Keywords to attract sellers

[coastal]

Keywords to attract buyers seem rather obvious "Anytown real estate" "Anytown Homes for sale" "Anytown Condos" etc...

My leads from my website are stacked at roughly 95% buyers and 5% sellers.

What keywords tend to attract sellers to real estate agents services?
Which leads me to the question do home sellers start their search on the web or do they just open the phone book and look under "Realtor" and pick whoever had the best TV commercial that month?

[Falcon Living]

You can try to create selling a home how to guides (with local keywords in it), or try creating articles on home warranty, owner financing, sellinh a home in <city> articles, best home improvements to sell a home tips etc etc.

[Tyson]

I would think terms like 'realtor' or 'real estate agent' would be split 50/50.

[bscseo]

here are the numbers from realtor.org

NAR’s senior economist Paul Bishop said both buyers and sellers use traditional methods to choose a real estate agent. “Word-of-mouth recommendation is the most common way to learn about real estate professionals,” Bishop said. “The most important criteria, whether you’re buying or selling, are the individual agent’s reputation and their knowledge of the local market.”

In finding a real estate professional, 44 percent of buyers were referred by a friend, neighbor or relative, 11 percent used an agent from a previous transaction, 7 percent found an agent on the Internet, 7 percent met at an open house and 6 percent saw contact information on a “for sale” sign. Six other categories accounted for smaller shares each.

websites are for buyers.
don't pitch getting sellers. i never do.
since the market is cooling down a buyer is going to become more important than ever.
here is the link to the whole article.

home buyer and seller survey

i hope this helps

clif

[judyo]

If I forgot about sellers with my sites then I wouldn't have had the listings I have received as a result of my websites. IMO, they might search for the same things a buyer searches for. If they live in, say, Chicago, they're going to want to see other Chicago real estate information, even general stuff.

How about searching the MLS to see similar homes and what they're currently selling for? And if a site has (& optimizes for) a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) that assures them of their privacy, a lot of sellers do fill those out.

In my case, most of the sellers I listed didn't fill anything out but just called me to set up an appointment. I guess I've done pretty well with NAR's 7% figure (and hope to do better as time goes on).

[webmaster]

Well first, that isnt so bad as it sounds because remember a decent percentage of those buyers searching for your services also have a home to sell :-)

But really, to find the keywords you are looking for, put yourself in the sellers shoes.

What do sellers need before they can list their home?
How much is my home worth? CMA, Market Valuation, Market evaluation, home assessment etc etc

Who do I hire to sell my home "realtor, real estate agent, broker"

Playing with terms that you would use tends to reveal quite a bit

[FindCRE]

Area Home Values
Area House Values
Area Home Prices and so own. I get alot of listings from my site.

[Eric Blackwell]

Coastal;

All of the above are solid suggestions. while I don't have solid rankings on ALL of these kw phrases enough to substantiate the claims...I do rank pretty well for a few...I will tell you that some of these kw's work quite well.

Above and beyond that, adding a way for potential sellers to get a CMA has proven a good use of time for us. As Judy O correctly points out...people DO in fact fill these out!

Right now in a "buyer's market" is a solid time to pick up listings off of a site...lots of anxious folks out there needing to move. Trick is to do it at a price that will actually sell!

My suggestion--try out some of these words on a PPC campaign. Maybe like Yahoo, where (at least for the moment...) you have DIRECT control of bids. See which words convert and then target your SEO efforts along those (or similar) lines.

(Hint: They may be a LOT less expensive than AREA REAL ESTATE....)

In the end you will find that once you SEO for the terms that convert, that will be the best ROI.

Eric

[RonnieG]

My efforts to attract local sellers with PPC, using many of the same keywords suggested by others on this thread, have been less than fruitful. Even when it was/is a seller's market, and my PPC seller campaign budget was pretty steep, I was getting 20x more impressions and clicks for buyers. Many days, I never got enough clicks to spend 1/4 of my daily budget.

I think this has less to do with what a prospect wants to do, than how they initiate the process. As they think about selling, they begin to research local area home prices on their own, often responding to the same keywords that buyers do, and often thinking that their process would be to find a new home first, then sell thers, when we all know it usually doesn't work that way, especially in a buyer's market. That doesn't mean that I don't offer lots of seller resources on my site. I also happen to rank #1 in natural results for a couple of seller oriented keywords. But, by focusing on buyers, or more accurately stated, on the buying process, you should get plenty of two-sided opportunities as well.

[REBlogGirl]

Be sure to select keywords relevant to the content on the page or else Yahoo! will not rank you well.