If your real estate website is “Under Construction” or non-existent, this Dojo article is dedicated to you.

Being a bit of a Gary Vaynerchuk fan, I tend to tune-in to his marketing wisdom on occasion. A while ago one of his short video clips landed on my Facebook home feed. I extracted the main message from that video, and now it’s on a post-it note and stuck to the corkboard in my office – I never want to forget this:

I never want you to forget it either! One is greater than zero. Despite being such a simple concept, it is applicable to so much in life and business – and is so easy to remember. Watch Gary’s 3 minute video below before we continue.

As a real estate agent, perhaps you’re not so concerned with a producer at CNN finding your content. Your ideal objective is (most likely) to obtain new leads and ultimately new clients from your website or the content you’re producing.

The 1 > 0 rule still applies to you.

How can you expect to be discovered online if you’re NOT online? How can you be present online if you don’t have a presence!? With every day that goes by that you have NO online presence, you are losing valuable brand awareness and you’re missing out on potential leads! That “CNN producer” is not viewing your limited website… they are viewing nothing of yours at all because there is nothing to view.

Many agents are never going to update their site from the painfully simply, usually terrible, default website (or profile) provided to them by their brokerage. Others are currently going through the website development process with a custom web design firm, or with a subscription-based REALTOR® website service like RealtyNinja, to get their first real estate website up and running.

• If you’re in the process of setting up your site, nice work! 
• If you are taking your sweet time to launch your site live, what’s taking you so long?! 

Some agents want everything to be perfectly polished before they release their website to the wild. I understand the desire to be flawless and the draw towards perfection – I consider myself a perfectionist so I get it, I really do.

However, this waiting game often leaves you without a website for weeks, months… sometimes I’ve heard of people waiting a year to launch their websites! I’m here to tell you – as a perfectionist – sometimes good enough is good enough.

One small fact to keep in mind is that a website is not a book… you don’t print 10,000 copies that you’re stuck with as-is. A real estate website is a living, breathing thing that should change, grow and generally evolve over time. In fact, Google actually gives you bonus points if your website is frequently updated or “fresh”.

(PS. That’s another reason why Blogging regularly is such a great SEO bonus!)

When it comes to getting your site online, we have a “Ready, FIRE, Aim” sort of mentality. If your website were a sports car, the most important thing would be for the engine to turn on so you can drive it. Fancy rims, a new paint job, bucket seats and a sweet sound system are all additions you can make later on down the line.

In case you’re wondering “what parts of a website are the engine, and what parts are the paint job and bucket seats?”, wonder no more. Here are a few of the essential elements you should have on your REALTOR® website right away so that you can launch it – the engine:

• Welcome Message on Homepage
• Contact information
• A photo (or two)

That’s really it… if you have these three things on your website homepage, go ahead and LAUNCH it! Contact info is the real important piece… does your business card have a list of your sold listings on it? How about your testimonials? Probably not… even if your website was just nothing but a business card for now, it’s still better than no business card!

Now here are a handful of other elements to add to your REALTOR® website on an ongoing basis. Remember, these are the paint job, the bucket seats and the sound system… the car will run without them, but it’s a way sweeter drive when you add these:

• Testimonials
• About Me/Us
• Our Team
• Featured Listings
• Sold Listings
• Buyers Resources
• Sellers Resources
• Videos & Photos
• Blog & Entries
• Niche MLS® Search Pages
• Custom Listing Grouping Pages
• MLS® Search
• Calculator Widgets
• Buildings
• Chat Widgets
• Social Media Links
• Email Subscriber Optin Forms
• the list goes on…

An item that I didn’t include in the list above is the overall design of the site. Working with a designer to get your site looking sharp is just as important as adding content and pages. However, the design process can often be the longest delay. If it’s possible, don’t worry about perfecting the design until you have something on the internet! Once your basic site is online – even if it’s a wireframe – you can begin to wrap a beautiful, branded design around it.

All of the items mentioned in the “paint job” category are extremely important to your website, and should not be overlooked. These items may not be essential to LAUNCHING… doesn’t mean they are not essential to the success of your brand and long-term online objective: to generate leads. Once your site is launched, you should spend time working on those pages and content immediately.

If you’ve managed to stay with me until here, I’m going to give you one other great reason to get your site online right away: Domain History.

You could be a REALTOR® for 25 years, but unless you have a website domain, your 25 years means practically nothing to popular search engines. The minute you launch your website under your domain (www.yoursite.com,) that’s when it’s born… that’s the start of your domain history.

From that moment on, all your website related marketing activities will affect your search engine rank. Everytime you write a blog, share a link, every time someone visits or links back to your site, every time someone clicks something on your site or spends a specific length of time on any page. All of these factors play into your domain history and how you rank on Google, Bing, etc.

Your new website is like a new person showing up at an SEO party. So many REALTOR® website domains are already at the party, rubbing shoulders with the search engines. And new domains are showing up at the party every day… creating a domain history with search engines.

If you don’t show up to the SEO party for another few months, imagine how many competing REALTOR® websites will have shown up and started building a domain history before you.

Now enough reading. Go put some gas in your real estate website’s engine, get it on the road and join the SEO party as soon as you can. Slap the new paint job on later…

What I’m trying to say is, go LAUNCH your real estate agent website today. If you’re a RealtyNinja website customer who needs assistance, email: support [at] realtyninja.com