Real Estate SEO

Posts Tagged ‘Real estate’

Are you looking for ways to take your real estate blog to the next level? Over time we’ve written a lot about blogs and how to blog for your business. As a matter of fact, we consider it to be fundamental to a successful online marketing strategy. It’s a way to connect to and communicate with your readers and followers, generate leads, and improve your organic search results (and since you’re reading this, then I assume you are trying to achieve just that).

Without further ado, here are is our advice about blogging best practices:

1. SEO 101 – How to SEO my Real Estate Blog
2. SEO 101: Blogging Part 2
3. Answers to common Real Estate blogging questions
4. Starting a conversation
5. SEO Army – A Real Estate office working together
6. How long should my blog post be?
7. Redesigning your blog? Keep SEO in mind
8. Top 10 sites to submit your blog
9. 10 ways to optimize your blog for Real Estate SEO
10. Blogging instead of spending

Do you remember the world 20 years ago? No computers on desks at work. No email. No Internet. Forget about Google (started just 12 years ago) and social media was a gathering of newspaper reporters.  :O)

Please name for me 1 thing that you do in the same way that you did back in 1980. Just one thing that’s done in the same way. Something that hasn’t been affected by technology, made faster, or eliminated altogether? Is there anything at all that’s the same?

Do you communicate the same way you did back in 1989? The same phone? The same typewriter? Has your job been changed by technology? Of course it has. If it has not, you’re probably a painter. Even if you’re a painter, I’m sure the way you sell your painting has probably changed. Unless you’re that guy on the street corner selling your art, and I suspect, if you’re reading this post, that’s not you.

What about your marketing campaign, are you marketing the same way you were in 1989? If you said yes, then you need to wake up!

Best practices in real estate marketing have changed a lot. The unfortunate fact is that lots of real estate agents are marketing themselves and their services in the same way they always have. If the only significant affect of technology to your marketing has been the way you generate listing sheets, it’s time to get with it.

The really shocking thing is that there are lots of BIG real estate firms that still haven’t embraced the internet. They’re not leveraging SEO or PPC or social media. If they are, it’s a small percentage of their marketing budget.

Developers are some of the biggest culprits out there, or I should say, it’s the marketing firms that work with developers. These guys are spending a lot of money – I’m talking about hundred of thousands or often millions of dollars – on the same media and sales methods that they used in 1989. I invite you to look at the marketing budget for a development in your area. If you live in NYC or maybe LA, then this might not be as true, but just look at where they’re spending their money. What do you see?

Very often you’ll find large print media budgets in marquis local newspapers, the same papers who are dying because of drastically reduced circulation. You’ll find huge budgets on branding firms to design expensive brochures and folders filled with highly designed collateral. There will be special attention paid to press releases (ok, that’s a little better) and flowers for the model unit. Even with all of this spending, the real estate marketing firm that reps the place is probably still taking a full split.

If you find a website on that budget, you probably won’t find much online marketing to support it. An email marketing plan? A SEO retainer with a good SEO firm? A PPC ad buy? A CRM system? Is any of this on there and does that budget rival the print budget? I doubt it. Have they invested in a good CRM system for the sales center or model unit staff? Is technology going to help them sell the units in inventory any faster? If not then you know as well as I do that an opportunity is being missed.

OK, for you analysts out there, I know what your comment is going to be before I even ask. You want to know why a budget should be allocated. Or, maybe the question is not why there needs to be an online marketing budget, but is it actually a better investment? The answer is unequivocally yes. We’ve done the math for many projects and over many years. SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, the online marketing 4 some, you might say, are by far more cost effective marketing investments for real estate marketing.

If, by chance, that budget you’re examining does have some online marketing on there and leads are, by chance, being associated with media buys or sources, do the math. Calculate the cost/lead and you’ll find that the online leads generated are costing half if not less than half of the leads from traditional media.

So, please ask yourself again. Am I using the same real estate marketing methods that I was 20 years ago? If you are, it’s time to innovate.

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.

Ever wonder how some blogs seem to be cranking out posts every single day and you see their content everywhere. Part of the magic of Real Estate SEO is to share the best ways for you to leverage your web presence through your blog…and I’m going to let you in on something good…the secret is in the sauce.

Really though there is no mystique about it. What you have to do, if you want to have a successful blog, the main thing obviously is to write regularly, but, here’s the kicker, you need to be willing to share some of the ingredients to your secret sauce. Give people the inside scoop, share with them how things work…empower your readers.

I recently came across a great article that posed a whole bunch of questions that realtors can answer through their blog, these are just some of the ways that you can share your secrets (you should read the full post when you have time, but here’s a snippet):

Ideas on things to share with your readers…

1. About Me-Introduce yourself to the world by creating a biography for your blog. Include your experience level, education, accomplishments, affiliations, and interests. Tell visitors why they should choose you to buy or sell their home. This will sell you to potential clients so keep it professional!
2. How to Sell Your Home in a Buyer’s Market-HOT topic!
3. How to Convince a Seller to Accept Your Offer
4. Why You Should Hire a Real Estate Professional to Sell Your Home
5. What to Look for When Purchasing a Foreclosure or Short Sale-HOT topic!
6. Staging Your Home for a Speedy Sale
7. Why You Should Buy A Home Now in (enter your farm area here)
8. How to Price Your Home for a Quick Sale-HOT topic!
9. What is a Conventional Mortgage?
10. What To Avoid When Remodeling Your Home
11. What is an Adjustable Rate Mortgage?
12. Why You Need A Real Estate Professional To Buy A Home
13. How To Use A CMA: For Sellers
14. How To Use A CMA: For Buyers
15. The Closing Process: For Sellers
16. The Closing Process: For Buyers
17. What is a FHA-insured mortgage?
18. What You Should Know About (enter your farm area here)-go to www.bestplaces.net for statistics and information on your farm area
19. Why You Should Be Buying Instead of Renting
20. New Homes vs. Existing Homes-Which One Is Right For You?
21. 5 Things You Can Do Now To Increase Your Home’s Resale Value
22. Why Now Is The Best Time To Buy Real Estate in (enter your farm area here)
23. How Rising Foreclosure Rates Affect Your Home’s Value-HOT topic!
24. How To Choose The Right Home For You
25. Negotiating with a Seller in a Buyer’s Market-HOT topic!
26. Do You Qualify For A VA Mortgage?
27. How To Properly Prepare To Purchase A Home
28. How To Know How Much Home You Can Afford
29. How To Use Technology To Find Your New Home Now
30. How To Invest in (enter your farm area here) Real Estate

Real Estate Agent, Brokerage and Mortgage Blogs

Readers come to you for answers. You are the expert! So you need to position yourself as one. They come to you for guidance and to seek your opinion. Sharing the how to’s and answers to the what if’s (regularly) will make your blog a worthy investment and a great source for link bait to boot.

Are there any other questions you can think of? Let us know.