If it sounds too good to be true, they are likely trying to sell you something.
Some tech companies come in like lions roaring and raging about the effectiveness of their websites in search engines or capturing leads. When this happens, ask them how many of their websites actually show up in the top 20 search results for your market. Find out a good average of traffic for their domains; how many leads generally come in.

We Can Make You Number One in Google!
Be especially wary of anyone promising to get you to first place in any search engine. Google specifically states that no company can promise any sort of exclusive relationship with them; as search algorithms are always changing no search results can truly be guaranteed. One sneaky tactic is for them to indeed get you to #1 in Google, but not for a phrase anyone is searching for – you see it’s easy to rank for “purple zebra hacksaws” but no one is searching for that; even if they did it certainly wouldn’t help you move real estate.

We Syndicate Your Listings to HUNDREDS of National Sites
This is one of the biggest bragged about features that we’ve seen others waving a flag for. What they don’t tell you is that many of those sites like Zillow and Trulia scrape listing data all on their own – so really they aren’t syndicating anything. They’re still glad to charge you for the service…

Social Network Marketing is MORE than just Being There.
Some companies will charge hundreds of dollars just to setup a twitter or Facebook page. Once their obligation to create them is complete it’s hands off and you’re on your own. JUST having those profiles, and the little icon on your site, does absolutely nothing for you unless you are actively using those sites, and using them in a consistent and effective manner. There’s nothing more sad than visiting a twitter page and seeing “Last Tweet March 2010″ or a blog with default text right where it was created.

REALTOR® websites from Tour Real Estate are affordable and effective. They are search engine friendly from the start; feature the ability for you to control your content, links, and search engine visibility. We package all the online tools you will need to market your services and showcase your listings. TourRE has been revolutionizing the way real estate is found for over 10 years, we are a local Idaho technology solutions provider; our customer service and loyalty is unparalleled.

Too busy to blog? Too tired to tweet?
We can provide cost effective REALTOR® search engine optimization and social network management. We are even glad to help you learn more about using the profiles you may already have  so that you can take control of your digital presence all on your own.

Already a TourRE client and want to make more of your site? We’re glad to help out!Contact us so we can discuss how you can improve your online visibility and gain more traffic in 2012!

Not a TourRE client? What are you waiting for?! For about the cost of a one time print ad you could have a powerfully dynamic real estate website online 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year generating better business for you and helping you move more real estate!

While it’s never too late to get started making changes for the better, if you are just now getting started you are already behind the game. It is therefore important that the content you are putting out there be as strong as it can be.

For those brave souls daring the universe by taking their own social management in hand (the way honestly, it should be) there can be a long, confusing, and often frustrating road ahead. We’ve gotten a little too used to instant gratification online; sadly getting results from your search engine optimization and social media marketing is very rarely an instant process.

Where do I even start?!

One of the most effective ways to improve traffic, share information, and get better search engine visibility is through blogging – this is especially true when you syndicate your blog to other profiles like a Facebook Fan Page.  With blogging, much like anything else, there is a vast difference between simply doing it and doing it well.

Here are some tips to help you write a better real estate blog…again.

1 – JUST having a blog or social profile doesn’t DO anything.
There is no set it and forget it in social media unless you are paying someone to do it for you. If you are not putting content into your blog on a regular basis, or interacting on your social profiles you may as well not even have them. There’s nothing that looks worse than visiting a blog or social profile and seeing “Last Update March 11,2009″.

2 – A single sentence, link, photo, or paragraph does not a blog make.
Writing just a single sentence or posting a photo by itself as a blog “post”  really isn’t going to help your search engine standing much. By posting one liners like this you kill your blogs power to create more keyword density, and to provide any kind of value to your visitor.

3 – Write well. Write frequently.
This means actually writing your own content. This does not mean copying and pasting a blog or news article from some other source (even if you credit the author) – this means actually typing out the words that come from your own mind.  It’s fine to reference outside sources, and even link out to them, but make sure you have at least a couple solid paragraphs of your own creation there to back them up. The next step is to write frequently – the more often your blog is updated the more frequently search engine spiders will visit it looking for new content.

4 – Keywords Keywords Keywords. Did I say Keywords yet?
Frequent blogging is great, and key to gaining better exposure, but chances are if you are guilty of #2 and #3 you’re probably not putting any keywords in your content either. Keywords are the words or phrases you want people to type into a search engine to find you – by including them in your text content you increase the level of relevancy search engines give you for those words. So it’s important to have them somewhere in your text. Don’t over stuff your posts with them, but make sure they do show up.

5 – Tag em and bag em.
If you are on the WordPress blogging platform, or if your blog supports the use of TAGS and CATEGORIES make sure you use and include these with every post; make sure they are relevant to the content you are creating and your keywords. By using tags and categories (which generally appear with each post) you don’t have to worry as much about including keywords in your blog post text; these elements provide great organizational abilities so that visitors can find information on the specific topics that interest them.

Where do I go from here?

Once you’ve got these details down you can do other things to help your blog gain exposure like submitting it to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. There are also any number of social networks out there that let you publish blogs on their systems as well, so take what you’ve blogged,  write a short intro for it and then link to it from those other sources as well – like Merchantcircle, Activerain, and LinkedIn.

Still have questions about writing a better real estate blog? Just don’t have time to blog on your own? Either way we are glad to help out – contact us and let use know what we can do to be of service!

More Tour Real Estate REALTOR® websites appear in the top search engine results than any other one company. We’ve been innovating online real estate for over a decade, and we’re only getting better.

Tour Real Estate Gold Package

In today’s technology driven real estate market you’ve got to be on the very cutting edge if you want to compete. There was a time when simply being online was enough to guarantee your share of the digital audience, this is no longer enough. While EVERY REALTOR® website we produce is highly search engine friendly, and extremely customizable, this special add-on service can help you gain better exposure for your online presence. Here’s what’s included:

Weekly Blog Posts for YOUR target marketFacebook Fan Page Setup / Weekly Management

Twitter Setup / Weekly Management

Gain Quality Backlinks to your site

Website Optimization for YOUR target audience

Tour Real Estate has helped establish the industry standard in real estate technology for over the last decade. We understand social network media for real estate and how you can leverage it to gain better exposure for your listings and services.

Unlike many new real estate technology companies that talk a good game and blow a lot of smoke, we believe in providing our clients with the tools they need, not selling them a lot of hype that they can’t use.

Maybe the Gold Package isn’t for you. Already a TourRE customer? We can work with you to help you make the most of the tools found within our system at little to no cost; are glad to help you learn the keys to better exposure for your digital presence.

Contact us today for your REALTOR search engine optimization consultation so we can custom tailor an online strategy for your success in the coming new year!

This newest template features an attractive zen-like design with a quick search prominently at the top. The main body of the website contains ample room for your business bio or other information, as well as our standard home page modules. As an extra bonus the top 5 newest listings randomly rotate below your contact information in the sidebar – adding valuable search engine visibility.

This template comes in a few different color themes and has multiple flash slideshows for you to choose from.

Like the layout buy looking for something more custom? We can customize this, or ANY of our website templates to your specifications to help you stand out from the crowd with custom colors, branding or other functionality.

This beta release features a larger photo format, more refined screen layout, and search engine optimized coding for optimal web presence.

Tour Real Estate customers can check out this sneak peek by logging into their client toolbox and posting photos for their listings in the Photo Tour section. The photos you post there will replace the ones from MLS on your website with us in this exciting new format!

Future developments for this project include fully customizable looks to brand your tour window to you, youtube movie publishing from the photos you upload, music support, and automatic virtual tour creation of your listings as they hit the MLS! Stay tuned to this blog for developments as they occur and in the meantime feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

• Listings are automatically added from your MLS, saving you time!
• Manual Non MLS, Rental, and Commercial Listings Display
• Multiple, search engine optimized, MLS Searches provides your visitors with a number of ways to search
• Over 50 attractive template to choose from in many color themes with easy and affordable customization available
• Hassle-free custom page  system lets you create an unlimited number of pages to showcase developments, events, or other items.
• Easy Link Exchange management and Business Partner pages
• And much more!

We give you all the tools you need to create a powerful online presence; we’re developing more every day! ALL of this and more is available for about the cost of a one time print advertisement. Contact Tour Real Estate Inc today to find out how we can help you start the New Year off right!

REALTOR® websites from Tour Real Estate provide your visitors with a number of ways to find the properties they are looking for quickly and easily. Our data comes direct from MLS and is then fully optimized to be highly search engine visible. These searches and more come standard in all of our designs:

It’s No Secret…

Having a elegant and functional website is the foundation of creating a successful digital presence. Beyond providing some of the most powerful and search engine friendly real estate web designs available today we are also constantly creating new tools to help you showcase your listings and services.

Just because you have a template website doesn’t mean you’re at a disadvantage – especially if that template website comes from Tour Real Estate Inc.

1 – Meta Tag Administration. By going into this section of your toolbox you can control the title,keywords,and description for nearly every page on your site. Follow the guidelines described here to learn more about properly entering meta-data.

2 – Add Alt-Tags. If you website template uses our homepage modules go into the Customize Your Homepage section of your toolbox and edit the modules you find there. Under the edit function for each module you will find a space for “alt tags”. Enter link relevant keyword text in this space.

3 – Edit your homepage text. Under your Personal/Team/Office settings you can enter a few paragraphs of text – make sure it is keyword rich. In addition go in and edit the text on all of the default homepage modules, by entering your own unique and keyword rich text in these spaces you will help your website stand out to visitors and search engines alike.

4 – Social Links. Go to the social links area in your toolbox and enter the URLs for any social networks you may be active on. If you do not have accounts on these social networks it is a good idea to create them and become familiar with using them.

5 – Get More Links. How many links from outside sources point to your website can be a big factor in it’s search engine visibility. Therefore it is a good idea to have as many links as you can pointed to you. Make sure all your social profiles have links to your main website on them, get friends who have websites to add a link to your site, comment on other websites/blogs and include a link, enter your links on any of the hundreds of free  directories online. It is best to only exchange reciprocal links with other websites of high quality but ANY link pointed to you is better than none at all. The Link Exchange section of your toolbox will allow you to easily create, edit, and manage your link exchanges with other sites.

These are just a brief Top 5 things you can do to start improving your templated REALTOR website. There are any number of other things that can be done to help promote your digital  presence; we’re always glad to talk with our REALTOR website clients to see how we can help them make the most out of their websites with us. We aren’t going to blow a lot of smoke and tell you that your website will change your world, but it CAN be one of your most valuable and cost effective marketing tools – and when it comes down to it a real estate website is just that, a tool, if you use it you will see results, if you don’t it will lay there and rust.

Contact Tour Real Estate today if you need help using your website with us, or if you are a real estate professional looking for a highly functional and powerful web presence.

That being said it is thereby important that your site itself be easy to navigate and your real estate searches be easy to use. But there’s more to it than that – in today’s search engine driven market it’s essential that your listing results and search pages also be search engine friendly.

Most IDX feeds will get you your data, but sadly most are less than optimized, or don’t get indexed at all by search engines – this could be robbing you of valuable listing traffic; hamstringing your ability to showcase your properties.

Tour Real Estate Inc, your provider of exceptional online real estate marketing tools is proud to let you know that our website clients enjoy not only a robust display of images and MLS details, but also fully optimized, search engine friendly listing and search pages.

Through the use of powerful dynamically written code we are able to make sure that your listings will be found in search engine results more often by optimizing the available data content – with NO extra effort from you!

**Real Estate Market Dirty Secret: MANY real estate website companies make a big show of popular national logos, claiming that they “syndicate” your listings across the country – FACT is those national sites like Trulia and Zillow go out and get that data all on their own…Don’t fall for smoke and mirrors, TourRE gets you results without all the techno-mumbo-jumbo!

If you make your visitors jump through firey rings just to be able to search for homes don’t be surprised if they start looking elsewhere. If your site is hard to use, or your searches don’t function well we can tell you there are hundreds of other sites for them to choose from with working, search engine friendly, searches.

In the end, the easier you make it for people to search for homes, the better and the easier it is for search engines to find those listings the more people will find them also. Tour Real Estate Inc provides some of the best real estate websites online – contact us to find out how we can start helping you move more real estate today!

We love seeing our REALTOR website clients making the most of the internet by leveraging social networks; we love giving them the tools to make it happen!

As one more part of that passion we’ve made it possible for our clients to send their listings directly to today’s most exciting social networks!

Simply login to your Client Toolbox, click Your Listings on the left, choose the listing you want to publish by clicking it’s MLS ID; on the page that opens click the Facebook or Twitter icons. You will then be prompted to login to those systems like you normally would and even include a customizable message with the post!

Are you a real estate professional who is harnessing the power of social networking to move more real estate? We’d love to hear from you! Share your success stories with us on our Tour Real Estate Fan Page.

Not on the social networks yet? Are you confused regarding how you can use social network marketing?  We can help! Contact TourRE today for the best in REALTOR social network marketing!