It always amazed me how little importance foreign business entrepreneurs in the real estate business in Spain give their web presence. Especially in the real estate market people seam to believe that their web site is nothing but a necessary expenditure and fail to understand a couple of things:

1. A professional web presence is a substantial part of the overall marketing plan and possibly the single most effective way to generate potential customers.

2. Marketing on the internet is substantially different then off line advertising.

3. People judge a companies credibility by the content and design of their web site

4. Web Sites dont work without promotion

As a result of underestimating these simple facts, the web site owners tend to look for cheap solutions and what is worse: do not put enough effort and planning into their internet presence. A common believe is: once I paid somebody for a web site, this is it, next task.

Very often it becomes worse then that, instead of outsourcing the design, and promotion to a professional, yet expensive Internet Marketing company, they give the task to somebody they know or the famous nephew who allegedly knows this stuff.

The result is web sites which look outdated, look like online brochures, are stuffed with flashy graphics and are highly annoying for the user. Colours have been chosen without given any thought to the effect certain colours have on the subconscious of the user instead the owners favourites are chosen.

The site features hardly any content but an extensive about us section, an enquiry form and a searchable property database and thats about it. Some web site owners put a little buyers guide and a page with general information about Spain.

The end result is a web site which features the web site owners favourite colours, strokes his ego to death ,did not cost a great deal of money but doesnt do anything but wasting server space.

Then the question occurs: how to gain rankings in search engines? Hey, easy isnt it? Stuff your meta tags with all the words you want to be found under and submit as often as you can to every search engine on the planet. There are people who even charge for this rather counter productive method.

Then the web site owner waits and waits some more, month go by with little success and he starts wondering what for he made a web site in the first place. Some actually start educating themselves on the internet about the subject they find an idea such as link exchange and rapidly start contacting other site owners to swap links.

You have guessed it already? Yes, they avoid linking to sites which feature related content fearing competition and end up having every known Spam site on their link page: Bali Hotels, Russian Hotels, Gambling sites, US Real Estate Directories and so on. None of which is of any value to their users hence considered irrelevant by search engines.

Time goes by, and the site owner and his designer remain the only people looking at the site. Finally the site owner decides, as a last resort to contract an SEO consultant.

Now it is really getting funny:

Instead of taking the SEO firms advice on board the game repeats itself: He wants an even nicer, even flashier site and insists that on his colours and design. The SEO firm does its best to redesign the site in compliance with internet marketing standards and as search engine friendly as possible.

The SEO firm insist on content and content development, being the single most important aspect of a credible and successful web site, whilst the site owners only concern is the look and feel of his site, and does not feel the urge to actually think about developing the content of his site he wants the SEO firm to achieve the impossible mission:

Get MY site in the top ten of Google and dont change it.

They recognize the need for traffic (OK, off to a good start). They did their research and selected a company (nice, moving forward) and they plunk down the money (and if it's an SEO company that's any good, it wasn't just pennies either). So far it all sounds good. What happens next nothing absolutely nothing!

Most companies in Spain that choose to outsource their SEO do not follow the instructions of the SEO firm they hired! I am going to repeat that again so the full impact reaches you Most companies that choose to outsource their SEO do not follow the instructions of the SEO firm they hired!

Instead they tell the SEO how much expertise they have themselves in marketing, how great they have been designing company literature, and how many years they do marketing. And: what THEY think a good web site needs to look like.

Now here the truth of the matter: There is NOT one SEO consultant on the planet who can get your web site anywhere near to top positions if you are not prepared to change your attitude. SEO is a time consuming, ongoing and difficult task. If it was easy everyone would do it himself. It is not only expensive but requires from you, the site owner the following:

1. Accepting that online marketing is substantially different from off line marketing.

2. Accepting that you know little or nothing about it

3. Time and effort to develop unique in-demand content

4. Choosing your SEO firm wisely.

5. Taking your SEO consultants advise on board.

Written by

Wolfgang Brand

Clever Marketing Spain