Take a look at the Resale Centre’s Facebook page to see it in action …

Then maybe you you should look at purchasing a “Generic Domain“?

What is a generic domain name?

A generic domain is a domain name with the exact search phrase that you as a internet surfer would type into your favourite search engine to find what you are looking for. For example, someone looking for a “property in Fuengirola” into www.google.co.uk – see the result below …

Unless you are a large company spending thousands each month on advertising and search engine marketing, you are NEVER going to get anywhere close to the top of the search engines, unless you have a little know how or help from someone that is good on website optimisation. Your website is probably competing against thousands of other websites in your industry and will probably never be found in the endless pit of search results.

Having a generic domain gives you a massive head start, 1) From a ranking point of view but 2) From a visitors perspective. Not everyone remembers the company that was advertising the product, but they do remember what they were searching for! So in the case above, they might not remember the companies name, but they will definitely remember that they had searched for “property in Fuengirola”.

Search engines seem to favour generic domains and they are easier to rank or position higher in the major search engines, which will generate you more traffic and traffic equals clients!

A generic domain will also holds its value as it is easily usable by anyone in the same industry as you, as long as they are marketing the same product. Compare that to a company name? Your company is very unique, you maybe be lucky enough to find one or two other companies with any exact match – however, it devalues the value of the domain name if their company is called something else! Making it much harder to market and sell.

Generic Estate Agent Domains

If you do a few searches, most of the very popular generic domains especially in your region will have been taken – if you do a little research into what are good quality search terms for the type of keywords that people search for, you may be lucky enough to find one or two that have become available again – especially as many Estate Agencies have gone out of business within the past few years.

You may also find dozens that are listed for sale, and just might be able to get the perfect one at a knock down price!

Targeting the UK market

As you may well know, from the UK if you are searching in Google, Yahoo! or Bing – the search engine defaults to the UK search page because of where you are searching from. If you are in Spain and type into your address bar www.google.com it will take you to the .es of Google (only works if you have cleared your internet history, otherwise will pick up what you last used).

UK search engines favour .co.uk domain names – so if you rely heavily on the UK market and clients, then a .co.uk may be a much better choice compared to a .com domain.

Some examples below:

Please note: Obviously, just purchasing the domain name and redirecting it to your website will not help what so ever. You are going to need to develop a unique website for your new domain name and do some search engine optimisation and marketing of your website. The purpose of this article is to inform you of the possible merits of a generic domain name and the rewards of owning one – should you market in in the right way, being the same as you would with your own company website / domain name.

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Here is a list of other websites that you can hook your Property RSS feed to, you will need to register, apply the necessary changes to your account and import the feed to have your listings displayed with the feed URL that we have provided you with.

• PeopleSound
• Plurk
• Jaiku
• Bebo
• Hi5
• Blip.fm
• Blogger
• Brightkite
• Buboo
• Buzzherd
• Google Buzz
• Custom URL
• Delicious
• Digu
• Fazkut
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Friendster
• Gozub
• Hictu
• Imeem
• Jisko
• Khaces
• Koornl
• Laconica Like
• LiveJournal
• Meemi
• Mexicodiario
• Multiply
• Ning
• Numpa
• Orkut
• Plerb
• Posterous
• Presently
• Remember The Milk
• Seemic
• Shoutem
• Skyrock
• Tuenti
• 12seconds
• Utterli
• WordPress
• Yammer
• YouAre
• Zuosa
• Blip.pl

We are not providing a service to open and upload to these websites, we are simply offering you ideas of places where you can feed your properties to using your RSS feed from Alphashare.

Good luck!

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And with the competitive industry that Estate Agents work in, coupled with the high maintenance of SEO (search engine optimisation), Google Places For Business is the perfect freebie for your company. It is simply the easiest way to get high rankings in Google without the hard work, it is easy to do and results usually appear in a shorter space of time.

Well known to many internet marketers, organic search results are more cost effective and generate better traffic which of course generates leads. Even the highest ranked websites may be missing out on this simple tool offered free by Google.

Do you already have a Google Places listing?

If you do then great! But is it performing for you? Each and every month you will receive a report on how your listing has performed, how many page impressions and click throughs your advert has had.

Tips for a grew business advert and to get the most of of it is to be “honest” with what you do and the services you provide, if you are targeting something that your company doesn’t do then or trying to optimise the ad for a huge keyword search term simply will not work. Apply your advert in the correct location, if your company office is based in the centre of Malaga and you market properties for sale and rent in Malaga then it is absolutely paramount that you state this and provide the relevant information.

Don’t put in “Spanish Property” and “Property In Spain” as categories because it simply will not show for these competitive search terms.

An Example of a good advert on Google Places For Business – Step by Step guide

1) Okay, firstly you are going to need your own Google account, many of you that use Webmaster Tools, have a Google Analytics account or use Gmail will already have your own logins to begin with.

2) Go to places.google.com/business and sign in if you have an account or register if you don’t. Once you have signed in you will come to a page welcoming you to Google Places to claim your free listing. On the right hand side it says “List Your Business” click on the link to begin.

3) Select the country where you are based and type in your telephone number.

4) Ensure that you indicate the correct address and contact details of your company, include your website address, e-mail and a good descriptive description of what your company offers in the location you are based in 200 characters, it’s not much but it can be done!

5) In Category, use up to five categories that best describe your business, i.e – Estate Agent, Property For Sale, Holiday Rentals, Property Management, Mortgages – or what ever best suits your company.

6) One thing that is extremely valuable to your listing is to ensure you have filled in as much information as possible, give your opening hours, what type of payment you accept, upload some images for your listing, if possible a video will really enhance your advert! And any other additional details that will set your Google Places For Business apart from your competitors.

7) Once you have entered all the relevant data you need to choose an appropriate way for Google to verify your details, this can be done through a post card delivered to your business address or via telephone. You will be given a code to input to verify your advert and that you have provided the correct contact details so this is vitally important.

8) After everything has been verified then your listing will start to run in a matter of time and you will start to benefit from the listing in Google’s search results.

It is important to keep in mind your categories and location that you have entered, Google Places ranks businesses depending on their location, the further you are away from the desired location the less likely you are to show up for that area, the closer you are … obviously the higher you will rank in the listings. Use your categories wisely and state services that one, people will search for but two … are relevant to the services offer.

Enjoy!

Company Statistics

Company Statistics is basically what it says on the link, displaying how many properties you have live on the system for sale, long term and short term rentals, how many properties you have archived and the total amount of images uploaded in your account. Below stats are displayed showing how many times properties have been viewed on websites, average daily views, searches made and views via our list of property portals.

Top 50 Properties Viewed

This section gives you a complete break down of your top 50 viewed properties via our portals and your websites. Not only does this offer you information on your best properties, it also tells you what people are looking for on the internet, so if you have a more views on small two bedroom apartments than you do on large six bedroom villas, it shows you that there is more of a demand for apartments – so getting more apartments listed is going to help you more than listing villas.

The data will tell you what price range potential buyers are searching for, property type and location. Again, you should use this information to your advantage – break down what people are searching for.

Top 50 Searched Towns

The data displayed breaks downs into views on properties and searches by town, the data is then broken down into percentages of towns searched, giving an insight into the most popular towns via your property search facility on your website provided by Alphashare AND most viewed towns IF they do not select an area when performing a search via your website.

Again, this will tell you where you need to be listing more properties, if you have 0% searches in Alicante for example but 50 properties there then really there is no point marketing more properties there as there is no demand.

This data can also be used to optimise your property website, if you don’t already have your own analytics account or StatCounter for your website you will not be able to see how people are finding your website, but you will be able to use the Alphashare Statistics to see what are the best areas to optimise your website for.

Top 50 Searched Keywords

Another new feature to the Alphashare webkit plugin for your website, along with all the different search facilities Alphashare has to offer, we are now able to insert a field so visitors can search by keywords instead of only using the drop down options – another great way of seeing what your visitors are really searching for!

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For an Estate Agent it is a great way to show your visitors the very best priced properties available in your portfolio of properties and also a good way of marketing properties for your clients.

How To Make a Property “Featured”?

Simply edit the property you wish to be displayed as featured in your “Property Admin” section of your Alphashare account, then go to the “administration” tab, right at the bottom of the page you will be able to set the property to “Property of the month” or “Property of the week”. Select from either one of these two options.

Then, most importantly this will need extra code added to your website in the location you desire for the property to be displayed. If you need the code to be inserted by one of the Alphashare team, a small fee is required. If you are comfortable enough editing code, ask the Alphashare support team for the module script.

Great Content For Your Website!

Not only is the featured property script great for your human visitors but it is also good for the search engines. Each time you refresh your page (depending on how many properties you have set) new properties will appear providing search engine spiders with new content which will bring them back time and time again to retrieve new content from your website.

In all, an excellent add-on for your Estate Agency website!

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