused on usability and user experience. The cutting edge sites aren’t filled with “happy talk”, benefit-laden statements or blinking Flash advertisements, instead they are geared towards initiating a dialogue with visitors, and gaining their trust by addressing their needs and demands. Such sites speak honestly and directly to their audience and are winning big.

Although different in their approach and marketing techniques, most real estate website designs in the Middle East use some common tricks to stay in the game. These include:

Sites like Bhomes, Allsopp & Allsopp and Palma-re are designed with an end-user in mind. Faster loading times, bespoke property search features, detailed property listing, and candid overviews of services are hallmarks of this new approach.

Instead of bombarding clients and prospects with regional property information, most new websites are skewed towards a particular locality or geographic location. This focus is critical, as it tends to give credibility to a website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an indispensable tool for online success. Apart from being fine-tuned for SEO, the latest websites also flaunt a news blog. These blogs are used not only to market services but to keep clients and prospects informed on real estate trends, best places to invest, open houses and special offers. Blogs are also used to supplement and boost an agency’s social media presence.

Unlike older designs, the latest real estate websites are laced with visible “Calls of Action”. Clients and prospects are encouraged to seek additional information or clarification about what’s available, and spend as much time on the site as possible. As per research, agencies spend a disproportionately high volume of work hours to design and develop sites that offer quick and hassle-free navigation.

It is observed that most agencies have rejected template websites in favour of bespoke designs. Most realtors willingly spend exorbitant sums to develop websites that stand out from the rest and offer services in the manner that best suits the brand image.

Most new real state sites are built on ASP.NET or PHP, and use powerful WCMS platforms such as: DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! to stay fresh and updated; a far cry from previous generations of designs.

Social media is a reality very few estate agencies can ignore. The latest generation of real estate sites offer wider integration with social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and even use Youtube videos for promotion and marketing.

Another facet of post-2008 real estate website design is increased accessibility across a myriad of mediums, especially across smart-phones and tablet PCs. This fact is commonly referred to as “responsive web design”.

Below are a few examples of best practices in real estate web design in the Middle East:

Johnny Huntington is a Managing Director of Traffic, a reputable web agency in Dubai, UAE which specialized in real estate website designs and have successfully develop a number of real estate websites for the Middle East realtors. You can follow Traffic @trafficsqwalk on Twitter.

View the original article here

New Treads in Real Estate Website Designs Middle East

8 things that make the latest generation of real estate website designs stand head-and-shoulders above their 2008 antecedents.

The business of real estate is changing and so too is the technology used by agencies to get their message across to clients and prospects. This is particularly true for real estate websites, which have seen significantly improved over the previous years.

Unlike the website of the 2008 era, the new real estate websites are focused on usability and user experience. The cutting edge sites aren’t filled with “happy talk”, benefit-laden statements or blinking Flash advertisements, instead they are geared towards initiating a dialogue with visitors, and gaining their trust by addressing their needs and demands. Such sites speak honestly and directly to their audience and are winning big.

Although different in their approach and marketing techniques, most real estate website designs in the Middle East use some common tricks to stay in the game. These include:

Sites like Bhomes, Allsopp & Allsopp and Palma-re are designed with an end-user in mind. Faster loading times, bespoke property search features, detailed property listing, and candid overviews of services are hallmarks of this new approach.

Instead of bombarding clients and prospects with regional property information, most new websites are skewed towards a particular locality or geographic location. This focus is critical, as it tends to give credibility to a website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an indispensable tool for online success. Apart from being fine-tuned for SEO, the latest websites also flaunt a news blog. These blogs are used not only to market services but to keep clients and prospects informed on real estate trends, best places to invest, open houses and special offers. Blogs are also used to supplement and boost an agency’s social media presence.

Unlike older designs, the latest real estate websites are laced with visible “Calls of Action”. Clients and prospects are encouraged to seek additional information or clarification about what’s available, and spend as much time on the site as possible. As per research, agencies spend a disproportionately high volume of work hours to design and develop sites that offer quick and hassle-free navigation.

It is observed that most agencies have rejected template websites in favour of bespoke designs. Most realtors willingly spend exorbitant sums to develop websites that stand out from the rest and offer services in the manner that best suits the brand image.

Most new real state sites are built on ASP.NET or PHP, and use powerful WCMS platforms such as: DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! to stay fresh and updated; a far cry from previous generations of designs.

Social media is a reality very few estate agencies can ignore. The latest generation of real estate sites offer wider integration with social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and even use Youtube videos for promotion and marketing.

Another facet of post-2008 real estate website design is increased accessibility across a myriad of mediums, especially across smart-phones and tablet PCs. This fact is commonly referred to as “responsive web design”.

Below are a few examples of best practices in real estate web design in the Middle East:

Johnny Huntington is a Managing Director of Traffic, a reputable web agency in Dubai, UAE which specialized in real estate website designs and have successfully develop a number of real estate websites for the Middle East realtors. You can follow Traffic @trafficsqwalk on Twitter.

View the original article here