• Is it something they offer free samples of at Hickory Farms?
  • Was it a song Pavarotti used to sing with a tear in his eye?
  • Does it have something to do with one of the Three Stooges deciding to go it alone?
  • Perhaps it is the name of a biblical King renowned for his great wisdom when it came to custody battles?

No, its none of these.

SoLoMo is a word made from three vital components: Social, Local and Mobile, and is the foundation for creating a sustainable real estate website that will get you found on today’s search engines.

Without a strategy to employ these three prongs of necessity into your site, you will simply be sitting on an irrelevant piece of un-viewed cyberspace.

Check out these easy concepts of how you can harness SoLoMo to make your website successful:

SOCIAL:

Are you wasting your daily mojo entering blurbs directly into Facebook and not using your own website as the repository for your thoughts and images?

Well, if so, Mark Zuckerburg needs to thank you for helping him get more SEO for his website at the expense of your own.

The thing is, according to Alexa’s list of the top websites in the world Facebook is already #2 out of millions of websites online today and Zuck really doesn’t need your help. He’s doing fine.

Maybe your website needs your help to get it higher ranking more than Facebook needs you to help theirs.

If you posted your local positive feelings about your area with photos, fun stories, positive life affirming stuff, all on your own website’s Blog, then “Broadcast” a blurb about your post to Facebook and Twitter with a link back to your site, you’d be showing Mr. Google what he wants to see. Google follows every link through the social medias back to their home and then spiders the entire site. If your site consistently is adding new content, like new rooms on a house, Google will smile and kick you another step up their ladder. Don’t disappoint Mr. Google. He can bring you a lot of business.

I saw a speaker in San Diego one time griping about wearing other person’s advertising on your clothes instead of your own brand. While he went a little overboard (he was singling out a local guy wearing a San Diego Chargers jersey), his concept was sound:

Don’t waste all your writing and inspirations on Social Media when you could plug that valuable content just as easily into a SoLoMo equipped website that will help you dominate your market.

A misconception is that you need to write something long and detailed like a magazine article. This is not true! In fact, this thinking will keep you from posting on a regular basis. Not only do you not have time to write these articles, but nobody out there really has the time to read them. Think quantity over quantity… short bursts like a Facebook post with an image done a few times a week in your own blog and broadcast to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Bing bang boom.

LOCAL:

Having relevant local content is vital to being found by your target market. Google sees where you are searching from, and they really want to send you to the best site to answer your needs.

And posting local content doesn’t mean linking to local city websites. This is one of the worst things you can do. I see this all the time, real estate sites that link to the different local cities where all of their crime rates, poverty rates and negative data is there to read. Plus, you’re literally sending them away from your URL. Because of that, Google will reward the other site with better search engine ranking because YOU basically voted for them as being more cool than your own site. So, does it hurt when you do that? Stop doing that!

Here’s what you should be doing:

Think about the area(s) that you want to be the king or queen of and regularly write about a different part of that area with a photo or two included. Even better, go to that location, pull out your smartphone’s video-recorder and riff about what makes this area great for two minutes. Do not worry about style points! You being a perfectionist will mean this never gets done. Just do it and be real, be enthusiastic., love your area and be its biggest champion.

Instead of focusing on making your site good for everyone in a 7-county radius, focus inward and really micro-target the specific housing developments and neighborhoods where your market is actually going to search for online. Create these pages one-at-a-time so you can show a regular drip-drip-drip of consistency. That’s the kind of behavior that Google will reward you for.

A great local neighborhood page should have a paragraph that you’ve written yourself – in your voice – about what makes this a great place to live. This page should have a virtual map of any available homes for sale, some pre-searched links for easy clicking, a short embedded YouTube video of you riffing on what a great place this is, and some blog or news posts just about that neighborhood. If you focus solely on that neighborhood and nothing else, your page will be a great resource for Google to point to, and you could even redirect a custom domain to the same page if you wanted to target-market in that neighborhood.

Just having photos of houses on your site with no sense of love for the area will make you seem like an automated robot-site with no heart. Remember, people do business with people they know, like and trust. Decide that you will be that local agent with the positive outlook that makes people feel good when they visit your site or read your posts and not some generic boring nothing wallflower.

MOBILE:

The “tipping point” is occurring right now when the total number of people viewing the Internet on mobile devices and tablets outnumbers those viewing on conventional computers.

This is a big deal. Google does not want to be irrelevant and be perceived as having “jumped the shark” by sending search results for a website to someone using a mobile device where the website can’t be reasonably viewed on their smartphone. Maybe a year ago but not now.

Google will now only give good placement going forward to sites that offer a great Mobile experience.

That is why we are at the dawn of the “Responsive Revolution.” Responsive is the term where your website looks good on any size mobile device, tablet or computer with the text all being readable and legible, and all of the elements of the website shifting automatically into a position that can be viewed on that device.

Imagine a couple out viewing homes for sale on the weekend. Is your mobile-optimized site the one they are using and loving, with the GPS built in to take them from house to house, or is your site ridiculously small on a smartphone where in order to read any of the text you have to keep using your thumbs to try to enlarge it and it never really works?

Or imagine that you have the indispensable local real estate website that feels like an “app” and where your loyal users can always go back to again and again.

Super_Business_WomanGET WITH IT!

Don’t be that Realtor with the old school site. Be mighty! The public knows when they see something that looks just like the same-old same-old they’ve seen for years from every other generic agent. You can have it all… Social… Local… Mobile. And with a modern look as well that makes you not seem stale and pre-recession.

WE CAN HELP

HoopJumper has been focusing for years on what’s coming up to help entrepreneurial Realtors stay relevant and brand themselves as impressive go-to Agents, all while providing the kind of platform you need to build a business year after year that lets people know you, like you and trust you.

Our Responsive Dominator sites are integrated with your social profiles so you can one-click broadcast your latest post in seconds. Our unique Custom Community Page Builder creates amazing local SEO neighborhood and city pages that include a virtual map, your YouTube video, custom links, and specific news items just for that community in a way that your competition can’t beat. You can build tens, even hundreds of these rich content filled pages that will get you found. And our mobile focus has made our new responsive Realtor websites one of the best in the industry for delivering a fantastic smartphone experience every time.

If your goal is to be generic and blend into the background quietly, you have your choice of companies out there that will cater to you with their cheap generic offerings… or are you ready to create something unique and special that announces that you’re open for business? If so, we want to work with you.

Whether you are a hands-on do-it-yourselfer, or you want our skilled staff to do it for you, HoopJumper has a solution for any budget.

Don’t delay your future success! Call HoopJumper today and let us jump through hoops for you and create the web presence you’ve always wanted that can help catapult you to the next level.

Request a Free Website Analysis and see if HoopJumper is the right fit for you.