Web Sites for Estate Agents

Designing and Building Websites for Estate Agents has become the domain of the specialist, and whilst having a great looking web site is crucial, of equal importance is achieving high ranking within search engines like Google.

Resource Techniques have been building websites for Estate Agents and Letting Agents for over 10 years and specialise in building web site specific technology, including development of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques, specifically for the Estate agency sector.

We produce beautifully designed award winning web sites for estate agents with amazing functionality offering a great user experience that project and promote our clients businesses at the forefront of technology.

Your company's web presence is probably the most critical marketing resource available to you and will become increasingly more so with younger buyers coming into the market, today it is reported that 7 out of 10 buyer and sellers finding you on the internet first.

... Which is fine but what if potential buyers and sellers can't find you and your web site when searching using a search engine (Google), it's not only a missed opportunity and massive loss of potential business but a complete waste of your hard earned money.

If by typing 'Estate Agents in... (followed by) your town' into Google and you're not list within the first page, you can be sure that you're losing business.

In recent years we have developed technology that ensures SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), the thing that determines how highly placed your site is within search engines like Google, runs through all of our products, Search Engine Optimisation shouldn't be an afterthought when building a web site, at Resource Techniques it's at the very core of all of our development.

Estate Agents are increasingly judged by the quality, design and functionality of their web site as well as its ranking within search engines.

We will happily provide you with a FREE review of your existing web site with absolutely no obligation.

Resource techniques offer a fantastic web design as well as having developed a strategy for ensuring that our web sites for estate agency clients achieve high ranking within search engines.

If you are an Estate Agent looking for a new web site or if your existing site needs updating, look no further than Resource Techniques.

Take a look at some examples of the web sites we've previously built for our estate agent client's, or call for a free informal web review.

Are You Twittering? NO? Think again...

Many businesses have, and continue to ignore the 'Social Networking' craze, most believe that twitter, facebook, dig and so on are the realm of the teenager, they are in some respects correct and whilst it maybe the realm of the 'x' gen 'y' gen (the under 30s age) these are just the people that are buying products and services today. There is now a huge weight of evidence in support of the ever increasing phenomenon of 'Social Networking'. Businesses, ignore it at your peril.

Reports suggest that social networking is now more popular than email. Twitter in particular grew 33% in only a month according to Compete data. Skittles.com increased its own traffic by 1332% in one day after a campaign that sent Skittles.com directly to a Tweet-stream (the site has since moved to different strategies of a similar nature like a Facebook page and currently a Wikipedia entry, which is in itself another interesting story).

Many brands large and small are realising the potential that Twitter provides, and as interesting as it may be to hear what 'Jonathan Ross' or 'Stephan Fry', two famous Twitterers, had for lunch today, many companies are realising that a more effective use of Twitter is to mine it for clients, recruit employees and answer customer questions. Twitter is becoming a primary traffic source for many sites as is Facebook and the other plethora of social networking sites. This trend will only continue as real-time search using this less conventional route continues to grow.

"Social search has been predicted for years and is now actually happening. Sure, most is entirely socially based but by providing real time, relevant information in a format and in an environment that is used by millions and millions of people, business opportunities are huge. Both social and business based networking will continue to grow and have a greater influence in our lives. It's increasingly clear why Google is obsessed with Facebook (and Facebook with Twitter). And they are not alone. Regardless of what many of the less enlightened think of Twitter and the like, there is no denying that it has made a tremendous impact on the web in general and the way people and businesses communicate.

What businesses can get out of Twitter:

- Traffic. Social networks have taken over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one, and continues to grow rapidly.

- People can "opt in" to follow your Tweets, so your messages will be well targeted. This makes it a great place to make announcements to your most loyal customers.

- It lets you interact with the public while increasing brand awareness

- Twitter's search function can help businesses better manage their online reputations in real time.

- Facebook apps can let you update Twitter/Facebook together. This means your Tweets can become your Facebook status and vice versa. Facebook is the most popular network around. Between Facebook and Twitter, you can build quite a following.

For help and advice on your Social Networking strategy - email troy@restech.co.uk

Social Media 'stats' that will blow your mind...

We are increasingly encouraged to blog this, flicker that and face book the other, before you know it you're twittering here, digging there and Goggling everywhere... As our electronic and physical lives become further obscured in the virtual cloud that is internet, the web has, for many, become an integral part of their lives, it is our primary source of communication and networking, a place where we work, rest and play...

Just how integrated into our lives and how reliant we've become on social networking and web 2.0 sites is scarily illustrated when you start looking at the statistical analysis, the numbers are mind blowing and truly awesome.

Below is a snap shot of the statistics from some of the major social networking and web 2.0 sites on the net today, as I say awesome, enjoy...

Google search stats:

Rough number of daily searches:

2004: 2,000,000 (two million) per day

2008: 2,000,000,000 (two billion) per day

1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) - approximate number of unique URLs in Google's index.

$110,000,000 - approximately amount of money lost by Google annually due to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button

24,400 - number of people employed by Google (December, 2008)

68,000,000 - the average number of times people Googled the word 'Google' each month for the last year

$39.96 - the average cost per click for the phrase "consolidation of school loans" in AdWords

1,430,000 - the number of Google results for "Robert Scoble"

136,000 - the number of Google results for "Admiral Ackbar"

Wikipedia stats:

2,695,205 - the number of articles in English on Wikipedia

684,000,000 - the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year

75,000 - the number of active contributors to Wikipedia

10,000,000 - the number of total articles in Wikipedia in all languages

260 - the number of languages articles have been written in on Wikipedia

YouTube stats:

70,000,000 - Number of total videos on YouTube (March 2008)

200,000 - Number of video publishers on YouTube (March 2008)

100,000,000 - Number of YouTube videos viewed per day (this stat from 2006 is the most recent I could locate)

112,486,327 - Number of views the most viewed video on YouTube has (January, 2009)

2 minutes 46.17 seconds - average length of video

412.3 years - Length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube (March 2008)

26.57 - Average age of up loader

13 hours - Amount of video that's uploaded to YouTube every minute

US $1.65 Billion in Google stock - amount Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for in October 2006

$1,000,000 - YouTube's estimated bandwidth costs per day

Blog - osphere stats:

133,000,000 - number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 - number of people globally who read blogs

7.4 million - Number of Blogs posted in the last 120 days

900,000 - Average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

1,750,000 - Number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

55% - percentage of the blogosphere that drinks more than 2 cups of coffee per day

81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere

59% - percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

Twitter stats:

1,111,991,000 - Number of Tweets to date

3,000,000 - Number of Tweets/day(March 2008)

165,414 - Number of followers of the most popular Twitter user (@BarackObama) - but he's not active

86,078 - number of followers of the most active Twitter user (@kevinrose)

63% - percentage of Twitter users that are male

Facebook stats:

150,000,000 - number of active users

170 - number of countries/territories that use Facebook

35 - number of different languages used on Facebook

2,600,000,000 - number of minutes global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily

100 - number of friends the average user has

700,000,000 - number of photos added to Facebook monthly

52,000 - number of applications currently available on Facebook

140 - number of new applications added per day

Digg stats:

236,000,000 - number of visitors attracted annually by 2008 (according to a Compete survey)

56% - percentage of Digg's frontpage content allegedly controlled by top 100 users

612 - number of stories from Cracked.com that have made page 1 of Digg

37,925 - number of Diggs the most popular story in the last 365 days has received see story, click here

Blogged with the Flock Browser

SEO - It's All About The Content

Many people think that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves some sort of magic formula.

Sadly, quite a few SEO firms perpetuate this myth by shrouding their work in secrecy and mythology, spouting words like "algorithm" when they talk to potential clients. They make it seem like their SEO work is similar to driving the space shuttle and mere mortals can never do it.

Almost inevitably, We find that the sites people want optimized (and that the SEO firms work on) are filled rubbish, irrelevant, unrelated garble... They're poorly written. They ramble on and on in an egotistical way about what the companies' products and services do. They're filled with industry jargon and corporate gobbledygook.

Our advice to people is that they need to understand their buyers and create great content that buyers will want to consume. That way, their pages will attain high rankings as the search engines gradually reward the great content.

Usually we get this message pushed back. People say they just want an agency to "tweak our existing Web pages." And, of course, many SEO firms are happy to take their money to do this.

Sorry, this doesn't work. The only way to create high search engine results is to create great content that people want to link to.

Performing search engine optimization on sites filled with rubbish just makes it slightly less rubbish.

We're amazed by how a piece of interesting content (a blog post, an e-book, a Web page) can generate high rankings for a tiny company, rankings way above those of the big, famous organizations. Actually, we're not that amazed as these are sites we produce.

Your challenge: Go to Google and do a search for the important phrases that your buyers are using to find organizations like yours, and look at where you fall in the search results. Consider what great content you can publish to trigger a high search traffic, that will get people linking to your content and send your site to the top of the search results.

Resource Techniques launch new Estate Agent product.

Resource Techniques software development and web design solution provider for the property industry, have launched a new and improved Version 2 web site for Estate agents.

Resource Techniques are a highly respected provider within the industry and are preferred suppliers for membership organizations and media groups such as Team, The Mayfair Office, Tiadle News papers and latest Homes.

The new Version 2 web site is in line with Web 2.0 design standards. It has improved functionality and includes integrated Google mapping that plots not only property search results but also local amenities, within the popular Google environment. We have also made major improvements in search engine optimization.

An example of what Resource Techniques new Version 2 website is capable of can be clearly seen with the design of the productive website www.penyards.com. The most important product that a website can have is ease of information and the Resource Techniques Version 2 websites offers exactly that.

Like most businesses, we have been exposed to the complexities of the IT world as the ever apparent requirements exist to improve the appearance, practicality and speed of electronic media and communications. Our experiences have been mixed but generally somewhat disheartening, that is until we had the good fortune of being introduced to Resource Techniques. Their interpretation of our requirements was first class. They were able to execute and deliver a plan in accordance with the agreed terms and were attentive and available to deal with any issues concerned, or matters of explanation that we required. Our move to Resource Techniques would certainly be one of our better commercial decisions for 2008.

Resource Techniques web design studio employs the latest internet technologies, ensuring that our customer's sites appear high in search engine rankings and a strong account management team ensures a structured upgrade path, keeping the sites fresh and up to date.

Our new Version 2 web site for our Estate Agent clients is a significant step forward in terms of both web site design and technical functionality, in design, we've combined the latest web 2.0 design concepts for improved usability along with W3C web standards for better accessibly. Functionality has seen a huge leap forward with property search results being displayed within Google mapping as well as local amenities and with our objective firmly fixed on improved search engine optimization (SEO) we have included content management systems to include our unique news feature. The new Version 2 sites have been incredibly well received by both new and existing Estate Agents clients and orders continue to come in thick and fast.

It is clear that Resource Techniques is committed to development of new and innovative solutions for this market and budget heavily each year for research and development hence the outstanding Version 2 web site.