Real Estate School Web

Can you prove that web advertising pays?

Website statistics are available for every real estate school site.  Counts can be viewed by page, by week, by source and many other ways.  Slice and dice the data, if you wish.  Look at charts and graphs. The cost is zero.  Is it worth your time to read the statistics and manage your website?

Ask any accountant – your website is an asset to your school.  To manage that asset, you look at its cost and its value.

You know the cost of your website – what you paid initially and any fees you pay for maintenance or hosting.  Costs are as easily measured:  you look at the invoice; you read the bank statement.

Website value is easily measured as well, once you know where to look.  Using web statistics —

• You track the number of visitors, and you know the source of those visitors.
• You know which search engine brings the visitors to your site, and which keywords were typed.
• You know the most and least popular pages on your site.

Those – and many other statistics – enable site management.  You can decide if a page should be updated.  You can know when and from where people visit your site.  You can choose keywords for search engine ads.  

What can statistics tell you?

Since the early days of the web – the 1990’s – hit counters have measured website traffic.  A “hit” can be any of these –

• Opening the web page
• Retrieving a graphic on a web page
• Responding to a mouse click

A visit to one page of a web site can rack-up several hits.  Do not confuse that statistic with a visitor count.  Hit tallies have limited value, beyond a webmaster technical evaluation of site performance. 

A site visitor count tells you the number of people reaching your website.  You can assume that word of mouth or advertising has brought them. 

Site visitor counts are more accurate than hit counts.  Visitor counts are based on the unique four-part code associated with every computer.  The code is called an Internet Protocol (I.P.) Address.  When a web page is displayed, the web host keeps a log of requesting I.P. Address.  Web statistics programs use the log to count visitors. 

Page view statistics reveal the parts of your website attracting the most and least interest.  Are online bookstore sales low?  Maybe site visitors never reach that page.

Website advertising can substantially boost traffic.  You can monitor this over any time period.  Referrer statistics will list and graph the external links and websites bringing traffic to your site.  You can drill further into details with search phrase reports.  These amazing reports list the keywords used to locate your website, and the number of visitors each brought.

Other statistics may interest your webmaster.  Knowledge of the browsers and software platforms that access your site can be used in site development and testing.  Is your website Netscape and Firefox-friendly?  If those browsers access your site, it should be.

Where can you find free statistics?

Many web hosts include statistics as part of their hosting plans.  Visit your web host site if you are not sure.  Read the package or plan descriptions.  There, you should find disk storage and data transfer amounts, along with email capabilities.  Among these, look for one further essential feature: statistics or traffic reports.

A few hosts charge a few extra dollars per month for website statistics.  Other hosts may provide only hit counts and page views.

You may wish to use Google Analytics.  This powerful, currently-free service enhances Google AdWords, but you do not need to buy advertising.  The only requirements are an AdWords account and a change to each web page.  The account is free, and the web page modification is not visible online.

Microsoft purchased the DeepMetrix Corporation in 2006, so it now owns a statistics package.  The DeepMetrix product offers detailed statistics, graphs and charts – as does the Urchin Software product purchased by Google.

Earn-Per-Click Profit for your Real Estate School Website

Online advertising is easy, common and profitable.  Want proof?  Visit any online bookseller and search for titles that include “AdSense”.  You should find about 15 books to help you “cash in”, earn “easy money” and learn the “secrets” of contextual advertising.

Better yet, go to the source.  Google.com offers AdSense.  Follow the link for “Advertising Programs”.  That leads to a second Google page which introduces both AdWords (discussed last week at RESchoolWeb) and AdSense.

Google is one of many sources for contextual ads.   Yahoo Publisher Network offers a similar program, as does does the MIVA Monetization Center (widely known as MC).

Enter “contextual ads” in your favorite search engine for more options.  Links will take you to dozens of sources.  Each source wants to place advertising on other websites – possibly your school website.

What it takes

Google AdSense and other contextual ad sources require completion of an online application.  The form can help both you and the advertiser determine if ads should be placed on your website.

Your signature (digital or faxed) certifies that you will follow various rules.  Because the ads on your website bring revenue, the provider will want assurance against “click fraud”.  One common rule is, a website owner cannot generate income by clicking the ads on that same site.

After approval, the advertiser is likely to provide HTML text that can be cut-and-pasted directly onto one or more of your web pages.  You can choose which pages, and where on the page.  Advertisers may require the page to have content – something more informative than a site index, a links or search page.  On a real estate school website, the best choices would be any page with licensing requirements, career information or Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ).

The benefits

Payment, terms and benefits vary.  Consider each of these as you compare ad sources:

• Contextual advertising from the right source can be easy to set up, and can quickly become an ongoing revenue stream.
• Ads will be matched to your site content.  They are unlikely to look out-of-place.  You may be able to choose colors and layout that blends with your web design.
• The provider should be able to block inappropriate advertising from your website.
• Where offered, free reporting can help you monitor earnings and make adjustments for greater profit.

The trade-offs

Keep these cautions in mind as well:

• You may have no way to estimate ad revenue.
  Chances are, the advertiser will require you to apply, configure and install the ads, and then wait to see how many clicks are generated from your site.  Until the revenue is earned, you probably will not know the value per click.
• Watch for competing ads.
  The advertising source should provide a tool that blocks other real estate schools from appearing on your website.  The tool may require that you type in the web addresses of other schools in your area.
• Online learning providers – with nationwide scope – could be more difficult to block.  Be especially cautious if your school offers online courses or a web-based bookstore.

Depending on the design of your real estate school site, contextual ads can bring in revenue and increase search engine scores without detracting from the appearance. 

Your next student is one click away

On a typical day, 60 million American adults use internet search engines*.  Many of your future students are among them. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising puts your message next to their search results.  Do you know how to place an effective PPC ad?
 *source: The Pew Internet & American Life Project, 11/2005.

With most advertising, you pay for placing an ad, not for the results that it brings. A homeowner can run a FSBO ad for months with no buyer response, and still must pay the newspaper.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising works differently. Cost is based on the actual number of click-through visits brought to your website. 

PPC may be the smartest, most affordable way to bring traffic to a website.  The site visitor is already  online.  They have gone to Google.com or another search site and entered keywords like "real estate school" and "license class".  Their needs and interests match what your school provides! 

The cost is determined by bidding.  Often, a click-through to your website can be 50 cents or less.  You set the ceiling price, and you set a maximum dollar amount per day or month.  Compare that to the cost of printing and mailing a postcard which is likely to be thrown away.

How to place PPC ads

How you place Pay-Per-Click advertising can depend on where you place it.   Three of the top search engines — Google, Yahoo and MSN — offer similar PPC advertising.  If you have another favorite search engine, be sure to check out procedures for ad placement there.

Your first step in placing PPC ads is to decide where to place them.  You will certainly want to consider one or all of the three leading sites. 

Leading sites provide online tools for choosing keywords and targeting specific regions, states or cities.  The keywords and geographic area determine the price you will pay per click.  If you choose highly unusual keywords and tiny, remote regions, the price per click can be low.  Unfortunately, your web traffic will reflect that.

Try different combinations, possibly limited to your state or the major city nearest you.  Leading sites offer a way to estimate cost per click-through.  In any major city, the keywords "real estate" alone will be too expensive - and not the words you want.  Every broker in the city could use those words.  Filter out house buyers and sellers by adding additional words.  You may want to try "real estate school" or "real estate license".  Caution! — even those could be expensive.

Limit expense by setting a budget.  Your choice of keywords helps you avoid competing with others who have more advertising dollars (brokers, for example).  Decide what a click-through is worth to your school.  What percentage of site visits results in a student registration, and what would you pay to capture that registration?

Many web hosts provide free statistics, telling you how many visitors reach your site.  Often, many details about those visits are available free as well - where the visit originated, pages visited, and much more.  We'll go more into web hosts and statistics packages next week.

Would you pay ten dollars for advertising that guaranteed a new pre-license registration?  No such guarantee exists, so divide the $10.00 by the number of site visitors estimated to produce that one registration.  Would ten visitors result in one pre-license registration?  If so, one visitor might be worth $1 in advertising cost.  In that case, you might bid up to that dollar-per-click.

Next, revisit your advertising budget.  Leading Pay-Per-Click (PPC) providers allow you to set a maximum budget per day and per month.  Begin small, and then increase your budget based on success.

You must also compose an ad  This ad appears near search engine results for the region and keywords on which you successfully have bid.  This may be the briefest ad you ever wrote.  Search engines do not allow much room.  Their online tool will help you fit the message into a prescribed space.  Note the advertising guidelines.  Your ad will be reviewed by human eyes and pulled from distribution if it appears exaggerated or potentially misleading.

Don’t advertise too soon

Imagine digging a dollar from your pocket to pay for a click-through to your site.  Hold on to that dollar until your website is ready.  Your school should not advertise until its website produces results.
An effective real estate school website —

• Gives a great first impression of your school
• Clearly (and prominently) offers the course that the site visitor needs
• Displays current information. This proves that your real estate school is in business; is not an abandoned website from 2002.
• Shows when the course is offered and how much it costs
• Provides information essential to the future student. Don't make them leave leave your website to find how to get licensed and where the state exam is administered.
• Tells how to take action, and suggests that action. "Call (999) 999-9999 to register." Even better, register now, online!

Pay-Per-Click ads leading to an effective website fill empty chairs.

Who cares about Spiders?

Business people who want busy websites should care about spiders. Spiders – also called web crawlers - are programs which roam the internet. They gather information from your website and about 80 million others.

The internet marketplace is vast and competitive. The search term “real estate school” finds about 1.1 million websites. Maybe your school site is one of them. The challenge is - how to move your website towards the top of that list.

In web marketing, knowledge is as important as dollars. You can not buy your way to top ranking in any search engine. You can find more expensive ways to advertise, but the most effective way to reach new students through the web is to make your site search engine friendly. That means your site must be prepared for spiders.

What spiders do

Spiders return website information to search engines like Google and Yahoo, who organize it for quick retrieval using indexes. Google uses a spider called the Googlebot. If you want potential students to easily find your website through Google, the Googlebot must find the right information at the right place.   
In the early years of the internet – not so long ago- spiders relied on keywords in meta tags. A clever web developer would put the most likely search terms directly into the meta tags:
<META name="KEYWORDS" content="real estate school, license, training">

Today, the Googlebot and other spiders rely much less on metatags. Instead, they evaluate the entire page more thoroughly. This makes search engines more accurate, which increases their value and popularity. Meta tag keywords have almost no value now.

1. Add appeal with <META> tag Descriptions

Keywords have little value, but other tags remain important. Include a relevant meta description with every page.
<meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="Here you describe the current page">

An accurate description of page contents can improve search engine scores. Also, the description makes results more readable at the search website. This will be more inviting to your future students.

2. <TITLE> each page

Another tag, <TITLE>, is the most important HTML on the page. Make it read like a headline. That headline should announce a real estate school in your state and city or region — plus one or two facts. For best results, choose facts that are likely to match search terms. Put yourself in the mindset of your future students. What terms will they type into a search engine, when looking for a school? Use those terms in the page title.

Reinforce the <TITLE> value by using the same words on the page. Short phrases in the title can be scattered through the page. Just be sure to include every title word. Your search engine rank can drop if the title does not match page content.

3. Limit the razzle-dazzle

Search engines can not hear the 1000 words that a picture says. Interactive movies and drifting snowflakes impress human eyes, but not web-crawling spiders.

Spiders look for text. Make text content easy to find by placing it near the top of the page. Often text is contained within <TABLE> tags. Web spiders read tables from top to bottom, one column at a time. That gives text in the first column higher priority than text in the last column.

Many web pages contain scripted code as well as the text and graphics that display in the browser. If it gets in the way, scripted code can dilute your search score. That is easy to avoid. Have your web developer move blocks of code as far down the page as possible.

4. Give spiders places to crawl

Internal and external links impact search page ranking.

Internal links take the web page visitor (including Googlebots and other crawlers) to other pages within your website or to other places on the same page. Spiders should visit every page of your site. They may not be able to do this if site menus are in a script language.

A common solution is to copy the menu choices from the top of the page to the bottom, or footer, of the page. Footer links should be simple hyperlinked text. They only take minutes to write, and make your site easier to navigate by every visitor — human and web-crawling.

Avoid parameters in links. Link parameters are one way to pass information from page to page, but spiders may not be able to interpret them. Have your web developer use session variables or XML instead.

5. Add a site map

A site map is another essential component to accommodate search engines. The map should be a plain, well-organized web page. It can look similar to a book index. It serves the same function.

List your website topics and subtopics in alphabetic order. You will not need a column of page numbers, like a book index. Just put a hyperlink on every topic and subtopic. Take the prospective student — or the web-crawler — directly to the most relevant page within your site.

6. Add a Hiring Broker List to your website

Internal links and site maps increase search engine scores by making the site easier to travel, and by reaffirming that the page content matches search terms.

External links can also boost your page rankings, so your website appears nearer the top of a Google, Yahoo or other search engine list.

External links require that another website includes a link to your website. The internet has thousands of sites which will link to any business willing to exchange links or — in many cases — pay a fee. Search engines are aware of those, and tend to not value that type of link highly. You could be paying for a link-to that adds little to your web traffic, and will not boost search engine scores.

At Code3w, Inc. we recommend that real estate school owners find brokers who want to hire their graduating students. Many brokers — particularly those not relying on franchise web pages — will gladly link from their About Us or Career Opportunities page to yours.

On the broker website, Career Opportunities can describe the profession and the brokerage, and then suggest that information about training can be found at your school website. You might suggest that the broker list the school phone number as well.

On your school website, include a Career Opportunities page or at the least, a list of Hiring Brokers. That list provides a link to each partnering broker website.

Link exchanges increase your search score because the broker website has many of the same search terms as your school site. The exchange is also an opportunity to build rapport and network with brokers. You may see many attending post-license training and continuing education. Every agent in their office could do the same.

Until January 1st, 2010, Code3w, Inc. will add a Hiring Broker list to any real estate school website for $500 or less. The first two additional student registrations you receive should pay for this, and it is free with a RESchoolSite. Request the details at info@code3w.com or call toll-free with your questions, 1-877 4Code3w.