Increase-your-trafficI am always looking for new effective ways to drive more traffic to my site and help others do the same, so I wanted to explore the most effective ways to do that without organic search engine rankings. Not everyone can get in the top 10 on Google. Luckily that is not the only way to get users to our sites.

I have come up with a list of different ways agents can drive traffic to their sites. I have put them in order of what I think are most effective and where I would spend my time, money and energy. I based my list on tracking the results through analytics of agents I have been helping. I would love for you to share methods you have had good success with and anything you think should be on the list.

1. Craigslist definitely is the best affordable way to drive a lot of traffic to your site and it is free. It has a pretty low average bounce rate (24%) compared to other methods. The average page views per user is 10, which is pretty good. Plus the conversion rate of sign ups is slighter higher from the Craigslist users than the Google CPC users.

2. Google Adwords is probably the most effect way to drive a lot of traffic to your site if you have a marketing budget. If the ads are put together correctly and land on the right page you will have a higher conversion rate. The agents sites I have been helping have been getting around a 20% Bounce Rate. The average page views per user has been 13 from the campaigns we have been tracking. Some of the agents I have been helping have also been using Homegains CPC product and the bounce rate has been running about 21%. The average page views per user is 16, but it is much more expensive than Google Adwords to get the same amount of traffic.

3. Syndicating listings through Real Estate Portals like Zillow & Trulia, Realtor.com, Listhub & others.  Although the traffic from these portals is not even close to Craigslist or Adwords, I would definitely still get your listings syndicated in as many portals as you can as long as they link to your site or at least have your contact information. The traffic from them was not significant.  Realtor.com drove the most traffic but had a higher bounce rate (48%) with a lower page view per user (2.3). Zillow was the next most effective source of portals with a bounce rate of 32% with 5 page views per user.

4. Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Activerain) can drive some traffic to your site, but the users appear to be less focused on buying or selling homes. Of the sites I tracked Facebook & Twitter actually drove more traffic then the real estate portals, but the bounce rate and page views were horrible.  Here are the stats:
FaceBook – 55% Bounce rate / 1.7 page views per user
Twitter – 78% Bounce rate / 1.3 page views per user
Youtube – 49% Bounce rate / 3 page views per user
Activerain – 44% Bounce rate / 3.6 page views per user

5. Directories like Yahoo, Dmoz and industry ones. These may drive some traffic, but  are more worth getting listed in for the link back to your site. It is a bonus if they drive some traffic.

The analytic stats used a combined average of the following 4 sites: St Louis Real Estate Today, Coastal Bay, The Desert On The Market & Home Sales San Diego.

It is very important when implementing any marketing campaign to make sure that you have some sort of analytics or tracking system in place. I prefer Google Analytics. It is free and you can set up goals to measure your results. If you do not have a way to measure your conversions, you will never have an efficient, effective & predictable way to drive traffic to your site.

These are the most effective ones I have been able to come up with that are track able through analytics. I am sure there are probably other effective methods of driving traffic to your website and would love for you to join the conversation & share them. 🙂