Online Advertising Guide for Estate and Letting Agents  

The internet and the search engines are vital in gaining your agency new business. The question is who do you trust, how do you go about this and what is the best way to achieve the vital new tenants for the vacant property. In all cases there is an allocation of money for marketing of your property, some of this will be on local advertising in newspapers, radio, sponsorships and local publications. The other part will be online advertising, this may include your own website as well as other forms of advertising such as the search engines and other portal websites.

Search Engine Advertising

When looking to advertise on the internet you are wanting to have the most cost effective exposure for your property and agency that is available. Search Engines have more than one way to get listed in the areas that you cover. There are paid forms, local search engine advertising and generic search results.

Paid Forms

Paid advertising in the search engines are sponsored results, these can be seen in on the right hand side of the search page. This form of advertising will get your agency listed on the first pages of google and other search engines; however there are significant drawbacks to this. Firstly it is an expensive form of advertising as each and every click through to your website will cost you money, it doesn't matter how long the visitor stays or whether they are interested in your site or products. Secondly it is open to what is known as click fraud, this is where individuals or the competition deliberately click on your ads in order to cost your agency money and also increase the cost per click on your ads. This can be used as a quick way to get visitors but as a long term strategy it would not be advised. There are companies that will charge you a fee to setup ads for you; this is something that you can do yourself for free. All that is need is a google adwords account and the ability to write a title and a description for your ads.

Local Search Engine Advertising Using Google Maps

This is a new addition that google has made in their search engine and it can be seen on the image with the results at the top of the page where the map is. In order to get your agency listed here you need a google account which is free to setup and you can find more information from the google local search. In order to get listed you must have an office in the location that you want to appear in as google will send you a special code in the post.

This is a vital task to do as all your competition will be on the local business search so make sure to complete this.

Generic Search Results This is by far and away the hardest of the three methods to get your agency listed. Your agency will appear on the left hand side of the search page below the google maps/local results. These are known as SERPS or search engine results pages, the competition is high especially for property/real estate and it takes a lot of hardwork, time and money to get your agency listed in these results for different keywords and locations. Your website will need to be coded well, optimized and have a continual development of fresh and unique content in order to consistently be found in these results. There are other ways to get exposure and that is to be listed on the sites that feature highly within these listings for the keywords that potential users will search on. These sites are portal sites and they specialize in advertising property and agents on the internet. Each portal site will vary in the number of visitors, breakthroughs and positions found for keywords.

A good all round portal for letting agents is Rentright, this site has good coverage in most locations for a number of different, popular keywords. Why not perform a search in your areas of interest and look out for Rentright in the natural search engine results. If a company is listed in this area and within the first three pages then this is considered a quality site that is trusted by the search engines.

Rentright offers a very competitive monthly charge for agents and their property to be listed on the site, read more about Rentright and the services from the links below.

Tenants Information on Rentright

Agents Information on Rentright

About the Author

Chris Courtis is the co-founder of the Rentright Residential Rental Property Portal which allows UK Letting Agents to advertise their property and agency to a wide UK internet audience.