Real Estate SEO

Archive for the ‘SEO Strategy’ Category

I love Jill Whalen’s newsletter; sometimes it gets me thinking. This article, in particular, got me thinking today. If you want to understand what I say below, please pause for a moment and read Jill’s article, then come back to this one.

I don’t have any reason or evidence with which to really disagree with Jill. I’m also not sure that I do, in fact, agree with what she said, and I want to propose another thought.

Jill’s premise is that Google may be keeping their page 1 search results informational so that the commercial search results have to be bought. I.E. Jill is arguing that Google keeps their search results inaccurate in order to sell more AdWords. Again, I’m not saying this is true or false.  Here’s what I do know:

Google has little motivation to improve their results at this time. Why? Because they’re already the most popular search engine! They’ve already won your business. If Yahoo and Bing really make a comeback, then OK, there’s a reason to accelerate improvement. Some folks might even say Bing has done or is doing just that, taking Google’s market share. Perhaps  this will motivate Google to start presenting ‘better’ results. For now, Google is getting billions of searches and even more page views, and lots of clicks which are paying them billions of dollars. Why change?

It’s a well documented sociological reality that if you want to know how someone is likely to act, you need to understand their motivations and incentives. Something would have to motivate Google to make big changes to their algorithm. Obviously, they haven’t had that motivation.

Now, Jill might be right in arguing that Google’s incentive (paid clicks) is driving them to produce a poorer algorithm. I would argue that I don’t think Google is actually trying to make a bad algorithm. I don’t think they’re trying to mislead us. I think they’ve got something that’s pretty good and it’s making them billionaires. So, why fix it?

Lastly, I’d love Jill to come up with a fix. I mean a real fix. She does present a 1 line suggestion. It’s not a bad suggestion, but I think the complexity of search engines is quite deep and to make changes to an application like Google ain’t no small task. it’s just not that easy. They have a lot of money and very good developers, but it’s very costly to build a better mousetrap. Google knows this and they’re probably trying to make their capital investment – or all past dev work into their search – stretch out into the future.

One more thing. Do you remember the web before Google? Trying to find stuff was next to impossible. Google came along and they made it possible to quickly search and find what you need. Then they made AdWords and PPC took off and a market for SEO was born, and now search is a huge paid medium for both ad buy and SEO services. All of this tells me that the world wants to be able to search the web – we want it to be fast, easy, accurate, and vastly comprehensive. We want portability and personalization, and we use these tools all the time. Google will continue to provide a quality system to do all of this – and most of us will keep using Google for a long time.

We have always recommended to our clients that they have Google Analytics installed on their real estate websites. We’ve even given great step-by-step instructions on how easy it is to set up Google Analytics on the Sequoia Real Estate Website platform. So let’s say that you’ve done it: now what?

In order to successfully interpret Google Analytics, you need to understand analytics terminology and language. Defining the information available to you is a great first step in understanding the effect of your web presence.

• Visits - the number of times a person interacted with your website, or the number of sessions on your site
• Bounce – the number of people who instantly left your site after visiting it
• Page Views - how many pages users clicked on and viewed in the total amount of visits
• Pages Per Visit - the total amount of pages in each specific visit
• Average Time on Site – how long people stayed engaged on your website
• % of New Visits - how many sessions or interactions were from first time visitors

Google Analytics Traffic Sources

Traffic to your real estate website comes from many different online sources. Direct traffic refers to the people who already knew about your website, and came to it by typing in your real estate website’s URL into their browser, or had your site bookmarked.

Referring Sites are other outside websites that are directing traffic to your website. The referral traffic can originate from blogs or affiliates that link to your site.

Search Engines, such as Google and Bing, are the online tools that allow users to search for any topic simply by typing in a word or phrase. When you are looking at the “search engine” category, note that this  includes both organic and paid traffic. Organic Traffic is traffic coming from search engines: that is, the search engine combed your website and produced organic results to the user. Your Paid Traffic includes traffic from any online advertising campaigns that you are running, such as Google’s PPC, Adwords.

Now That You Know…

With this information, you can better understand what your web analytics tool is trying to tell you. Now, what do you do with it? How can you analyze this information so you can implement some of the data’s suggestions on your website?

While these are fairly broad questions without specific answers, you can start to analyze the information provided with Google Analytics by asking yourself:

• What are the trends that you notice in your website’s data?
• Where is recent growth coming from?

Similar to online survey data analysis, the key to implementing positive changes for your website that will help you continue to grow comes from asking the right questions and responding appropriately. The more that you practice using the analytics tools, you will continue to discover areas of improvement for your real estate website, and reacting to your data will become second nature.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately regarding the topic of bad reviews on website like Yelp or Get Satisfaction or any of the other review websites online.  People are asking me if those bad reviews have an impact on the SEO of those bad businesses and if they are actually HELPING the bad business by providing an inbound link from a fairly reliable source (the review website).

The recent buzz on the topic was started, in part, by a lengthy feature in the New York Times which highlighted how an online “designer” glasses reseller, DecorMyEyes.com, enjoyed high organic search engine ranking in Google for designer brand names and keyphrases like ‘designer sunglasses’; not only to spite bad reviews and complaints, but BECAUSE of them.  The owner was claiming that all the ‘link juice’ from the mentions of the brands in the poor reviews on reputable websites are actually helping him rank for the terms organically and helping him get new customers every day.

BUT IS IT TRUE?!

Google addressed the issue on the Official Google Blog earlier this month, tweaking their algorithm to penalize merchants that provide an extremely poor user experience, and explaining the issues they face when considering the upgrades.  As Google pointed out in their blog, many review websites actually use a bit of code known as a ” rel=nofollow ” which tells search engines that the link is not to be considered an endorsement and is to essentially be ignored.  Most of the ‘link juice‘ to the vendor in question actually came from articles by reliable news outlets writing about the owner’s arrest and antics!

Good Business Practices Still Apply

If this ‘Negative Marketing’ was somehow helping the company rank higher in organic search results.  However, a little research would have shown potential buyers that the business has a lot of negative reviews, complaints, and lawsuits against it.  Search engines are trying to provide users with the most relevant content to their search query.  It’s up to online consumers to use their search engines to research merchants.

I want to assure you that the old saying that, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ just isn’t true.

The unethical marketing techniques exercised by Decor My Eyes to take advantage in loop-holes in search engine algorithms are just an expansion of ‘Black Hat’ SEO tactics.  There may be short-term tricks for temporary manipulation of search engines, but algorithms are constantly evolving and changing.  Eventually, bogus tactics are discovered (remember keyword-stuffing, anyone?) and improvements are made to the algorithms to make the search results even much more reliable.

THE TRUTH ABOUT NEGATIVE ADVERTISING

As a consequence of all this “Negative Advertising”, search providers and review forums such as Google, Get Satisfaction, Yahoo, and others have already taken direct action against Decor My Eyes.  I did a quick search on the brand names he mentioned ranking for in the major search engines in the interview for the New York Times article, and at the time of writing this blog, he is no longer showing up in the top results for any of them.

Look what happens when you start to search for the company name, Decor My Eyes, in the major search engines now!

Immediately After the Word 'my', Google Suggests a Scam

Interestingly enough, at the time this blog was written, if you were too quick and used Yahoo Search, you could land on the company’s website without ever being alerted to any scams or complaints, as shown in the screen shot below.  Although, as soon as you start to type the word ‘eyes’ into the search field manually suggestions for scams and complaints start to appear.

Yahoo Search- 'decor my' WITHOUT Warning of Scam

Yahoo Search for 'decor my e' Suggests Scams & Complaints

BE A SMART CONSUMER

Bad companies like Decor My Eyes are only able to succeed because of uneducated consumers.  Consider this story as an example of why you should take the extra few moments to do some research on a company before giving them your business!

Seek out and read reviews to see what others are saying about the company.  Look for reviews by established community members, not people who are anonymous or reviewed a low number of business, because reviews by less established members are not as credible.  Note if there are any relevant news articles in your search engine results for the company, such as the final link appearing just above the scroll on the Bing search results about the Decor My Eyes guy getting arrested in the screen shot below!

Bing Reveals the Reputation of DecorMyEyes

In this modern age of technology, consuming is easier than ever; we can even do it from the comfort of our home!  This is very convenient, but  it can also lead to the dangerous habit of engaging with businesses we know nothing about.  The best way to avoid being the victim of a scam, is to do your research.  Search engines are also a great tool for researching company histories, not just what to buy.

WHY BEING GOOD IS ALWAYS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

This story should also serve as a warning to businesses engaging in bad business practices in efforts to trick search engines and customers.  Search engines will continue to route out ‘black hat’ SEO techniques and scams like this ‘Negative Advertising/ Link Building’ Decor My Eyes was utilizing.  Any advantage received from unethical ranking techniques are only temporary.  If caught using unethical techniques, search engines can penalize and even ban you.

There are also real-life consequences to the bad press, consumer reviews, and Better Business Bureau complaints this company has been receiving.  The website hosting and credit card payment service providers are ending their associations with Decor My Eyes for fear of being associated with an unethical business.  Search engines have also deliberately targeted his company as a result of the bad press.  In the end, the technique had failed, and eventually so will his business.

Businesses would be much better off putting their time and efforts into creating happy customers, writing valuable website content, blogging, and building a positive social media presence, which will only increase in value over time.  You’ll probably also get more sleep that the owner of Decor My Eyes, and not be afraid to have your photo in the paper!

What People Say Counts. Be Good to Your Clients.

As a website owner, chances are you already know that backlinks from external sources are important to achieving high rankings in search engines. The following is a brief breakdown of the major link building tactics that you can utilize for generating inbound links for your real estate marketing strategy.

1. Internal Links

Internal links occur within your website, and offer you two great advantages:  1) The ability to develop silos of authority within the hierarchy of a website, and 2) The ability to assist search engine spiders find new content.

Benefits: Internal links are most substantial low hanging fruit of link building, but this tactic is frequently overlooked by website owners. Effective Internal Links are blended seamlessly into web page and blog post text, are not navigational, and aren’t clustered at the end of content.

2. SEO Directories

Essentially, web directories are the telephone book pages of the Internet. There is generally no relevance, ranking, or human input with the listings. They have in the past been an integral part of real estate SEO strategies, as it was believed that having inbound links from these directories was not only valuable for your website’s credibility in the eyes of the Search Engines, but it also validated your links so that Search Engines didn’t have to. However, now it’s important to hone in your focus on the big players in directories, and do your research as to which ones are relevant to you.

Benefits: With the exception of Yahoo, DMOZ, Google Places, and Yelp, many directories can potentially be a waste of time and resources. They’re basically a paid link that passes rank.

 

 

3. .Edu/.Gov Extensions

These websites are legitimate sites of authority, and getting your website placed on sites like these that are relevant to your business is great news for your real estate SEO campaign.

Benefits: Your URL placement on these websites will have a massive impact on your website’s keyword rankings. If you have “political connections”, these can go a long way, but a campaign dedicated only to obtaining these links may not be the best use of your time.

4. Social Media

Social media marketing has always been a great channel for spreading the word about your website through link sharing: the top dogs here are Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Just remember to not become a Twitter spam Robot by posting only links to your site over and over again!

Benefits: There are tremendous ancillary benefits to social media link building: one tweet can generate dozens of high-quality backlinks across the blogosphere.

5. Link Baiting

Link baiting is the process of creating incoming links through the generation of engaging content and tools. If you are considering link bait, follow one simple rule: make your content something an audience will want to share with others.  There is also no risk level: Matt Cutts of Google has even encouraged link baiting. Famous examples of link baiting include Office Max’s “Elf Yourself.”

Benefits: Excellent. Link baiting is one of the most reliable long-term real estate SEO strategy for developing a high performance domain in search engines.

6. Press Release Links

Press Release links requires using a press release firm such as PR Web or PR Newswire to generate incoming links. This is a great strategy if the press release is both useful and relevant to your content. Tip: Check over your site content: determine the most relevant page to link to, and be sure to link deep, if possible.

Benefits: When appropriate to your business and website, releases can quickly drive quality backlinks from reputable news sources.

Link building is a constantly growing and changing process. One of the favorites of link building strategies is link baiting is because it’s creative, fun, and users want to share them with their friends. Take time to find something you enjoy creating and see if you can use it as a method to drive incoming links. Not only will this be something you enjoy participating in every day, but it will also encourage your  link building to a part of your daily real estate SEO routine, and thus make your website an SEO success!

1. Over 70% of online consumers start their search for products, services, and information by typing in what they need on a search engine. You probably can’t afford not introducing your company and yourself to this process (AND an enormous new audience!)
2. Most internet users don’t bother clicking past the first couple search results pages (many don’t even bother reading past the first one!) so it’s clear why a good position on the first page is paramount to your success.
3. Unlike paying for a banner advertisement or a sponsored listing on a search page, you can’t buy a good position in the search engines. What you can do is invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to target visitors, provide publicity, exposure and revenue.
4. While you cannot actually buy the keywords that will optimize your website, it helps to imagine that you are in fact paying for them. This will help you narrow down your list until you have the ones that will most effectively drive traffic to your site and provide the most return on investment.–  For example, “BC apartments” might have a TON of global searches that aren’t relevant to a Boston
   broker because they could be searches for apartments in British Colombia rather that Boston College.
5. When choosing a keyword, you must understand that the more popular the keyword is, the more competitive it will be to achieve a high ranking for it. Typically, very general keywords tend to be more competitive.  For instance, “Apartments” is extremely hard to rank for, but “South End Apartments” is much easier to achieve a high ranking for.  Take advantage of the free Google Keywords Tool to determine a keyword’s difficulty rating in Local and Global Search Volumes.  If you are a local company, place your focus on ranking high in your Local Search Volume and don’t worry about how you rank globally.
6. Don’t be afraid to use specific keywords. With the advent of Google Instant, online consumers are naturally becoming more intelligent searchers.  The search results morph in real time for each letter typed into the Google search box, so often consumers end up typing in very specific search terms.  Search results now will appear and change almost instantly as the keyword phrase in the search box is edited.  This will start getting rid of the need to scroll through pages of results; rather consumers will just refine their search and focus on Long Tail Keywords.
7. After you determine how competitive a keyword is, you have to figure out how much traffic it will drive to your site. Luckily, there is no need to hire a psychic to predict the success of each keyword.There are two ways to predict the traffic from a keyword:
   1. Use industry standard keyword research tools such as Overture or WordTracker. These won’t be 100% accurate, but they offer a basic estimation of traffic flow.
   2. Set up a Google Adwords (pay-per-click) campaign that ties into web analytics. While Pay-Per-Click advertising is not the same as SEO because it is paid for, you can use Adwords to see the exact keywords that were typed in the search engine by a visitor.  To start out, make sure to check the setting “broad match” so that you allow a variety of keywords to prompt your advertisement.  While you have to pay for this service (you can rank for the first paid advertisement slot within 24 hours) it will help you learn about the keywords that will benefit your website.
8. After you pick your keywords, it is important to make sure you aren’t just shoving keywords into your site without good content. Even if your site is easily found by search engine robots, you must have unique, correct, specific, and appealing content in order to entice online consumers to actually stay on your site.  Updating your content often is also important; if you regularly update your website, you are giving consumers more reason to return. One of the best ways to ensure new content is to blog.  We recommend blogging at least twice a week to keep a constant stream of content flowing.  Search engine robots will also visit your site more often as it is updated, leading to a quicker index in the future.

   

9. One of the hardest parts of SEO is acquiring incoming links. The only way you can make sure that other people link your website is to have good content. This is something that is sort of out of your hands, but by networking and blogging, you can often acquire incoming links.  It is important to create social media accounts on popular websites and add links to your website on your profiles.  Good websites to make accounts on are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It is also helpful to add your website to directories like Yelp, Google Places, Yp.com and industry-specific directories like Angieslist.com. You should also register your website’s blog on blog directories like Blogcatalogue.com.
10. Do not try to fool the search engines. While it may seem appealing and easy just to stuff your website full of keywords to up your traffic, it is the easiest way to get your website penalized or even banned from search engines completely. Search engines need their results to reflect accurately on content, not on link farms, alt text spamming, cloaking or keyword stuffing.

Helpful Links

http://www.roi-seo.com/seo-choose-keywords.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Choose-the-Right-Keywords-For-SEO&id=4254547

http://www.content4reprint.com/internet/webmasters/why-use-seo-search-engine-optimization.htm