Free Traffic for REALTORS

On friday, part one of a 4 part series I put together was posted on Realtown titled Why 95% of REALTORS Are Leaving BIG Money on the Table. The first part deals with passing up free traffic. Online marketing opportunities have changed for real estate. There are a lot of places that can provide free exposure for listings. I think this is still the first phase of new trend. I think back to when search engines were coming out right left and center. There was Altavista, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, let's not forget Webcrawler.. and many others. They used different algorithms, produced different results and it seemed like there were more opportunities to generate free traffic. As we moved into era of paid search, prices were so low at the beginning, we endulged in a traffic bonanza. As paid search prices went up and search engines consolidated, traffic seemed to become more challenging to come by.

Today, there are more and more syndication sites that are providing consumer search and in turn, provide an opportunity for free exposure. I'm not sure where this is going to go. Some search sites will rise in popularity, some will fade into obscurity. We could see massive consilidation or we could see massive fragmentation toward more local portals. We could see these sites continue to build on an advertising model that continues to provide free exposure for some time to come, or we could see many of them try to start monetizing the content providers, the real estate professionals.

What ever the future holds, the strategy is clear for now, get your listing in as many places as possible and milk the free traffic for all it's worth!

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