Real Estate SEO

Archive for June, 2009

You may have wondered what you can do to optimize your WordPress blog for real estate seo…

If you are using WordPress for either your entire web presence or as a blog which is part of your larger website you will still want to make sure that it is fully optimized. Even if you already have an optimized website you still need to optimize my blog. Yes you do. What if you have the overall blog optimized, do you still need to optimize each page/post? Yes you do.

A great simple solution in WordPress that makes all of this much easier for you is the “All in one SEO pack” which you can install with one click through the “Plugins” section.

All In One SEO Pack

10 steps to optimizing your blog

1. Custom Permalinks: Permalinks, essentially your URLs, are now a basic part of WordPress that you can easily edit. Based on what your title is, your permalink will appear as such. My recommendation is to try to keep it short when possible and to have your keywords as they relate to your post included.

2. Meta Titles: Your meta Title, or Page title as it’s also referred to, is another essential part. It’s what ends up being the text in the blue bar of your search browser and also the text that is the first line of your site in the search results. You want to make sure that it is clear and relevant to your post otherwise you may turn readers away without knowing it.

3. Meta Description: You meta description is another part that appears in search results as text below your page title that is in essence descriptive information about what your site holds in store. You are limited by 160 characters so be sure to be precise, informative and whenever possible don’t copy text directly from your content.

4. Titles and Subtitles: Aka Headers; H1 and H2 etc. An H1 Header is your primary header. Within WordPress your post title will always be your H1 header. This further helps shows your readers and search engines what you’ve written about. Headers also help establish a hierarchy of your content. Typically your H1 title will be the largest and increase in size from there on. Makes sense right…You can easily format the type of header you want by choosing a different “class” or within the code source/HTML enclosing your text within <h2> … </h2>.

5. Content which includes your Real Estate SEO terms: I did not place this list within order of importance but more so order of flow from the top of a page to the bottom. If I had ordered it by importance “content” would probably have been first. Your content is extremely important because it sets you apart from all others (aka your competition). Your content should reflect your business, your services, goals etc. What you have to write about is precisely why people come to read your blog over and over again…you will establish loyal readers.

Once you’ve determined the focus of your blog, obviously something to do with “real estate” then you should stick to that. While you should have fun with it, please remember that you should incorporate your keywords in a natural way whenever possible. Incorporate news about neighborhoods in which you do business, your local involvement, featured properties, opinion pieces etc. People like to hear what you have to say and they certainly like knowing that they are getting the inside scoop from you (a trusted source) first.

6. Links: We have talked about getting inbound links for your real estate site before but this is about links within your blog. Including links like I have throughout this post, from a certain topic to a related topic/post within your blog or website is an important part of any site structure. You should also link out to other trusted sources/sites. This shows your readers and search engines that you get your information from trusted sources and share your information with those sources.

7. Images and ALT Tags: Really this should read “images must have ‘alt tags’”. Images are an important and rather engaging part of your blog post. Whether you include one or multiple images it’s a good practice to include unique images to help break things up visually. Since search engine robots (that crawl your site regularly in search of new or updated content) can’t see images, they need to have a “clue” of sorts…and that’s where “alt tags” (sometimes referred to as alt attributes or alt text) come into play. As you add new images WordPress will give you the option to optimize your “alternative text”…make use of that option and name your images according to what they are and not something like picture 1 and picture 2 etc.

8. Category Names: Categories are used to arrange more than one article into a common label. Similar to tags, they help organize content, both are used to label or name articles and arrange them. A good practice is to include broad keywords as part of your categories.

9. Tags: Tags are descriptions that will associate an article to various topics. Typically one-word descriptions of the most important aspects of the article with the most prominent keywords or commonly recognizable words are used. It is the tags attributed to a post that lets visitors search your site and then find relevant posts.

10. Call to action – pose a question: Similar to a sales pitch you want to have some kind of call to action in your articles. I recommend not using a “sales” approach where you try to sell your services by saying something like “if you need a realtor then contact xyz” because your content should be empowering enough so that readers will want to know more and either come back or contact you to learn more about how you can help them. You can’t twist someone’s arm and you should not beat them over the head with information. Instead you should close your posts by asking engaging questions. Remind your readers that you value their input and engagement.
Are you employing any of these strategies on your blog (even if it’s not WordPress)? What other kinds of things would you suggest to optimize that I may not have listed here?

Related Articles:

• Top reasons why you should have your own blog
• Top 10 sites to submit your blog
• Answers to common Real Estate blogging questions
• How long should my blog post be?

This post about the origins of Real Estate SEO is part of a series. I highly recommend you read this post first about the origins of direct marketing and SEO.

To summarize part 1:
First there was print, then there was the telephone and then radio and TV. Then, maybe 50 years later, along came the internet and search engines like Google and Yahoo. The search engine companies invented PPC platforms like Adwords and Overture. Placing a dollar value on search engine referral traffic (PPC) created a market for SEO services.

Now, let’s talk about real estate.

When the internet went public in ’93, not everyone jumped on the band wagon. Lots of industries were slow to adopt, but within a few years, the dot-bomb bubble was raging. Around the same time, the real estate bubble was forming. Real estate agents were doing a lot of transactions. They hadn’t really adopted technology yet, but they were making lots of money. As the old saying goes, if it aint broke, don’t fix it.

Well, we all know that didn’t last. The Real Estate bubble did burst about 3 years ago. You couldn’t just put a property into MLS anymore and expect 3 offers at the first open house. So, realtors suddenly had to start to innovate.

Now, there were some early adopters in the real estate market. In fact, you can bet that in just about every major market there’s some broker or agent who bought [cityname].com in 1993. But since the market wasn’t spending on real estate technology, there wasn’t a whole lot of innovation.

Meanwhile, as real estate agents were making a lot of money and not using technology all that much, buyers were already turning to the internet. Really, there wasn’t a lot to find yet. Pretty soon over 90% of buyers were starting their search on the web. And we all know where we go to search, yup, Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines. If buyers are starting there, then I better be there to, reasoned the real estate brokers and they were/are right.

Well, while we were sleeping and making money without technology things really changed. So, about 4 years ago, Realtors discovered PPC in droves. I can tell you this because the calls started coming in and we were doing a lot of PPC work. Then, about 2 years ago, the Real Estate SEO market got hot. Real Estate SEO is still the rage, but Social Media is making a big push for the community’s attention.

Technology is being adopted by realtors at light speed (well, at least for this industry it is). The economy is pushing that shift. Why? Because the go-go bubble days are over and the real estate brokers and agents are realizing that they need to spend wisely and efficiently. They know that the best real estate marketing medium is the web and real estate seo is crucial. Of course, social media is cost effective and goes hand-in-hand with SEO. That’s why they’re both popular at the same time.

So, what’s next? Well, stay tuned.

Thanks for reading. If you have questions, just jot a comment and we’ll reply shortly.

We had a new associate start in our marketing department this week. Welcome Aurora. Expect to see her writing about Real Estate SEO on this blog often. Just as soon as we give her the keys.

So, I had the opportunity to teach a few real estate seo lessons. Where to start? Well, we start with direct marketing 101 (circa 1920) and we look at the history of marketing. Then we look at the development of the internet and how SEO, SEM, and social media became what they are today. Of course, we only spend maybe 30 minutes on the first 80 years, but they’re worth noting anyway.

So, 1920. There’s a real estate market, no internet, no Google, and no SEO…yet.

A wise man once referred to marketing as salesmanship in print. Now, this was said about a century ago. Today, we say that marketing is salesmanship through another medium. Back in the day, all we had was print. We had the newspaper and we had the mail (oh, and billboards too, but they don’t get distributed). The newspaper was the major mass medium and direct mail was just about the only direct marketing medium. Still, but no internet and no seo. The real estate market remained the same.

Soon, phones came around, but it took about 20 years for even 10% of homes in America to have phones in them. Still a direct marketing medium was born and phone calls allowed information to travel quite far, cheaply. Then came radio and then TV (told you we’d go quick). Two more mass media. Along with radio came the jingle and branding took a staring role. Still, no SEO.

The masses could hear or watch your ad now and the idea was to generate brand recognition. The selling points often went by the wayside. Also, mass media campaigns generally achieve VERY small conversion rates. When you reach 100 million viewers with a superbowl ad, you don’t need to convert even 0.01% to get a lot of new customers. Radio and TV grew. Budgets grew huge.

That’s the way it was from about 1950 til 1993. Then came the internet and soon the search engine. A few years later, Google and Yahoo! figured out how to make money in the search space. They figured out that they would sell the ad space next to the search results with paid results. Overture and AdWords were born, in that order. Now Google had a profit model (they hadn’t figured it out before then). So, PPC was born.

Here’s the key lesson in this part 1: PPC caused the SEO market.

Here’s how:
When Google created a bidding platform for PPC known as AdWords, marketers like Boston Logic started bidding on terms. The prices went up as companies realized that search engine marketing was a fantastic form of direct marketing. Soon, buying clicks got expensive. So, SEMs started to look back at the left 2/3 of the screen. They realized that the organic listings were FREE and asked a simple question: How do I get my site to come up over there? How can I stop paying for all these expensive clicks?

Thus, the market for SEO services was born. The value of SEO is completely derived from the value of paid clicks. If you can buy the clicks for less than the cost of your SEO expert, then you’re likely to fire them and just get a good PPC manager (they’ll cost you less).

The fact is that SEO is a better investment the vast majority of the time. So, business owners, realtors, and really everyone realized that SEO was the way to go. Thus the preponderance of SEOs nowadays.

OK, that’s it for lesson 1. This one was more about where SEO came from. Next time, we’ll get into the Internet and the search engine’s impact on real estate and the ongoing demise of the newspaper.

Ciao.

Are you one of those that thinks having your own blog is too much work and, well, what do I get from it anyway?

Here’s a list of reasons why you should have your own blog:

• It’s good for Real Estate SEO.
• Your blog should be part of your real estate website i.e. http://www.domain.com/blog.
• Blogs offer great link bait.
• Blogs attract visitors.
• Blogs will help generate leads.
• Having your blog as part of your own website (rather than only ActiveRain or Trulia) will give your site credit for inbound links.
• Inbound links are of a huge value in calculating Google’s PageRank.
• Blog posts will help your website rank for terms.
• Whether hosted through a blog platform or part of your website’s CMS each new blog post/article acts as a new page to your website, which means it’s new content added, and thus a new page to be crawled by search engines.
• You can write content and safe drafts and thus publish at a later date.
• You can have multiple people write for you, or someone else all together if writing is not your thing.

To sum it up, blogging = more fresh (optimized and relevant) content = more inbound links. All of which = more relevant traffic = more sharing, commenting and more links, and finally LEADS.  Remember: Anything that you put quality time into will give you quality results. Individuals now more than ever are jearning for trust and thus will do their research prior to buying…what a better way than through you blog to present yourself and/or your company.

Happy Blogging.