My name is Annie Maloney, and during my first year in residential real estate I relied solely on "desk duty", plus my sphere of influence, to generate leads. Even so, I was able to finalize one sale out of every eighteen leads I received. I became a multi-million dollar producer in my first year.

Then I read that 80% of homebuyers use the Internet as an information source according to the 2006 National Association of REALTORS Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. That guided my decision to get a Myers website. During my second year in business I increased my leads by about 75% as a direct result of my new site. I now receive four to five online contacts per week from my website, and close an average of two of these leads every month. My gross sales production has increased by 103%.

Looking back, I was very excited when I received my first online leads. It motivated me to focus on how to get many more. My husband offered to help, and we began to dedicate time towards learning effective online marketing techniques. Our efforts have paid off handsomely - I currently receive an average of 207 visitors a day. Half of my business in the last six months has come from my Myers website alone.

We chose to educate ourselves about search engine optimization rather than to pay someone else to do it. We were so surprised to learn how much help is available; it seems that SEO is an area where people are willing to help each other - even though they are sometimes competitors. We took many of the free Myers classes, and obtained useful tips from other members of the Myers BizBoard community. We also visit a real estate agent webmaster forum where members share search engine information, and find "ActiveRain" - another real estate forum - to be a helpful and informative community.

Two other colleagues and I have "invented" the Gold Team here at Century 21 MVP. As team partners, Lisa Hatfield, Kathy Key and I all share strong customer service and construction backgrounds. Together, we aim to combine and leverage our skills, experience and personal schedules to deliver the Century 21 "Gold Standard" treatment to all of our customers. This means that we strive to fully understand our client's wishes, and that we believe in the importance of doing small things that make a difference. We let people know by our actions and attitudes that finding their dream home, or marketing their existing home, is our first priority.

Our biggest challenge with the Internet is finding ways to "outrank" our competitors! To accomplish this, we try to stay on top of all the latest search engine trends. For example, Google is phenomenal in recognizing and rewarding genuinely relevant content for the human reader - as opposed to "shallow filler content" strictly placed in hopes of achieving improved search engine placement. We continually provide authentic, original, valuable content for the reader, which directly improves my website search engine ranking. "It's crazy how this works!"

To help us generate more new leads, we use Google Analytics in order to learn what search criteria people enter that causes them to arrive at my website. This clearly tells us what people are searching for, and enables us to see where my site ranked on each specific search. For the searches where I didn't rank very high, we perform some research and place a page or two of detailed, relevant content on my site. This way, a web search with the same or similar search criteria will result in a higher ranking of my website in the future.

Myers has been very receptive to what I have asked for. They have responded to every question, issue and request that I've made. Not long ago I mentioned that an RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") feed would be very helpful to me. Lo and behold, Myers delivered. Because Myers stays on top of the market trends, and responds to my needs, I am able to market my company successfully and have the time to provide an award-winning level of service to my clients.

Visit Annie Maloney at
http://www.anniemaloney.com/