Agent Profiles - Insufficient Data on Profiles

The agents’ profiles on the website lacked sufficient data. The profile pages covered the basics like name, phone, and bio, but didn’t include listings, brokerage listings, map tools, testimonials, or sold data. In addition to a lack of information, the pages were not designed to work on mobile and were glitchy.

Agent Websites - No Agent Websites

When CloseHack initially conducted their technology audit on Beach City Brokers, they realized that there wasn’t a process to create IDX websites for each brokerage agent. Forcing an agent to find, set up, and pay for a website created a bottleneck during agent onboarding. This inefficiency became a significant cause for concern. 

Inherent problems: Low Adoption Rate:

• Less than 20% of the agents created websites that met average standards: IDX, Property Search, & Lead Capture.

Extra Spending:

• On average, agents spent $500 – $5,000 on website setup fees and $99/month – $500/month on hosting and licensing fees. An inability to benefit from brokerage group discounts from vendors resulted in these high fees. 

Inconsistent Branding:

• Some of the agent websites used outdated logos and branding. Not having the ability to globally change the branding resulted in increased fees for agents wanting to update their website.

Competing SEO:

• Without knowing or understanding how SEO works, the individual agents were competing for the same keywords and hurting their prospects of ranking higher on Google.

Local Marketing Vs. Real Estate Technology:

• Some of the websites were created by local marketing companies versus being made by real estate-specific technology companies. The issue was that the agents didn’t understand that hiring a local company to build a solution from scratch is expensive and would still provide suboptimal results. Technology companies invest millions into specializing in real estate development, while local marketing companies have limited real estate experience and no specialization.

Some of the agents purchased domains to point to their profile on the brokerage website. Doing this led to a lack of indexing of individual agent websites because no content was hosted directly on the agents’ websites. As a result, individual agents did not receive credit for their data or content in terms of search engine optimization. Additionally, because they had no individual website to send leads to, there was no way of tracking leads, which resulted in lost leads.

No Meta Information

The Beach City Brokers website didn’t utilize the meta information to help tell Google who or what the website was about. The image below shows that both the title and the meta do not provide information about the website. You would expect both the title and meta to contain the brokerage name (Beach City Brokers) and the homepage to contain the geolocation.

CloseHack Hosts More Data on the Beach City Brokerage Website

Initially, the Beach City Brokers website had less than 100 pages indexed on Google. To clarify, this means that there were only 100 results for Google to serve in the searches when users searched for real estate in their area. Searching for an agent’s name, location, or even brokerage website wasn’t an option because of the low page count. Data can be a valuable asset for any brokerage that uses it correctly. Within a week of launching the new enterprise system, Beach City Brokers went from having 80 indexed pages online to 4,290 indexed pages. 

CloseHack Increases Page Count by Indexing Active Listings

When CloseHack first conducted their website audit on Beach City Brokers, they noticed that Beach City Brokers did not host their listings and domain on the same server. Instead, they were using a third-party IDX provider. As a result, CloseHack downloaded all of the Beach City Brokers listings to their servers/database and displayed them directly on the website. In addition to indexing the website’s listings, CloseHack created an HTML and XML sitemap to tell Google exactly what the indexed content was about.

CloseHack Increases Page Count by Indexing Agent Websites on a Subdomain

Another great way to increase the page count of a brokerage website is to provide all agents with websites hosted on the primary domain’s subdomain. In this case, CloseHack created hundreds of websites for each of the Beach City Brokers agents. In terms of increasing the indexed pages for Beach City Brokers, generating subdomains is a best practice. The brokerage now has access to the valuable data below and more:

• Name
• Phone Number
• Email
• Bio
• Headshot
• Listing Data

The above data will go to waste if one does not generate content and index it on the primary domain. CloseHack uses this necessary information to generate thousands of unique pages indexable online.

CloseHack Utilizes All Available Data to Create Robust Agent Profiles

The Beach City Brokers website previously displayed a limited amount of data on the agents’ profiles. The lack of data resulted in weak and low-value pages for the users. CloseHack rebuilt the agents’ profiles using all of the available data. This rebuild resulted in an agent profile useful to the end-user and increased site navigation.

Additions to the agent profile included:

• Sold Data
• Featured Area Map with Brokerage Listings
• Agent Testimonials
• Call-to-Action (Home Valuation)

Before CloseHack:

Lack of information on agent profiles.

CloseHack Profiles:

Robust agent profiles with high-value information for the end-user.

CloseHack Built 10-Page IDX Powered Agent Websites for 100+ Beach City Brokers Real Estate Agents

In addition to redesigning and developing the brokerage website, CloseHack also created 10-page fully customizable websites for 100+ Beach City Brokers real estate agents. Before making these websites, only 20% of the real estate agents had websites with their own domains. The main reason for this low technology adoption was not due to price, but instead due to the agents lacking the know-how to successfully find, pay for, and set up their technology. As a result of creating websites for all of the real estate agents, CloseHack made the following observations:

• Agents started putting their domains on their business cards.
• Agents had an incentive to drive traffic to their websites now that leads were guaranteed.
• Agents invested in digital advertising to drive traffic to their websites.
• Agents increased social media activity.
• Agents encouraged clients to search for listings on their website as opposed to Zillow or the MLS.
• Agents uploaded testimonials to their websites, which were then syndicated to the brokerage website.
• Agents created articles/blog posts that increased the overall digital footprint for both the agent and the brokerage.
• Agents were more confident in recruiting and empowered by technology.
• Agents captured leads from listing pages and home valuation forms.

CloseHack Implements Search Engine Strategy for Beach City Brokers

Search engine optimization can be a mysterious thing, but one proper way to test a website’s SEO quality is to do a boolean search of the domain. Typing site:{insert domain name.com} will retrieve all of the content Google has indexed for the website and display what it thinks the content is about. Google does this mostly with the title and the meta descriptions. When CloseHack initially conducted their research on Beach City Brokers, they noticed that there wasn’t the slightest attempt to conquer the search engine world. The example below demonstrates how Google saw Beach City Brokers before and after working with CloseHack.

OLD SEO STRATEGY (OR LACK OF ONE)

Take note of what is in bold above. The bold words are called “title tags,” one of Google’s most significant ways to know what a website is about. This information is pulled from the head tag in the code of the website. This pulling of information is not something the user can see on the website.

This is the code in the header of a website and what tells Google what your website is about.

It is easy to forget about SEO when focusing on a website’s visuals, but SEO plays a vital role in driving traffic and capturing more leads.

UPDATED SEO – UPDATED TITLE TAGS & META DESCRIPTIONS

CloseHack Indexes More Pages on Beach City Brokers Website

CloseHack Generates Title Tags & Meta Descriptions for Agent Websites

CloseHack Generates Title Tags & Meta Descriptions for Listings

The overall digital footprint was increased dramatically by properly titling and indexing data on the brokerage and agent websites. CloseHack created an HTML sitemap and XML sitemap and submitted these to Google webmasters combined with the proper setup. These fixes increased the likelihood of Google picking up more content and documenting more accurate data from the websites.

This video was created 100% hands-free for both the agent and the brokerage. This content was then indexed online, creating a sense of excellence without adding more work for anyone.

Increased YouTube Presence and Digital Footprint for Beach City Brokers

For the first time, one could find social proof when typing any agent’s name in the YouTube search. Each of these videos also directed traffic back to the main website.

YouTube Videos Search Engine Optimized for Real Estate by CloseHack

Over time, Beach City Brokers continued to sell more properties, get more clients, and generate more content. The best part was that this automated video solution was truly a “set it and forget it” type of software. Agents were empowered to tell their clients that CloseHack would always create a video for their listings regardless of the listing price.

CloseHack Provides Beach City Brokers with Customer Service Relationship Tool

One of the primary reasons that CloseHack decided to create a CRM for Beach City Brokers was to have all of the data in one place. Previously, the agents all had individual CRMs. Because each agent was using a different CRM, the data was fragmented. Thus, the managers didn’t have one CRM to see how all of the agents were doing. 

Creating a CRM for the brokerage allowed the managers to see how agents followed up with their leads. Some agents were more active in using the CRM than others. The ability to see how agents followed up with leads gave the managers a chance to change lead routing settings to route them to more active agents. They also learned whose numbers were lacking, which allowed them to train those agents towards better follow-up practices.

Another major reason that CloseHack created the CRM was to create a global message/brand across all of the interactions with Beach City Brokers agents. The admins could create canned email templates, blast emails, and drip campaigns that sounded like a cohesive brand. With all of the agents on the same CRM, the brokerage could train and share best practices.

CRM INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY FOR BEACH CITY BROKERS AGENTS

Instead of agents tracking their customers with spreadsheets and keeping sticky note logs of all of their interactions, all agents had a tool that increased output. From sending bulk emails to managed drip emails, the CloseHack CRM helped organize the agent’s client information and create a seamless real estate experience for both the agent and the user.

Summary

Although Beach City Brokers was already topping the charts for their category in Southern California, they invested in evaluating their current technology and took steps to improve upon it. They have officially been deemed a technology company. When an agent joins Beach City Brokers, not only do they get to be apart of a superb group of professionals, they also get access to incredible technology that empowers them in their profession. CloseHack continues to work with Beach City Brokers to develop and maintain scalable business technology solutions. To learn more about how CloseHack helped Beach City Brokers, please feel free to reach out.