Real Estate SEO

Archive for the ‘Link Building’ Category

Real Estate offices are, all too often, made up of agents who are in competition with one another. The reason for this is quite basic really. The compensation structure of most offices doesn’t foster team work.

But, without changing the way your entire office works, I want to give you some suggestions on how each member of your team can put in a little work each month to help your office website rank better in the search engines. If you have the right systems setup, then you’ll see more leads for everyone.

1. Make sure there’s at least one link on your real estate agent site to your real estate office’s site.  Inbound linking is very helpful when you’re trying to SEO a site. The best links for your real estate seo will be from other real estate websites to your site.
   1. Make sure the link is HTML text and not an image.
   2. Compose the text of the link carefully. If you practice real estate in Newport, then the text of the link should read “Newport Real Estate” or “Newport Homes.” If you practice in Boston, then the link might read “Boston Real Estate”  or “Boston Condos.” Choose terms for which you’d like your office site to appear higher in the search engine results and make that the text in the link.
2. Start an office blog and divvy up the writing assignments. The average real estate office in the USA has 10 agents working in it. If each agent writes a post every other month, then your blog will be well populated before you know it and you’ll start to see reader traffic, comments, and leads. Here are some tips on how to make that blog engaging. Also, if you didn’t know that blogging was good for real estate SEO, there are plenty of posts on this blog that will explain why and how to do it better.
3. Each agent in your office should use social bookmarking websites to promote your site and each post to your blog. Every real estate agent and even the admins in your office should learn how to use StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, and other social bookmarking sites. When a new post goes up, a few members of your staff should bookmark each post on each of these sites. This should take no more than a couple of minutes. Have a look at the bottom of this post and you’ll see links to lots of social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking will bring referral traffic to your site and the backlinks will help your search engine ranking.
4. Make sure every agent in your office has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. Make sure the office has a page on these sites too and that you’re all fans of or connected to the office page. If you don’t know how that works or if the last sentence I wrote makes no sense to you, you need to learn more about social media sites. Call Boston Logic immediately. Social networking sites are a great source of referral traffic, don’t miss out on these visitors!
5. Aggregate email lists. Make sure the office is sending out a newsletter at least once a month. The content can be pulled from or at least reused on the blog you’re going to start.

Ok, these are all simple SEO tasks that just about any agent in your office should be able to do. If you’re reading this post and thinking how great it would be to get the whole office behind an effort like this, just remember that people love to follow leadership. Be the leader in your real estate office who starts the organic SEO effort. Your colleagues will thank you.

Have a great weekend.

When it comes to managing and optimizing your blog there are some key factors that can help improve the performance of your blog tremendously. As you know by now, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as making a site more appealing to visitors. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. When a website appears near the top of the search results for relevant search queries, traffic to that website increases dramatically. As a real estate business, Real Estate SEO can help you can acquire a great deal of leads by appearing high on the search results pages. Blogs in particular allow you to add new content on a regular basis and establish territory for your particular niche or market.

How do I SEO my blog?

Keywords: Do your research (search-trends and keyword competition/difficulty analysis) and use your keywords throughout your blog. We suggest, when appropriate, using some form of your keywords in your URL, title, content, links and tags for your post. An important thing to keep in mind is to make the incorporation of your keywords reader friendly. Don’t just cram the words in there, but use them in a way that will still make reading enjoyable.

URL: You know, that funny text that appears in your browser window, Http://www.such-and-such.com … Well most blog platforms like WordPress and Typepad actually let your edit what the URL structure or Permalink (as it’s sometime called) will be. URL naming is important because that is one of the pieces that search engines query as they gather relevant information based on a user’s search.

Basically it is much more powerful to have a URL be http://www.domain.com/blog/fascinating-topic or http://www.domainname.com/fascinating-topic (if your blog is in a separate domain from your website) rather than http://www.domain.blogspot.com/querystring…

There is also a whole issue of canonical URLs – setting a primary URL structure – that I won’t go into now.

Eye Catching Title: The old adage that you only have a few seconds to grab someones attention with what you have to say still counts. Express what you are offering in your post to your reader upfront. Key things to remember, keep it brief, and keep it relevant and if appropriate use keywords. I’d suggest forgetting about being clever, we all know you can channel Johnny Carson, and instead focus on giving your readers something they are looking for (especially given market trends) like the “Top 10 mistakes home buyers make”, or “How to buy a house and close within x Days” …

Keep in mind also that most blogging platforms take your title and use that as a base for your URL, so unless you have the ability to edit your URL directly, you are stuck with your title as part of your URL.

Content: Foremost you want quality and relevant things to write about. Write about neighborhood news, celebrity sightings (trust, this brings in lots of traffic), housing market updates, featured properties etc.

Finding something to write about isn’t always easy. Be prepared for those days that you are too busy or honestly may just not feel like it. On those days that you do have time and inspiration and could write an entire anthology, write down extra ideas or thoughts for that rainy day. And look for inspiration where ever you can find it.

Last but not least, remember to review all content prior to making it public. It’s important to communicate your subject matter with authority, and nothing says authority like well thought out and grammatically correct posts.

Links: For usability and SEO purposes you want to link your article to other posts within your blog and also to other sites. As a rule of thumb, if you write about a site that is less familiar to the general public you should, as courtesy, provide a link to that site.

Gathering inbound links is equally important. You should have a plan in place for your blogs linking and submission. One place that I highly suggest you submit your blog to is Google’s Blog Search.

Social Media/Community: There is a saying in SEO that “content is king”, well … content is only a lonely King if there are no people to follow. Have some kind of “share this” or “add this” function available for a each post. If you are already part of the social networking community you can share your posts online and have others who follow you do the same. I recommend that each post you write you distribute it to other social media venues. Statistics show that about 1 in 20 posts that you publicize will actually go viral.

While blogging may seem like a lot, it is truly worth the investment. If you cannot or do not want to invest the time yourself, then invest in a service like our Real Estate SEO. The long term results are worth every penny…but I don’t need to tell you that just give it a try and see for yourself.

It’s amazing what some people will tell you.

We’ve been working on signing a new client for our SEO practice. They really are nice folks. They own a real estate office, surprise surprise, and I’ve spent my time in touch with a couple of the members of their marketing department. After telling them what we offer, sending a document on what to expect from our SEO services, I then sent along a service agreement. Pretty much, this is our standard sales process when someone signs up with us for SEO work.

This client wrote back asking us to write into the agreement that we would create 150 “backlinks” each month during the SEO campaign. This set off an alarm right away.  First of all, it was obvious that some SEO provider had told the client that this was an SEO best practice. Well, it’s not. So, we took the time to explain to them that when it comes to inbound linking, you want quality links, not just a high quantity of links.

When you’re trying to increase your inbound link count, you need to increase the number of quality links. This is just one of the elements of good SEO. Here’s how you judge whether it’s a good link.

1. Google assigns every page with a PageRank. They don’t make these page rankings public, but you can see a version of your PageRank by downloading and installing the Google toolbar. If your links are from pages with PR (PageRank) 1, then they’re pretty much worthless. If you can get inbound links from pages with PRs of 5, 6, 7, and higher, then you’ll really be doing more for your SEO.
2. Links to your site should be from pages with similar content. So, if your website is about Boston Real Estate and you’re trying to increase your ranking for the term “Boston Real Estate” then the inbound links to your site should be from other pages about Boston Real Estate. Also, ideally, the sites that those pages are a part of are sites about Boston Real Estate. The search engines look at this like the site is an authority on the subject. So, another example would be: a link from this website to a site about Real Estate SEO would be of high value to that other site; whereas a link from this website to a site about plumbing would be of far less value to that site.
3. Link farms are bad. If the link to your website is from a page or website with many other outbound links on it, then this is not going to help your placement all that much. Google and Yahoo! can tell when a site is a link farm. All they have to do is count the number of outbound links on a page and on the site. So, if you’re just one of 100 outbound links on a page, then that link isn’t going to be looked upon very favorably and this will not help your SEO.

OK, now that we understand what makes for a good link and that many links aren’t worth much at all, let’s remember the following: Good SEO links are about quality and not quantity. If you can remember this mantra, then your SEO campaign will have a much better chance of performing well.

OK, that’s about it for now. If you have any questions about this topic, drop us a note and well get back to you. Thanks.

Maybe you’re one of the lucky Real Estate agents? Maybe you’re the top producer in your office, the name on the sign outside, the envy of the rest of your peers. Well, and may not.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but most of us are not the top producer in the office. There’s only one of those. In the US, there are 10 agents in the average real estate office. That means that 9 out of 10 agents aren’t the top producing agent. That’s OK. This post is for the 9 of you.

If you’ve been in the business for less than 3 years, if you’re having a slow winter, if you had a slow ’08, then you don’t spend your whole day selling real estate. In fact, in this market, you might spend very little of your time actually selling property or working with home buyers. Your job, for a large part of your day, is to find clients.

If you’re really new to the real estate biz, then your full time job is to find clients, generate leads, learn, and cultivate your own brand. Some day, if you do this diligently and well, you’ll spend very little time looking for your next client.

I want you to know that Real Estate SEO is a fantastic investment of your time and money during this period when you have some time on your hands. If you work at achieving search engine placement now, and you have a quality website, then the leads will come. To quote a classic, if you build it, they will come. It’s true in Real Estate SEO, and you never know, old baseball players may come and visit you.

Anyway, let’s assume you’re one of the 9 real estate agents in the office that is not the top producer and let’s assume that you spend less time with buyers and sellers these days than you used to. You’re looking for a way to spend your time which will ad value to your business and help find you clients. Here are some things you can do:

• Start a real estate blog and post several times a week about your local market
• Create market reports on a monthly basis, post these on your blog and send them to your past and potential clients
• Create pages on twitter, facebook, and Linked-In and link your blog to those pages
• Make a goal of having 500 people following your business on Twitter.
• When you get to 500, set a new goal at 2000.
• Set a goal of having 500 fans for your Facebook page about your business
• Make sure you write a monthly newsletter.
• Set a goal of having 1000 subscribers.
• Make sure there’s a link to subscribe to your your email newsletter on your Twitter page, Facebook page, website, Link-In profile, and everywhere else you can put one.
• Add social bookmarking links to the pages of your site and the pages of your blog.

These are just a start. There’s a lot more you can do, but let’s talk about the effects you will see:

Many of these tasks will boost your search engine placement. This will, of course, help you generate leads, grow your email list, and engage perspective buyers and sellers. As you grow your email list, each blog post, market report, and newsletter will require the same work, but be more effective since it will be received by more people. The folks who follow you on twitter will be notified when you post on your blog. This will generate traffic for your site.

The more folks who are your fans, follow you on twitter, or on other social sites, the more traffic your site will see. Many of these are link building tasks. They will help boost your referral traffic and your search engine placement. I could go on. Suffices to say that your real estate seo campaign and your overall online marketing campaign will improve. These are not hard tasks, they just take time.

But let’s be honest, right now, you might have some time on your hands.

If you need help with any of this, just let us know. We’re happy to provide guidance and assistance.

First of all, thanks to those of you who attended the first session of the online marketing for real estate course on Monday at the North East Association of Realtors offices. I’m looking forward to the next session which will be on February 2nd.

While I was giving the talk, I learned something astonishing and I just had to write a post about it. It seems that a large real estate conglomerate called Prudential Prime Properties here in Massachusetts made a BIG mistake. Though, I’m sure they did so unwittingly. They signed their entire 21 offices and the agents in those offices up for a website service that is, to put it mildly, holding their agents back. The company is called RLS2000 and while they’re not selling SEO snake oil, I just had to write a post and put it in this category to talk about why these sites will only hold back your real estate SEO campaign.

First of all, a basic principle of any good SEO campaign is unique content. It seems that the only page that you can edit on your RLS2000 website is the home page. One woman had shown up for the course and only wanted to know how to edit her home page in order to appear at the top of the search engines. Well, I told her that she’d need to edit many more pages on her site than just the home page. She informed me that she could not. Hmm. That’s not going to let you do any real estate seo to speak of.

Another fellow in the room had the same site – yes, it’s almost the exact same site – we looked at his. He had written a great update on his home page about IBM moving offices to his town and how this would impact the real estate market there. I immediately asked him if this was a blog post. No, he said, they don’t have blogging capabilities. What? They’re trying to help you market online and they don’t offer blogging. Run, as fast as you can people.

Here’s the kicker, many of the pages of their sites were exactly the same, and they couldn’t update them. This means that their sites are virtually guaranteed not to rank well in the search engines. I was encouraged to see that the search on the site was not in an iframe, the problem was that there are no static links to any of those pages. So, again, the real estate seo opportunities are completely lost.

So, I asked them the price. It’s apparently $350/year! Well, my surprise was replaced by disappointment. Of course you’re not going to get anything for that price. Good real estate seo is not cheap. What really disappointed me was that a company with 23 offices and hundreds of agents would set back their people so drastically and without asking someone who knew simple questions about marketing and SEO like, “is this going to help our agents?” “Are we doing the right thing to help our agents succeed by signing up with this service?” The answer, very simply is no.

With so many agents, there are great opportunities to work together and really achieve great search engine placement and generate thousands of leads. This is a lost opportunity. Now, I’m sure that this company had some decent reasons for using this vendor. I just hope they rethink their logic before the re-up for another year.