Tips For California Listing Agents

There is no question that for most real estate agents, the key to success is a large arsenal of listings. True, there are other ways to be successful in your real estate sales business. You can be a great buyer's agent without ever having a single listing of your own.

However, the most successful buyers agents have a lot of listings, and that is no accident. It's because a steady stream of listings keeps an agent well publicized in the community as an expert. When you have a listing, you have an incentive to market yourself a little more than normal. That extra publicity, whether it is through listings on the MLS or advertisements in magazines, newspapers, and online, helps to get buyers familiar with your name. They see your name everywhere in neighborhoods and advertisements, and make an obvious connection. You're the one to call when they need to buy a home.

So how do you get more listings? If you are a California listing agent (and of course, these tips apply to most markets), here are some tips for getting more listings in your inventory so you can earn significantly more income in the coming year.

1. Build your own real estate website

Having your own real estate website is essential to establishing yourself in the minds of sellers as the "resident expert." Many agents rely on their broker-provided, standard-issue website. This is a huge mistake, because it doesn't allow the agent to brand himself or herself independently of the brokerage.

Only slightly better is to rely on a third party website that is essentially a "rented" or "leased" website. While giving the agent more control over their own branding and website functionality, the agent is still placed at the mercy of a third part company. Very little customization can be done on such sites when it comes to custom programming and server-level changes.

When you own your own website, and the webhosting account is in your name, you maintain ultimate control over your own online marketing destiny. Hiring someone to build you a quality real estate site can be expensive, but it is a drop in the buck compared to the lost commissions from not making the investment in your career. When you consider spending $5000 now vs. losing years of extra commissions, the decision is clear.

2. Get your website ranking on Page 1

It can take some time and hard work to get your site to rank on Page 1 of Google or Bing (Yahoo typically parrots Bing results now, and most other search engines don't matter). Companies that do professional quality real estate SEO can help you with this endeavor, or your can opt to learn SEO yourself.

SEO is time consuming and very competitive, but is rewarding to learn if you have the time. You'll be required to do a lot of writing (or hire others to do a lot of writing), and then publish your articles in various online publications (article directories, blogs, social networking sites, etc.).

At some point, you'll need to decide whether you are in the real estate business or SEO business, because it is possible to spend more time on this aspect of marketing than actual real estate transactions.

3. Get listed in free and paid real estate agent directories

There are a number of free and paid real estate agent directories. It is always helpful to get your website listed in DMOZ and Yahoo Directory. One good paid directory to check out for California listing agents is www.californialistingagent.com. Another directory of real estate agents listed by state is www.oneagent.us. Here is a list of free directories from Google.

4. Write articles on real estate marketing

Article marketing is one of the leading methods of distributing your content so you can get the ever-important backlinks to your website. Backlinks help your site to rank better on Google and other search engines. When you submit a professional article on how to sell your home fast, how to qualify for a mortgage, etc., you not only present yourself as an expert in your field, but have the opportunity to link the article back to your site.

Make sure to link back using your SEO keywords in the anchor text of the link whenever possible. Anchor text is the text that someone clicks on to go to the linked site. Your SEO keywords should be chosen based on the keywords users actually use to find agents in your area. Most often that is "YourCity Real Estate," but there are many variations that can deliver significant traffic to your site.

5. Submit real estate press releases for publicity and SEO

Real estate press releases are a great way to get additional exposure for your business. It is a more advanced form of article marketing, because a press release in its basic form is an article. Knowing how to write press releases and where to distribute your press release for free or paid publication is important, because the breadth and depth of your distribution will determine how effective the press release is at getting your announcement spread to thousands of website.