Hi, I'm a real estate broker in Southern California and I'm new to trying to capture business on the internet.

I've found a few local phrases in my market that get about 6,000 searches per month that I think I could get in the top 5 in google on.

With that many searches do you think I will get substantial business? My goal is to close 3 to 5 deals per month from the internet. Am I dreaming?
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I've been getting pretty solid leads on a weekly basis. I've already sold 3 homes through my site. I've only been online since October and in realty, I really didn't start effectively SEOing until December (I had to change my URL for legal reasons and start all over). I'm still not even in the first 100 pages of Google for my Keywords, but on the first page on Yahoo and MSN.
I think it would be worth spending as much time as possible getting links and optimizing your web pages. Here is great resource for SEO from the man himself SEO-GUY
Good luck Tim.
Kyle

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Brevard MLS
Satellite Beach Real Estate Brevard MLS
Advanced Brevard MLS

Wow that's amazing Kyle, What sort of leads are you getting? Are they first time hombebuyers? What sort of sale price range?

My market is very diverse and I'm trying to anticipate what to focus on.

Two buyers were out of state and one buyer lived an hour south of my area. I've only been getting buyers leads.
No.
One out of state person bought a vacation condo $249,000. The other out of state person was moving down here to be close to relatives, his home was $190,000. And the last person who lived an hour south bought a $450,000 home on 4 acres. I got this buyer from allowing people to search our Florida MLS on my site without having to enter personal information. He called me about a house in an area I don't even target, but sold him the home he called about.

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Brevard MLS
Satellite Beach Real Estate Brevard MLS
Advanced Brevard MLS

I've gotten conflicting advice regarding forcing people to enter contact info to use the mls. Did you read it was better not to force them? You'd think many leads would go by without being able to act on them.

All I know is when I used to use people's MLS searches on their sites (before becoming a realtor) I would enter false information, just to bypass being contacted or spammed . So, for me it was just a personal preference.
I have contact forms on almost all relavent pages and my phone numbers on all pages, if they want me to contact them, they can enter the information.
Here is a post on this subject http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread240.html

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Brevard MLS
Satellite Beach Real Estate Brevard MLS
Advanced Brevard MLS

I feal that you should be able to do 3-5 deals per month. My site is newer and I am already doing a deal per 3 weeks and I still don't rank in Google. Once I get some rankings in Google I am thinking that I will be able to get enough leads for a deal per week. Best of luck to you.

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What will happen if the market has a downturn? You think online business will dry up?

I'm out here in California and I'm worried it will be hard to get deals online because of how saturated the business is out here.

What do you guys think?