By Maria Patterson

RISMEDIA, July 23, 2007—Dan Bozza, broker associate at RE/MAX Central—part of RE/MAX of New Jersey—in Manalapan, New Jersey was looking for a Web site with legs. Serving the populous regions of Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties for about 16 years, Bozza considers his online presence to be a major factor in capturing customers and competing in the marketplace. Dissatisfied with the capabilities of the site he had been using, Bozza began searching for a new provider—and partner—in the online arena.

“We were looking for a Web program that had multiple pages where you could add articles,” says Bozza. “We wanted something that we could customize ourselves and that offered strong SEO. We did a search online and Homes.com kept coming out on top in the search results.”

After conducting further research on Homes.com, Bozza signed up with the company about six months ago and began redesigning his Web site to create monmouthcountyhouses.com. “The Agent Advantage program, which is powered by Homes.com, allowed me the flexibility to go in and totally customize my site.”

Bozza also subscribes to the Agent Advantage PowerSearch Advantage program that garners his site high rankings among the major search engines. “When you enter Monmouth County Real Estate, we come up number-one in the paid results in Google, and on Yahoo!, we come up organically as number one and two for four different key words,” Bozza explains. “When I revamped the site, I changed all the meta tags.”
In the six short months since working with Agent Advantage and Homes.com, Bozza has accrued up to 200 clients through his site and is “actively working with a few of them.” He is already seeing actual closed business from his Web presence.

“Right now, we’re averaging between three to six new clients a day, but I really want six to nine,” he explains. “We’ll see if we can boost this with our SEO and by changing a few things.”

Bozza attributes part of his current success to the breadth of the site’s design. “We are not narrow to one town,” he explains. “We concentrate on three different counties. We then have that site linked to other sites and a separate blog site. We try to circle our business through all three sites—our monmouthcountyhouses.com site, our N.J. Realty Café site (blog), and our regular RE/MAX Central site. We try to make sure that our clients stay within us.”

Another important reason why Bozza’s Agent Advantage Web site is yielding such positive results is the strategic planning and ongoing support he receives from his Agent Advantage representative. “She’s absolutely amazing,” he says. “If we have any problem whatsoever, we can pick up the phone and call.”

One online strategy that works for Bozza is offering FSBO advertising on the site. Bozza explains, “When the FSBO gets tired, they turn their business over to us.” Bozza also exchanges links with his mortgage rep, which generates leads both ways.

Looking ahead, Bozza will continue to strengthen his Web presence: “With over 80 percent of people starting their search online for a home, you have to have a strong Web presence. With Agent Advantage and Homes.com, we have that.”  

For more information, please visit www.homes.com ^[1].