Real Estate SEO

How the big guys plan to exploit the little guys and how Real Estate SEO and Real Estate SEM level the playing field.

It’s no secret that the National Association of Realtors is on the side of the big guys. I’m talking about the ERAs, C21s, Prudentials, and Exits of the real estate world. From one point of view, that’s OK. These big firms employ hundreds of thousands of Realtors.  That’s a lot of jobs. I’m sure that a lot of our readers work for some of these larger companies and that’s all well and good.

Now, I’m going to draw out exactly how the system that the big guys, supported by the NAR, have put in place, can actually work to the little guy’s advantage, through the use of the internet, SEM, and SEO. It goes like this…

The revenue model at the heart of most the big residential real estate companies is pretty simple.

1. They want as many real estate transactions as possible to happen under their brand
2. They want to keep as much of the transaction’s value as they possibly can.

Seems pretty obvious. If a trillion dollars in real estate transactions happen in the US in a year, then Coldwell, for example, wants as much market share of that trillion to be under their name. AND they want to keep, that is the corporation wants to keep, as much of that as they can.

Most of the big guys are on a traditional split. The agent negotiates a commission with the seller and the company keeps a percentage of the commission. There are 2 ways for the company to make more money:

1. The agent negotiates a bigger commission from the seller. This is all well and good, but most markets are seeing consistent commissions paid by sellers. It’s likely 5 or 6 percent in your market and just about everyone is working for the same percentage - regardless of how long they’ve been a Realtor. So, the corporation has little control over this.
2. The corporation takes a bigger percentage of the agent’s commission.

Now, most of these companies start you at a low split. If you’re new to the industry, they may take 60% of your commissions for the house. If you’re doing a lot of sales, that will graduate to 50/50 and on down until you’re keeping 80% or more of your commissions.

Of course, the big companies want to keep as much of the commission as possible, they don’t like 80/20 splits or event 60/40 splits. Their goal is to have as many entry level agents doing deals as possible. The result is that they’ll keep 50 or 60 percent of the commission. In order to make this possible, they need lots of new realtors in the market pretty much all the time.

So, the big companies, in cooperation with the NAR and local real estate boards around the country have kept the barrier to entry into the real estate profession exceptionally low. Lower than almost any profession where someone has as much earning potential as they do in real estate.

This means that just about anyone can come into the industry whenever they want. So long as this is true, there will always be too many real estate agents for very many of them to make a great living. Sure, some of them will make lots of money, but most will not. Most will take on a second job or do real estate on the side or even average less than 1 deal per year. Just take a look at NRT’s stats for deals/agent and you’ll be shocked. (they’re the largest residential brokerage in the country)

Now, here’s how this all plays into the hands of the average realtor. The internet is one giant level playing field. The big guys can try to buy a million clicks or SEO around every term on the planet, but it’s untenable. They’re years behind the local guys and longevity matters in the SEM game.

You can start a real estate website today and so long as it’s built on a good platform and you hire a good SEM/SEO team, you can achieve ranking in just a few months. In some ways, this means that the internet is in the little guy’s favor. The independent real estate company can be ranked right next to the big guys. In lots of markets, the big companies aren’t ranking at all.

As real estate marketing and client acquisition continually goes more online, the big guys will be more and more left out of the picture. With time, it’ll be easier and easier for the independents to challenge the big guys and take market share. We’re already seeing this in lots of markets. Do a Google search with your town or city’s name followed by the words real estate. This will give you some insight into who’s already investing into real estate SEM and real estate SEO.

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts? We’d love to hear from you. Thanks!

Image source: www.nuwireinvestor.com

Are you looking for ways to take your real estate blog to the next level? Over time we’ve written a lot about blogs and how to blog for your business. As a matter of fact, we consider it to be fundamental to a successful online marketing strategy. It’s a way to connect to and communicate with your readers and followers, generate leads, and improve your organic search results (and since you’re reading this, then I assume you are trying to achieve just that).

Without further ado, here are is our advice about blogging best practices:

1. SEO 101 - How to SEO my Real Estate Blog
2. SEO 101: Blogging Part 2
3. Answers to common Real Estate blogging questions
4. Starting a conversation
5. SEO Army - A Real Estate office working together
6. How long should my blog post be?
7. Redesigning your blog? Keep SEO in mind
8. Top 10 sites to submit your blog
9. 10 ways to optimize your blog for Real Estate SEO
10. Blogging instead of spending

Here’s a little something I bet most Googlers probably don’t know about.

Conduct a search in Google…say for “real estate seo” then select “show options”. That will open an entire panel of goodies.

Within that left hand column, towards the bottom, is an option to choose search via the infamous “wonder wheel”. Select that! Now watch…this is really cool. To the right of the wonder wheel are still your search results for “real estate seo” and then you can choose any of the options the wheel presents; realtor marketing, real estate search engine optimization etc.

With each new choice your search results will update and allow you to quickly drill down to something new, maybe even something you had not thought of before.

Quick tip: this fun little tool can come in handy when doing keyword research.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

We recently featured a blog post on how to optimize your real estate blog for SEO in 10 steps. Today I am your personal guide inside the Boston Logic ONE System and how customizing your blog is the key to success in real estate online.

Previously we took you inside WordPress as a blog platform. A platform that we highly recommend for blogging. The only thing better than WordPress for search engine optimization is a customized solution.  It just so happens that we offer such a platform. The blog is only one component of the Boston Logic ONE System, a comprehensive real estate website platform, but it is a crucial component for SEO.

It is important to customize your blog from head to toe to represent your business. Everything from the blog name, URL, titles, meta tags, images, content, links and categories should reflect how you want to have your business represented online. For example, this blog (Real Estate SEO by Boston Logic) talks about search engine optimization for real estate. The URL www.realestateseo1.com and title ‘Real Estate SEO, Our SEO blog for Real Estate Brokers, Agents, and Developers’ makes it clear you won’t be reading about dog haircuts. Notice also that you are reading a post about customizing your blog and how it’s the key to success in real estate online. All of these items reflect Boston Logic’s mission to provide market leading tools and services that enable real estate professionals to acquire, retain, and develop clients–go figure.

Here’s a bare bones example of what Boston Logic’s blog application offers (see image below). In addition to giving you all the great blogging features that a mainstream platform (like WordPress) provides, the ONE System makes it easy for your readers to find their way to the property search–the part of your website where you ultimately want all traffic to go. By having the option of a static “quick search” tool on each page of the site  (including your blog), you gently  guide visitors to your listings.

Cabot and Company, a Boston Real Estate company recently had their website redesigned by Boston Logic and are using our online marketing - SEO services. As part of our SEO services we recommended our customized blog platform and all it has to offer. Joseph Palermino, a managing partner at the company, is now a regular blogger and to his surprise, a really good and engaging writer.

Our recommendation to Cabot and Company and others is–learn your blogging platform and use it well. Write as often as you can and have fun with it - or find someone to do it for you. Our clients consistently see increased traffic and visitor retention by writing new posts and keeping loyal readers coming back for more…and you can too!

PS: here are a few more Boston based real estate companies that use the Boston Logic blogging platform;

• Avenue 3 Real Estate
• GKR Residential
• Coming soon - Boston Realty Advisors’ Blog

So, every once in a while, I read an article that makes some great points.

Mike Parker, who I’d never heard of before, wrote an article for Broker/Agent Social network and it touches on a lot of good facts and points. The web address and a link to the article are below.

The article is entitled Traditional Agents Earn $36,700 Annually; Internet Agents Earn $100,000+ Annually. It’s an attention getting name for sure. The article goes on to tell how real estate agents have a lot of trouble existing solely on the money they make from being in the real estate biz. That is, accept for the folks who have embraced the internet.

Now, I don’t agree with everything Mike said. Intelligent and reasonable folks can disagree. That’s fine. But I’m going to highlight some of his points and I also want to look at some of the comments he received.

The best part of the article is that Mike tells us that the average “Internet Agent” makes more than $100,000 per year. Now, I’m not sure that the numbers are quite that high, but let’s assume that the Internet Agent does make a lot more than the average agent. Who is this agent? Well, they get 70% of their leads online. They sell more than one home each month. And lastly - and I don’t really agree with this statement - Mike tells us that they have a positive outlook for the future because, “There are no economic downturns online.” That last quote is not completely true. That said, there’s a reason why we’re seeing Boston Logic’s real estate clients growing in a down market. The reason is online marketing: SEO, SEM, and social media. A general embracing of online strategies to succeed in real estate marketing.

Mike tells us that the AVERAGE Real Estate agent doesn’t get many leads from their website. Well, regular readers of our blog will tell you that we’re not surprised to hear that at all. In one of the comments, a reader says that they have a website and haven’t seen results. Again, no surprise. Mike’s comment in response is really quite spot on. Mike says that it’s likely that the strategy wasn’t implemented properly. Just having a website isn’t nearly enough. Yes, you need to invest in online marketing. Yes, it will cost you money. The Real Estate brokerage business is like any other, you have to invest money to make money.

Next, Mike makes a great point saying that you need professional Real Estate SEO help. He says, “…let someone manage a site built just for you that produces these leads, and that site must employ the best in REAL SEO…” I’m not sure what he means by Real SEO? I’ll assume he means white hat techniques that won’t get you banned from the search engine results pages. Of course, Mike is right on the money. You probably need a professional and you need to have a site that’s build just for you that produces leads. Not some cookie cutter template site. Read our Snake Oil category to learn who not to buy from.

Now, it’s very important that you remember a few things. In order to succeed online - in order to see a return on your investment - you’re going to need a site that gets visitor traffic, you’re going to need a site that generates leads, and you’re going to need to follow up with those leads. I think we’ve posted about a dozen times on just those topics. Here are some recent posts that back up just what the stats from NAR tell us:

• SEO is a means, not an end
• Setting goals
• It’s not 1989 any more
• Results are what really matter

Here’s how you can get to Mike’s Article:
http://www.brokeragentsocial.com/article.php?article_id=364

Thanks for reading.