website optimisation - presented at the property drum social media conference

Making your web presence work

Presented by Chris HainesMD of the Evolvin Group of companies

Your web presence is made up of several facets :

• Your website• Blogs by you and your key staff• Your social networking sites

They are all important.


Part 1

Website design and content



• Design is important• First impressions count• You have 3 seconds to impress• This is your brand• Pay attention to the detail• Generate lots of content


The psychology of web design:• The users eye works left to right, top to bottom…


The psychology of web design:• No more than 3 clicks to get to results…


Get the most out of your stock:• Multiple photos• Floorplans• PDF documents• Video

Search engines like lots of mixed content…


Have regular content updates:• News and articles pages• Include images and links• Have a regular pattern

Tips on content:• Make the news positive• Keep it personal• Raise your staff profile

Other things you need to do with your website:

• Use Google Webmaster tools• Produce and publish a sitemap• Have good page titles and meta tags• Push your domain to directory listings• Tell the search engines your site exists• Tell all your clients….


Part 1b

Things not to do...



Don’t use framed content to show your property from other sites


Host your own website and use your own links for images and content

Other things not to do:

• Don’t point more than one domain at the same site– This is seen as a duplicate and you will be penalised

• Setup your domain correctly– www.domain.com and domain.com – Use a permanent redirect

• Don’t use duplicated content in more than one place– This includes feeds from news sites etc– Articles should link to their source


Part 2

Creating your social content


Create profiles and pages on the social sites:

• Twitter– Create a page for your company

• Facebook– Create a page for your company– Get lots of friends to like and follow the page– Set a friendly name for the page once you have 25+ likes

• LinkedIn– Create a group for your company– Register your company– Get your key staff to sign in and register against the company– Get your clients to post recommendations



Populate your feeds:Push new, featured property and price reductions to Twitter, Facebook & LinkedInGet your news and articles distributed to the social sites


Publish video or image animations:Generate YouTube content from your property, via videos, or animated image setsCreate a branded channel for your own videos, with your logos and branding


Creating blog content:

Use a blog platform, or amend your website to do the job

Raise your profile through specific blogs for your niches

Always provide links back to your website

Push these articles to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn


Creating blog content:

Use mixed media – images, documents, videos etc

Consume your YouTube videos directly in your blog content

Allow users to recommend, share, like and bookmark your articles

Track the content with Google Analytics (more later)

But does this mean I need to spend time updating lots of sites with content?



TotalSocialHub:

• push content to multiple sites in one go

• manage multiple profiles and brands

• allow multiple users access to manage

• integrates with all the major sites

• works the way you do, so you don’t need to be a techy!

Other things you need to do with your social:

• Register all your offices with Google Places• Get your clients to comment on review sites• Tell everyone about your sites and profiles

– Amend your email signatures– Add instructions to your standard letters


Part 3

Make sure your site is visible



See where you stand:

• http://uitest.com

These links will provide insight into how the search engines see your website, and allow you to measure and tweak the content and output.

http://uitest.com/


Make your web content accessible and friendly:

• http://validator.w3.org

Make sure your website is compliant and well formatted HTML.

http://validator.w3.org/

http://validator.w3.org/


Make your website load quickly:

• http://pingdom.com

Search engines like sites that load quickly and reward you accordingly

http://pingdom.com/

http://pingdom.com/


Get suggestions on changes:

• http://nibbler.silktide.com

See how you can amend your website and content to perform better.

http://nibbler.silktide.com/

http://nibbler.silktide.com/

Part 4

Reporting and analytics



Google Analytics

It is simply criminal not to integrate with Google Analytics.

The service is free, amazingly powerful, and provides valuable insights into traffic.

Questions and Answers


website optimisation - presented at the property drum social media conference

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