Google Plus - Why you should be using it for your real estate agency

Often other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are favoured over Google +, but this unassuming social network is just as important for your business - here is why.

The latest statistics show that Google + has over 300 million active users and was recently folded in Google My Business (Google’s way of getting you more customers.) Therefore, it only makes sense that you spend some time getting your business on Google +

Google + not only presents an opportunity for you to connect with customers and your other industry connections, it has a significant impact on SEO - unlike other social networks. The reason for this boils down to the fact that a Google + page makes it easier for people to find you on Google - this can be attributed to its inclusion into the Google My Business product.

Google My Business use Search, Maps and Google + to make your brand more visible in local search results. Customers will be able to find your business hours, your business address or contact details by simply searching for “real estate agents Hoedspruit” for example.


The easier you are to locate on Google, the higher you will rank and as a recent study showed from Optify, websites that appear on the first page of Google get 54.8% of all the clicks from users.

These local searches are becoming increasingly important as mobile internet usage continues to grow, meaning that improving your local SEO will also becoming more vital.

Another great feature of Google + since the recent tweaks is the fact that customers no longer require a Google + account to leave reviews. That means that anyone can now leave a review and share their experience working with you - this immensely helps with your business’s credibility which in turns can help increase your organic search ranking and might help you garnish new customers without having to do much.

As with any SEO, the results won’t be immediate - it will take time, but by sharing listings or news articles from your Flex website on your page you are possibly reaching clients you wouldn’t have normally.

Find out more about Google My Business 

Popular posts from this blog

Easily link Base with external CRM systems

Image
What is the Base Zapier integration? The Entegral Base system was recently improved with a native Zapier app integration . This allows estate agents to exchange data and create automated workflows with over 2000+ popular apps, including all the leading CRM specific apps.  Why even link a CRM system? Although Base has contact management, contact categories, automatic lead import, and other great CRM features , users sometimes require very specific CRM functions that we don't (yet) cater to. With our Zapier integration , we allow agents to link any popular app with Base. Once linked with your app, you can for instance automatically synchronise your contacts from Base to the external app or vice versa.  The added benefit is that you can create automated workflows and link more apps (e.g. insert contact details into a Mailchimp drip email campaign  and ZOHO CRM at the same time). This makes the Zapier fee irreverent compared to the derived benefits.  Automated portal lead import from
Read more

Property24 acquires Private Property, what do estate agents think?

Image
Property24.com, South Africa’s largest property portal owned by Naspers, has bought rival Private Property . The deal is likely to come under the close scrutiny of competition authorities as it involves the two biggest property portals in the country. Due to the impact of such an acquisition on the industry, Entegral was interested to find out what the perceived advantages and disadvantages of such a deal would be, both through the eyes of the consumer and the estate agent.   Here are the results from around 250 responses received on a survey done over a 2 day period , mostly from agents and agency owners. While the survey presents a small portion of the market (a ccording to the EAAB's latest annual report there are 19,424 registered agents and agency owners, excluding intern estate agents, in South Africa) , f eedback has been received from well-respected agency owners and agents, and we believe this gives a good indication of the current view of agents. The fear from estate
Read more

US trends show more buyers come from internet, less from print

Image
Where home buyers found the home they purchased- 2001 vs. 2008   Have a look at the very interesting figures published for USA home buyers on: http://rismedia.com/2009-03-29/buyers-becoming-more-successful-finding-homes-through-internet/   The NAR statistics show that 7 years on from 2001, 32% of home buyers found their home through the internet. What’s even more interesting is that print newspaper hardly makes an impact, a mere 3% of buyers found their home through print.  
Read more