Lets talk websites! That is the key to getting estate work and diversifying your business.
One of my best decisions after becoming a real estate appraiser was to create a website to get orders and to focus on making it the top ranking website in Google for my primary keywords.
If you have an existing website, that is great and you have a good place to start. Unfortunately, if you have a Xsite, you might want to get another website to get appraisal orders and keep the Xsite because it looks pretty and you might have it on your business cards and advertising. The problem with the Xsites are that they are not very user friendly in terms of Search Engine Optimization and they share a lot of the same text across multiple appraiser websites, which Google sees as duplicate content and will not allow you to rank for any of it.
You need a top ranking website to get appraisal orders.
For now lets focus on getting a completely new website so you can do it right from the very beginning.
You have a couple options, you can get a professionally designed website that focuses on the appraisal industry at http://www.appraiserwebsites.net or you can get a simple host account with a WordPress blog and build it yourself. It all comes down to cost. Appraiser Websites does include the search engine optimization and link exchange that will help you get ranked quicker, but do whatever is comfortable with you. The additional benefit of building the website yourself is that you will have to learn the techniques to get a top ranking website and you can apply it to other projects if you need additional websites.
So pull out a piece of paper and identify your top keywords. These are what your customers search for when trying to find an appraiser in your area. I will show you detailed information on the tools I use to find all my primary keywords in a follow up Email soon.
Most people search for:
[city name] +appraisal
or
[city name] +appraiser
when trying to find an appraiser in their area. So identify the top cities within your market, identify the top 5 cities and make your list.
Next determine the name you would like for the website. A keyword specific name will help your rankings, so you should go with your #1 top term. My top keyword is San Diego Appraisal, so I would try and get sandiegoappraisal.com. If that is not available, I would then search for sandiegoappraiser.com and then add additional words if that is not available. You have a lot of options like sandiegoareappraiser.com or .net, fastsandiegoappraisal.com, etc…
You can check the availability of names at http://appraiserwebsites.net/domain-availability.php. A domain name costs only $19.95 a year, so you can build multiple websites focusing on different cities or services. I have about 10 different websites covering areas I wish to focus on.
Buy your new domain name and either get it built or build it yourself! I will email you in about a week to make sure you have purchased your new name and give you more steps on either getting your website built or steer you in the right direction on building your own.
Future posts will cover keyword selection, search engine optimization, hosting and more.
If you have any questions, please send me a comment at [post to blog below], and I will get back to you!
So to follow up:
1. Build a website or buy one at http://www.appraiserwebsites.net
2. If you have an existing website and would like me to review it to suggest changes, please email me or use my contact form.
Bryan Knowlton
Appraiser Income
http://www.appraiserincome.com
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linkedin – http://www.linkedin.com/in/appraiserincome
