Real Estate SEO

Posts Tagged ‘Linked In’

Thank you to everyone who attended our LogicClassroom presentation last night. We discussed how and why to leverage different social media platforms for your business. Don’t worry if you missed this session - the slides are below for you to view!

Please join us for our next LogicClassroom session 2/9/10 on Search Engine Optimization 101. Please email Katrina to attend.

Lots of folks wonder why the search engines have written their algorithms in certain ways? Folks ask us how and why social media is going to help them build their brand and generate new business? The high level answer to much of this is that most of this actually parallels a real life situation. The analogs are quite stark. In this post, we’ll examine a few of them.

In the SEO realm, there are lots of factors that affect ranking. Many of them actually digital analogs to the pieces of evidence that we all look for when evaluating the quality of a potential service provider.

URL Age
Do you want to hire the guy who’s been in the business for 6 months of 10 years? I think the answer is simple. All other things being equal, the search engines are going to rank the site that’s been around longer higher.

Links
Well, as we know, quantity of links is not as important as the  QUALITY of those links. That said, a link is like a vote. The more votes you have, the better off you are. Still, people tried to exploit this and just get as many links as possible. So, not all votes are created equal. i.e….

Link Quality
If you wanted to buy a new car, would you take a survey of your friends? Or might you go to your 1 friend who really knows a lot about cars and ask for their expert opinion. Most of us would go straight to that friend. To us, they are the authority on automobiles and their “vote” is more valuable than 10 votes from friends who don’t know anything about cars.

Google uses some sophisticated analysis to determine which sites are authorities. If there’s a website about BMWs and on that site there are links to another site about BWMs, then that other site about BWMs will rank well for the term BWM. The Search engines also look at the text in the link itself. If the link reads Ford Cars, then the search engines conclude that this link points to a page about Ford Cars. Similarly, if the link reads BMW, it’s like the originating site, where the link resides, is voting for the other site in the search results for the term BMW.

New Content
Search engines want to see new, unique content. Why, well, which report do you trust: A report about the best cars on the road from 2004 or a report on the best cars on the road from 2009? Similarly, 2 reports about the best Realtors in the neighborhood might give me the same ranking order, but one might give me more detail as to why someone is ranked at the top of the list. Most of us would like to see the supporting details. So would the search engines.

Unique Content
If all you do is republish everyone else’s content, then why should I ever visit your site? Republishing content, with today’s technology, is relatively easy. If anyone can do it, then many sites will republish the same old content. Why would Google want to send you to one of those unoriginal sites over another. Instead, they’re going to send you to the site with the most unique content and with the most recent posts on it.

Social Media Profiles
Smart consumers do their research. We want to know more about a real estate agent than where they work and what their sales performance looks like. These days, it’s not that hard to look someone up and check them out. Make sure that what they’re going to find looks good. Update your Linked-In profile and your Facebook page. If you are trying to sell the clients on your use of technology, then you better have a Twitter account and your tweets should be relatively current. Google your name and see what comes up. If it’s not flattering, you’re liable to lose a client as a result of the fastest background check in the world.

Social Media Connections
Are you a networker? Do you gain much of your real estate business by relationship and referral? Lots of us do. Social media is an analog to what you’re doing already. Thing is, you can network in your jammies on a Sunday morning. Get connected, remind people you exist and what you do,  and don’t forget to make it personal. Have a real interaction with them. Don’t just friend them or follow them or link to them, ask them how they’re doing and if there’s anything you can do for them. They may just have a job for you.

BLOG!
This one is maybe the most powerful. When you blog and give people insight, they immediately begin to see you as the expert. The more you blog and the more you educate your readers, the more you will position yourself as the expert. If you blog about real estate, when it comes time to buy, the customers will come to you for help in buying their new home.

To boot, blogging means generating more new content. As I said above, more content means better search engine ranking. Blogging is essential to good SEO…Just one of the many benefits.

Thanks for reading our blog. Have a good weekend.

Today, I got an email, generated by Facebook (or really by someone I’m friends with on Facebook) suggesting that I become a Facebook fan of a deli meat. Nope. I only wish I was kidding. I did not choose to become a fan. I’d never even tasted the stuff.

In stark contrast, my real estate agent (the one who I worked with when I bought my home) recently sent me a request to write a recommendation for him on Linked In. So, I did. I wrote him a glowing recommendation saying that I’d bought and sold and bought real estate again with his services helping me along the way and that I’d be happy to provide a direct reference if anyone wanted to call or email me.

Well, let’s examine these two instances. In the first case, someone asked me to become a fan (doing so requires 2 mouse clicks on Facebook, so long as you’re already logged in). The second required about 15 minutes of my time. I had to think and write a paragraph about the realtor. I wanted it to really be something that helped him.

You see, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do Social Media. This is true for real estate and for other industries as well. When you’re in professional services, you’re better off having some strong and heart felt recommendations, from people who really mean it, than just having followers, fans, or friends. On both Linked In and Facebook, it’s easy to have people write positive reviews about your company. If you need help setting up a Facebook fan page, give us a call.

The idea that you need 1,000,000 friends and/or followers is fine, but what you really need to start with is some good friends and some great testimonials. Ask some past clients to write recommendations, not just on Linked In, but use the space on Facebook and other sites to do the same.

The fact is that lots of people use Facebook and Linked In nowadays to ‘check you out.’ If someone recommended a real estate agent to me, the first thing I would do is look for a website, then I’d check them out on Linked In, then maybe Facebook if I hadn’t found anything yet. I’d also probably Google their name, just to be safe.

I once heard a story about a person Googling a realtor’s name and finding an article about them tampering with a gas meter. I doubt they got hired.

So, it comes down to this: As much as you can, shape what people will find about you when they search for you on the web. This includes Social Media, of course. BTW, if you look for Rich Haen, my real estate agent on Google, you find his website, then his Facebook page. He’s learned well!

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.

We’re in a recession, most of us have less money, does that mean that we can’t afford SEO?

Au Contraire!

When cash capital is scarce, human capital is abundant. It’s a great time to invest your human capital in SEO and social media. In this post, I wanted to mention some great ways to get the most bang out of your time.

Great blog posts take time and effort
A great blog post is more likely to be read, linked to, and syndicated. This is the essence of great SEO. If you’re a real estate agent and you spend some real time and effort creating a great post about the real estate market conditions in your town, it’s going to get read. I mean real quality. Make some graphs, give real stats, include photos of listings that characterize the points that you make. A great post goes a long way. A weak post will only take you so far.

Video
Did that word scare you? Creating video is getting easier by the day. There’s lots of free video software out there. You could use a camera or just do a screen capture. If you’re reading this post on a computer with a built in camera, then you have no excuse. Videos are highly engaging, users watch them, and you can post them on other sites - like YouTube and Facebook - and folks will see your material there too. FYI, the Obama campaign put up hundreds of videos on YouTube. By the end of the campaign, they’d been watched a combined total of 77 Million times!

Update your profiles on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter…
Take the time to make sure your profile on Linked In is up to date. Same goes for Facebook and Twitter and the other sites that you use to promote yourself. Make sure your blog is syndicating to those spots too. There are easy instructions on how to do that on each of those sites. If you don’t think people look at those sites to check you out, you’re wrong. Referrals have always been a big part of real estate client generation. Now, in the social media age, potential clients are going to check you out before they meet you. If you haven’t had someone tell you, upon meeting you, that they read your profile on one of the sites I’ve mentioned here, they day can’t be far off. This happens to me all the time. My profile proceeds me.

Establish partnerships
Let’s go back to our premise. We can’t increase our SEO budget. Maybe you’re cutting the budget in other places like print ads (smart move). It’s also time to take a few notes from the business 101 playbook. Partner with other real estate firms and real estate agents. They’ll probably be eager to partner with you too. Talk to folks in neighboring cities and towns. Remember to exchange links on your websites so that you get the link juice. Also, become friends on Facebook and follow them on twitter. Do everything for them that you want them to do for you and they’ll do it in return. Then go do the same with 10 other great real estate agents.

Get the most for your time/money/SEO
Finally, I mentioned this in a post the other day. I’m going to assume that you’re investing in some professional SEO services. If you’re also following some of what I’ve written in this post, your SEO marketing team will be able to take these contributions and make them go even farther into the reaches of the web. This is the most efficient way to invest your time and money into SEO. As I’ve mentioned before, you’ll see a multiplicative effect. Very soon.

Thanks for reading.