Within your CMS (content management system) you have the ability to create your own forms. This can include anything from collecting basic contact information, requesting an evaluation on a sale or rental, to inquiries of all types. Creating a form is similar to creating a page within your CMS, and you can apply it to anywhere within your website.

Our newest optional feature in real estate website design, Dynamic Forms lets you create customizable forms for your users to fill out. From simple lead capture forms and requests for information to full questionnaires and more, you can build your own forms with checkboxes, radio buttons, required fields, file uploads, calendar selections, and much more!

Don’t have the Forms feature enabled on your website? Contact us today to get set up!

To begin creating forms for your site, follow the simple instructions outlined below:

1. Log into the backend of your website using the LOGIN button in the upper right hand corner of your site.

2. Scroll to the CMS Tab and select “Dynamic Forms”

3. Select “Create New Form”

4. Design your form by entering the information you would like to have appear to your site visitors. In the first part, include all instructions on what you would like include in the form.

a. You also have the option to select if you would like the lead capture modal window to appear before they fill out the form which prompts them to sign into your website first.
b. The email address that you include is where all form submissions will be sent to.

5. Don’t forget to fill out the second half where you can choose which fields you want to include in your form.
a. You can choose if you would like additional fields to be required.

b. To re-order fields, simply click and drag the arrows next to the filed type titles.

1. Once you have completed your form, Select “Save Changes.”
2. After your form has been successfully created you will see a message that states, “The form Request an Evaluation was successfully updated.”
Your form will now be active in the dynamic form section! Edits can be made as often as you wish to the form.

To add your form to the front-end of your website complete the following:
1. Under CMS, select “Pages”
2. Select “Create New” on the right hand side above all current pages
3. Enter Name, Path, and Page header: Similar to adding a regular page to the website.

1. Leave Body Content Blank – Scroll Down to “Form” and select the form you would like to add to the page.

1. After you select the correct form, select “Create”.
a. The form will now appear as its own page within the pages of the website!

2. A form can either be added to a menu or used as a link within the website.
a. To add a form as a menu item, it is going to be added the same way you add a page to a menu.
i. Go to Menu > Primary Navigation > Create New
ii. Enter Menu Text > Find Form Page > Enter parent if applicable > select Create
iii. The Form will appear as a Menu Item within your Menu Bar

1. To add a Form as a link, select Edit on the Page that it is to be added to.
2. Enter the text associated with the Form (typically the form name, ie. “Request an Evaluation”)
3. Select the Insert/Edit Link Tab on right hand side of tool bar
a. In the URL, enter the Form’s path name (ie. “request-evaluation”)

b. Text will now be hyperlinked to your form.
c. Select update page. Text will now link to Form.

Congratulations!

Users can now fill out your form to gain more information from you, and you now have an increased opportunity to make contact with users and close more sales.

Boston Logic is here to assist you in your real estate website‘s success. You can also contact Boston Logic’s support team at any time for assistance.

If you have your own website and blog, or have been tasked with maintaining your company’s website and blog, you should understand the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is the process in which you attempt to increase your search engine ‘ranking’ (how high in search engine results your website appears) for a given search term or ‘keyword’, when your potential customers search the products or services you offer in Google or other major search engines. The higher in the search results you appear, the more visitors your site will get. The more visitors you get, the more opportunities you have to convert those leads into clients!

SEO is an ongoing process with many facets and levels of complexity.  You do not need to be an SEO specialist, however, to start optimizing your website and increasing your search engine ranking!  If you are a Boston Logic client with a One System website or a new Sequoia website, you’re in luck because we’ve designed our sites to make it easy for you to populate and optimize your own website pages and blog posts.  This blog covers the basic techniques we recommend using to get your SEO Campaign started!

For an additional overview of the SEO process, check out David Friedman’s blog post from our Real Estate SEO blog in which he describes the overarching “stages” of SEO and discusses why SEO is important to your website.

It may also be helpful to check back on our Real Estate SEO Blog frequently for more tips on optimizing your website!

How to Optimize Your Website

Pick Your Keywords

These are the words your customers are typing into Google to find you. So take a moment to try to think like your target demographic; what words would they choose to type into Google or another search engine and ideally find your website? Some examples might be ‘cheap Boston apartment’ or ‘Allston homes’. You can use online keyword tools to help you determine the difficulty and popularity of your potential keywords, and to help you to develop more ideas. Once you’ve selected your 10-20 appropriate keywords, make a list and reference it frequently while blogging and populating your website pages with content.

Optimize Your Web Pages

Now that you have chosen your keywords, you have to optimize your website pages.  Ideally, you’ll focus on a few closely-related keywords on each page of your website.  The keyword(s) you selected should be strategically placed within your pages to increase your search engine ranking, but be careful not to over-stuff the pages to the point of annoying a reader.  Try to fit your keywords in as naturally as possible.  Here are some the more effective ways to use keywords:

1.  Keywords in Page’s URL.  For example:
www.bostonlogic.com/blog/2010/07/real-estate-web-design/

2.  Keywords in Title Tags. This is what visitors will see in the top of the browser tab, so make sure it is spelled correctly and has proper capitalization.
For example:
‘<title>Real Estate Web Site Design with Boston Logic | Boston Logic – Marketing Blog</title>’

3.  Keywords in Page Meta Descriptions. Your page descriptions appear below your Title Tag in search engine results.  They need to be interesting enough to get people to click on your link and include your keywords where possible.  Notice in the example above, Google ‘bolds’ the keywords in the description that match the search terms used.

4.  Keywords in Page Headings or Heading Tags. Much like you read a newspaper (or this email) headings and sub-headings help readers and search engines quickly skim the content of a page to see what each section is about.  In general, ‘H1′ Tags are thought to be the most relevant to search engines.

5.  Keywords in Page Text. Each page should be fairly targeted to each keyword or group of keywords you are targeting.  So, if your keywords are ‘Allston apartments’ and ‘Allston MA rentals’ you should find a way to creatively include these terms a few times within the text of the page.

6.  Keywords in Bold. (e.g. [strong])  Making your keywords bold will help readers easily see where in the page the words they are looking for are mentioned, and search engines will place more emphasis on these words, too.  Just be sure not to over-do it, because it will scare them both away!

7.  Keywords as Links. Your keyword links can be internal or external.  Internal links provide visitors easy access to related content; in the previous example, you may want to link to ‘Allston condos’ from your ‘Allston apartments’ page.  External links should be used to cite sources and you should only link to credible website, not link farms or ‘Spam’ sites.

8.  Keywords in Images. Search engines can’t see photos.  The only way to ensure they do is by giving the images a relevant name, description, and tags.  An image file with the name ‘image123.jpeg’ won’t do anything for your SEO, whereas an image with the name ‘Allston_apartment_bathroom.jpeg’ is much more informative.

9.  Keywords in Meta Tags. It is important that these tags contain your keywords, as search engines use tags to determine your website’s relevant content when a potential lead searches for your services.

Optimize EVERY Blog Post

Blogs are great places to optimize, as they are always producing new relevant content, and can drive traffic to your website. (Read Ashley’s blog about Ideas for Real Estate Blogs if you’re experiencing writer’s-block!)

1.  Keywords in All of the Above! Just like any other web page, you should try to focus each blog post on a specific topic and target a specific keyword or group of keywords for each blog post- and incorporate those keywords into the post URL, title, description, text, etc.

2.  Keywords as Categories. Blog add another level of SEO potential with categories.  Categories are for grouping relevant blog posts together so they are easier for visitors (and search engines) to find.  For example, ‘Allston condos’, ‘Allston homes’, and ‘Allston apartments’ could all be different categories you organize your blog posts into.

When ranking your website or blog, search engines use various algorithms that constantly change to determine your ranking.  However, some of the most important and common factors are the age of the URL (how long have you owned the domain?), internal links, outbound links to other relevant sites, links to your blog from other sites, relevant content (i.e, keywords), and the number of posts.  So make sure to promote your blog, and to blog consistently.  We recommend posting at least 1-2 times per week, as search engines will start to really pay attention to you after your first 100 posts.

Keep Track with Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools

Now that you’ve put in all the work, monitor your progress!   We recommend keeping track of keyword rankings each month to check for progress.  By checking Google Analytics frequently, you can see what posts are popular, where your traffic is coming from, what keywords users are searching and which words are landing them on your site, and much more!

Haven’t installed Google Analytics yet?  Don’t worry!  Read our step-by-step blog breaking down the Google Analytics installation process, and how to interpret the Analytics numbers and results.

Boston Logic is here to assist you in your website’s success!  If you need a refresher-course on how to populate your new Sequoia website, watch this helpful demo video by Katrina on the Boston Logic YouTube Channel.  As always,  you can also Contact Boston Logic’s Support Team at any time for assistance.

The information on these pages can be what you would tell someone looking for a new home in the area in question; you can talk about the demographics of the area, the great amenities, the architecture, the public transportation, etc. Basically anything you think clients would find useful or interesting.  In addition, information on properties in the area such as average price, number of properties on market, and more is automatically added to the page.

Here is an in-depth guide on how you can create a Town Page in the Sequoia System:

1)    Log into your website.  Click on the ‘CMS’ (Content Management System) Tab.
2)   Select the ‘Pages’ text link from the sub-navigation menu.
3)    From the ‘Pages’ menu, click on the ‘Create New’ button with the green plus sign icon.  Then fill out the form in the ‘Create Page’ pop-up window that appears.

4)  Fill in the Town Page information

a.   Name: This is your internal reference for the page- visitors won’t see it.  We recommend including the words ‘Town Page’ at the end so they are easy to find in the Pages Menu.
b.    Path: This is the URL your clients will see in their navigation bar and it is also used by Search Engines to help rank your site.  Make sure you use a keyword you want to rank for (‘Fenway Apartments’, in the example above).

5)    Page Content:
a.    Page Header: This is the headline of your page that visitors will see when they land on this page.  Make sure it is relevant, and utilizes one or more of your keywords.
b.    Body Content: This is where you enter that paragraph of useful text you created.  If you are pasting your text from a Word Document or Text Pad/ Notebook program, make sure to use the appropriate pasting option from the tool bar.  You can edit the text within this box much like a Word Document, changing text with Bold or italic styles, adding hyperlinks, etc. using the icons in the tool bar.

6.    Meta Data: This section is where you enter your SEO Title, Description, and Keywords as covered in our earlier email about Optimizing Your Pages.  Remember to make sure your Title and Description are readable to a viewer and not a rambling list of Keywords.

7)    Hit the ‘Create’ Button when you are finished!

8)   Your new Town Page will now appear on your ‘Pages’ list.  Ta-Da!  Congrats!  You created your first Town Page!

You can now link to this page, using the URL you created, from blog posts or other pages that mention the neighborhood.  The more relevant internal links your site has, the better for SEO and user experience.  For example, if you mention something about Fenway Condos for Sale in your Fenway Apartments Town Page, make the words ‘Fenway Condos’ a hyperlink to a Town Page about Fenway Condos for Sale.  If you talk about the Fenway’s proximity to another neighborhood, link to that Town Page, too!  Your potential client might not be sold on the Fenway area and you can keep them looking on your site longer by providing them with helpful links to other information they might find useful. To automatically boost SEO for your site, be sure to set up dynamic search results for your town page!

Linking Your Town Page to Dynamic Content:

By linking your Town Pages to a Sales or Rental Searches for that area, you will create a page with not only great text for visitors and search engines, but also a page with constantly updating information, which is great for SEO!  We recommend making a town page for every area you want to increase your Sales or Rental activity in, to improve your real estate online marketing campaign.

1.    From the ‘CMS’ Tab, select the ‘Town Pages’ link from the sub-navigation bar.

2.    Click the blue link for a ‘New Town Page‘ from within the Town SEO Pages Menu.

3.    The ‘New Town Page’ popup window will appear.  Select the Town Page you just created from the ‘CMS Page’ dropdown menu.

4.    Select the ‘Search Type’ you want associated with this page (Sales or Rentals).

5.    Then select the search parameters for the listings you wish to show to visitors on this page, such as price range and the location (Fenway in this example).  Be sure not to leave the price range blank or it will cause errors on your page or lead visitors to believe there are no listings available in this area.

6.    Click the ‘Create Page’ button at the bottom of the screen once you’ve entered all your information.

7.    Your new Town Page now appears in your Town Pages menu under the ‘CMS’ Tab and is linked to a relevant search to keep your page constantly refreshed with new information and no more effort on your part!

You’re almost done! Now you just have to make it so visitors can find your new page without knowing the URL through real estate website marketing.  The best way to optimize your new Town Pages is to create a link to it that can be clicked on from any page of your website.  This will ensure that users and search engines can find it!

Making Your Town Page Easy To Find

Search engines and users alike will find it easier to navigate to your town page if it is prominently displayed – which is why we have a dedicated Town Pages menu which appears between your pages and the site footer. Adding each Town Page to this menu will increase real estate internet marketing presence, SEO, and promote ease of use for your customers.

1. Select the CMS tab again, and then choose the “Menus” sub-item.

2. To the right of the Town Pages menu option, click Menu Items.

3. Click Create New, then name your Town Page menu item. It is best to use the name of the town the page relates to in the title.

4. Choose your Town Page from the dropdown list of pages, then click Create.

You’re DONE!

Making Your Town Page EVEN EASIER To Find

Did you know that search engines cannot see information in forms, such as the drop down menus used in your property searches?  In fact, search engines often only ‘crawl’ within 3 clicks of your website’s Home Page.  One solution to this problem is to create a Sitemap and submit it to your favorite search engines to ensure they can find your Town Pages. Check back later for a post on how to create a Sitemap.

Until now, Boston Logic did not offer a cost-effective solution for Real Estate agents who wanted to have their own personally branded, custom real estate website. Well, so many individual agents asked us to create such a product, that we couldn’t say no any longer!

Like our sites for Real Estate Offices, Agent Sites are designed to help you rank in the search engines, leverage social media, produce more traffic, and convert more of that traffic into leads. The difference is ownership – Agent Sites not only work seamlessly with the LogicLeads system of your company’s Sequoia site, they can generate their own unique leads which go directly to the agent who owns the site.  Aggregating leads from your Agent Site and your office’s Sequoia site will increase the amount of business going directly to you.

Of course, Agent Sites have all New Sequoia Features of the best-in-class features that make Sequoia the leading platform in Real Estate agent website design: branded site designs with an unlimited number of pages, advanced lead management, unlimited editable lead capture forms, MLS property search with Google maps, extensive interactive user tools, rental search, and much, much more.

Our websites for Realtors offices consistently produce leads, traffic, and search engine ranking. Positioned at the cutting edge of online marketing and technology, Sequoia sites support next generation marketing campaigns, work seamlessly with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and give offices the edge over their competition. Now individual agents can tap into the power of the best software platform in the industry – by using Sequoia Agent Sites.

Explore the power of your personal brand and the unlimited lead generation potential the web has to offer. To find out more about Agent Sites and the Sequoia platform: web design for realtors, contact Boston Logic today.

In addition to being hard at work launching and maintaining new websites for realtors, we have also been devising more creative ways to enhance our customer service. With the recent launch of an increasing amount of Agent sites on our real estate agent website design platform, we wanted to create a more in-depth and efficient way to address questions on the basic functionality of our websites. Now you can watch a demo at your convenience, actually see the answer, and follow along on your own computer!

We have three real estate website walk-throughs now available on Boston Logic’s YouTube Channel. In these videos, we discuss a variety of website topics, including how to incorporate some of the recently launched Sequoia features you have read about onto your websites.

The videos also discuss how to manage your leads, walks you through lead emails, lead search settings, Google settings, and MLS Settings options. It also demonstrates how to activate the additional features like Walkscore, ConstantContact and iContact – and goes over basic website editing with the Content Management System, or CMS. These are also a great resource to refresh knowledge of website editing, especially if you haven’t done so in a while!

Watch demos now on the following topics:

Lead Management
Editing Your Website Settings
Using CMS to Edit your Website

We’ve added the ability to send leads to iContact automatically. Boson Logic has been integrated with Constant Contact for some time now. Clients requested that we add iContact to this short list. Now, your leads can be automatically sent to the iContact realtor internet marketing system too.

Email marketing through iContact allows you to create, send and track your email messages with ease and efficiency. For this feature, all you need to do is create a list in iContact and enter the list name and your client number into your Sequoia System’s settings – the system will then send your leads’ info to iContact whenever they sign up on your site and every time you enter a lead using LogicLeads. This eliminates the need for exporting and importing lead lists.

We’ve also added a college search option for LogicRentals clients. Now users can search by proximity to the college or university of their choice! The search will return all properties within a mile of the chosen school that meet the searcher’s criteria. You can see a great example of this feature in action on the Warren Rentals website.

We’ve now added the Similar Properties feature to rental searches. Just as for sales, you can choose in your websites for realtors settings whether or not to display similar properties on your property details pages. As many as six properties will be displayed, all within 10% of the price or rent of the original property and from the same town or neighborhood!

ConstantContact has recently conducted a survey in which nearly 60% of respondents indicated that they currently use real estate web sites and email marketing to drive more potential customers to their businesses. Now, more than ever, it is important for real estate agents and brokers to establish effective means to build and maintain strong customer relationships. And with the right website and online marketing campaign, more contacts = more leads = more closings.

But simply having a web site is not enough – you have to advertise it to gain drive traffic to your site to get leads. And furthermore, you must understand where your traffic is coming from so that you can narrow the focus of your advertising efforts. When executed and maintained correctly, as much as 50% of your business can come through your website. And if maintained and tended to consistently correctly over time, you will see a growth in business. The National Association of Realtor data states that more than 80% of home buyers will start their property search online, and 70% will then work with the agent that contacts them first.

Blogs are also a key tool for real estate businesses, and they are great resources for search engines to crawl for relevant search content. After time, blogs can attract much organic search engine traffic because of their keyword-rich content. So your real estate internet presence can make the effectiveness of print ads or billboards a thing of the past – as long as you work consistently on your website, blog, and email marketing campaigns, customers will find you.

Read more here.

Sales and Rentals property details pages are now integrated with Walkscore. Walkscore is a comprehensive site that helps you find a walk-able place to live by calculating a “Walk Score” for any address. You can register for your Walkscore ID here. Then go to the Settings / Configuration page to enable the Walkscore setting, where you can enter the key that was emailed to you. Here’s an example of Walkscore integrated with a listing.

Welcome emails now enabled when new users register! When a new user registers from the “Sign Up” page and the company does not have lead email verification turned on, that user will automatically receive a new “Welcome” email thanking them for signing up. This is great news for your realtor internet marketing strategy: you can now retain new signups more effectively, as they are receiving emails regarding their new activated account.

Luxury building prices now included with the mortgage calculator! The mortgage calculator now pulls its price from luxury buildings as well as properties. Currently, luxury buildings can have 3 sales prices: 2 Bed Start, 1 Bed Start and Studio Start. When users utilize the mortgage calculator, the price is now pulled in that order. For example, if a user searches for a 2 Bed Start, the 2 Bed starting price that has been entered  uses that by default. Then, it looks to 1 bed start price, then studio price.

ConstantContact marketing tool is now integrated with your website leads! Your ConstantContact account information can now be submitted to now have verified leads pushed to an email list when the lead signs up. To configure, simply go to the Settings / Configuration page in the admin section, and enter your ConstantContact username and password, then the email list you’d like to add leads to. A great feature for your real estate online marketing campaign!

Our design staff created a Sequoia custom real estate website theme for the Boston Home Team, crafting a near-perfect replica of their existing design – created by our design staff several years ago – but backed by the most robust real estate software platform in the industry.

For The Boston Home Team, keeping the look of their site was of utmost importance, but a functional upgrade was necessary to bring their lead generation and management to the next level. Boston Logic has the realtor web design firepower on hand to make this happen for our clients, and can do the same for your firm. If you need a more powerful suite of tools to grow your business but don’t want to move away from your existing design investment, give us a call or email today. We can build you a market-leading website without sacrificing the stylistic elements critical to your brand identity.

In addition, we continue as always to make the Sequoia platform stand above all of our competitors. Invest in your realtor website marketing today and contact us, or read more in-depth about all of our Sequoia upgrades and feature releases here.

The Boston Home Team, part of Prudential Unlimited Realty, focuses on properties for sale and for rent in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

We’ve added a Similar Listings option – companies can now turn on or off Similar Listings in their Settings. The feature shows up to six similar properties for sale in your property details view. The criteria for similarity are simply that the comparable properties come from the same MLS, the same town, and the same neighborhood if applicable, that their price be within 10% of the original property, and that their bed and bath count be plus or minus one of the original. The similar properties have to be active in MLS and have the same property type. This is a great way to show your customers other great listings that match their search criteria, keeping them engaged and on your site for longer.

We’ve enabled brokers and agents to manually send daily email updates. This can be done both for sales and rentals. If a new leads signs up and you don’t want them to have to wait until the next day to get their first email, you can generate it right away using their search criteria (or criteria you set up for them).

We’ve also built an HTML search code generator that agents can place anywhere on the Web. Agents can generate the code from their profile details page when logged into the system – when the code is pasted on an outside site, it shows a search tool which sends leads back to the site the code was generated from. This is a great way for agents to gain more exposure, and leads coming in from these searches are automatically assigned to the agent who pasted the code!

Additionally, we made our Property Tools, such as Schedule a Showing and Contact an Agent, automatically assign leads to the agent who listed the property in question. If a lead uses the tools for a property listed by an outside agent, the leads become Unassigned (or are auto-assigned if you have automatic lead assignment turned on in your Settings). Any tool use by leads already logged in results in the activity being sent to the agent the lead is already assigned to, regardless of which property they are interested in.

Check back in often for more software upgrades for property web design!