Real Estate SEO

Archive for April, 2009

Today was session 4 of my series with the North Eastern Association of  Realtors.  We further went over the benefits of social media and blogging in Real Estate SEO and lead generation. Take a look:

What do Real Estate SEO and Wayne Gretzky have in common? May seem like nothing at first glance, however he once was quoted for saying the following:

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. ~ Wayne Gretzky

That is precisely like SEO.

I actually got the inspiration for this (*grin*) by watching an episode of the Office. The quote was actually written on the wall in their office and as the camera slowly zoomed in on the quote…it got me thinking…what an accurate statement.

SEO is typically thought of as a “lottery” where the same holds true. If you don’t participate there’s no chance of you making it. I am not going to go into the odds of playing the lottery, but I am saying that not participating = not having a shot. Or per Gretzky, “not taking the shot” = “missing 100%” of the time…that indeed is a fact!

The same can be said for your web presence. Let’s see how: First of all, if you have no site you have no online presence. Second, if you do have a great site but don’t market it, you are missing out tremendously. A site without visitors is like a billboard in the middle of the woods. Why even build one there in the first place?

So take the cue from one of Hockey’s finest…you don’t want to miss out. Optimize your online presence with an online marketing campaign – Real Estate SEO. Read more of our blog or contact us directly if you have questions about marketing your website or creating an effective online presence.

Here are some answers to everyday questions about blogging and managing your agents’ outside blogs:

How can I persuade my agents or other agents to blog? David recently wrote a great post about the SEO army. Put that army (aka your agents) to work. Learn how to by reading more in that post.

Is it ok to have multiple profiles or blogs out there? Yes, it’s a good thing to be visible in multiple places. They offer more means through which potential customers can find and reach you. You just want to make sure that those other sources (profiles, accounts, blogs etc) link back to your site in some manner.

What are some basic things I need to know before blogging? Blogging is basically an extension of your personality, so keep that in mind as you write. It will vary from author to author. If you have multiple authors you will want to divide some of the writing workload, which also helps maintain consistency in terms of volume and style. Also keep the basics in mind, meaning good grammar and spelling.

Shouldn’t all communication come from one source? It is my professional opinion that if your agents are already spending quality time writing good posts, then those posts (if relevant to your business) might as well go up on your site. However, that varies from business to business. You will want to establish a ground rule from the onset. But keep this in mind, it’s a great and inexpensive marketing medium for your agents.

I already have agents blogging. What can I do next?Assign someone to manage some of this communication. In all likelihood you have some kind of office assistant or manager who can surely spend a little time tracking some of this communication (really it can take as little as 15 minutes a day).  A quick and easy way to do this is to either follow up with agents directly or (if you are one of those saying, yeah right) sign up with Google Alerts and track what gets published through there. Obviously if your agents are all blogging at the same place then this won’t be much of a problem.

How do I SEO my blog posts and incorporate keywords? Read this great article about the basics of SEO and you will be well on your way to a successful blog.

How can I help promote my agents’ blogs? A great way to promote your agents’ blogs, personal site or other outside profiles is to link to them, whether from your broker blog, a dedicated page on your site or some sort of other profile page.

What else do you want to know? If there any questions that I’ve left unanswered please let us know by asking the question through the comment section.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Monitoring Your Name is Important (ariwriter.com)
• How to use Google Alerts (itfreakszone.blogspot.com)
• Smart Realtors Use Search Engines for Marketing (stompermom.com)

How many ways do you think Social Media can contribute to good real estate SEO? Jot down a list and then compare it to mine. If I left off any major ones, please let me know. Here goes:

1. Blogs are social media. Blogs only get read when there’s new content. New content helps your search engine placement.
2. You can syndicate your content (let’s say from your blog) to social media sites. You could even feed your real estate listings, by RSS to your twitter and Facebook profiles.
3. Many social media site pages are public. These pages are bound to have links back to your site. Linking will improve your SEO.
4. Social bookmarking links on your site will produce back links from those sites (Digg, Reddit, Stumble, etc.) to your site. Again, these links will improve your SEO, your rank, and bring you more traffic and more leads. Remember real estate buyer and seller leads are the goal, not just ranking!
5. Users spend a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter, and many other social media sites. The referral traffic will help you gain more visitors, more clients and sell more real estate.
6. Promotions have more power with social media. Post a promotion on your site, edit your PPC ads accordingly to drive clicks, broadcast the promotion to your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and LinkedIn connections and watch your traffic spike.
7. Remember that real estate SEO is about leads and customers. What you care about isn’t always ranking but leads and real estate transactions that come from those leads. Use your analytics system, like Google analytics,  to look at the social media sites that are driving traffic and leads to your site. My money says that you’ll see a good conversion rate on this traffic.
8. Chatter on Facebook and Twitter can fuel your blog. Look at what the people are saying about your real estate market, your real estate business, even you as a real estate agent. You’re likely to get inspired and find a topic to blog about. Also, here’s another post about blogging inspiration that could be helpful.
9. Social media is all about linking and showing the world what you’re up to. As a result, your friends and followers are likely to check out the stuff that you’re pointing them to. So, engage your community, send them to your site – full of great resources and information – and they’ll convert into leads.

Ok, that about exhausts my list of how Social Media can improve your Real Estate SEO. I’m sure there are many others that I forgot, but I have to get back to SEOing a couple of sites today. I look forward to your additions to my list. Leave them as comments please. Thanks.

This post is going to address a couple of major SEO topics. Why am I tackling 2 in one blog post, because they jumped off my computer screen in rapid succession!

First, I’m going to call out another snake oil seo salesman. The first thing I saw was that their ad read “Good SEO = More Traffic.” This immediately screamed AMATEUR SEO. Then I clicked through to their website (yes, the PPC click probably cost them a couple of bucks) and I started reading. I immediately thought, this was not written by someone who speaks english as a first language.

I couldn’t believe it, I was reading what was supposed to be marketing copy and I could immediately tell that it was written by someone who wasn’t qualified to be writing it. So, I clicked on the contact page on the site. Sure enough, they gave an address in Mumbia, India.

The company is called Convonix. I’d never heard of them before, so that’s why I decided to click on their ad. It’s a bad sign when we’ve never heard of an SEO firm. We’re pretty well aware of who the players are in the industry. It’s not hard for us to suss out the riff raff. Like I said, I knew they were snake oils salesmen. Here are two major reasons why.

“Good SEO = More Traffic” is how their PPC ad read. THIS IS FALSE!!!

GOOD SEO = MORE CUSTOMERS

Results are what matter. I would shout this from the rooftops if I could. Any SEO firm that’s trying to sell you on placement is behind the times and should not be allowed to practice SEO. Who cares where you place and how many users come to your site if you don’t gain any customers as a result? Good SEO = Revenue. Good SEO = Business Growth. Good SEO = Speaking the language.

This brings me to my next point on SEO and really marketing in general. Years ago, one of the fathers of direct marketing described the practice of marketing as “salesmanship in print.” In the 21st century, we can expand this definition to say “salesmanship through another medium.” The medium could be a website, print, radio, you name it. The marketer’s job is to help promote and sell the offering.

Now, let me ask you bright people the following question. Is it wise to have someone who doesn’t have a good command over the language write your marketing copy? Do you want the content of your website to be written by someone in India? Will they understand idioms? Slang? Irony? Let’s remember, when we talk about SEO, content is King! The answer is simple. You need someone with a healthy command of the language to do the SEO work. SEO is not something that should be outsourced to Mumbia or Paris or Moscow. Marketing requires someone who knows your language and your market and SEO is marketing!

This is twice as true for the real estate industry. You need someone who speaks your “language.” I’m using the word language a little more loosely here. The language of real estate, which is required for good real estate seo, is specific to the industry, your geography, and to your market. The home buyer or seller, whom you want to click on your listing in the search engine results, is going to search using works and phrases particular to the real estate industry. They’re also going to use real estate terminology specific to your area and the current market condition.

This brings me to my last point. We’ve had clients in the real estate industry ask us how we can work with multiple real estate companies in the same market, which we do all the time. The answer is pretty simple. You can work with a real estate seo firm, like Boston Logic, who speaks the language, with domestic staff, who know the real estate vertical extremely well, or you can pay someone else to ride a learning curve on your dime. Also, it’s a big market out there. If we can help a few clients in each market gain more market share, then we’re doing our job.

That’s what good SEO equals…more market share. Not just more traffic.