Real Estate SEO

Posts Tagged ‘SEO startegy’

This post is going to address a couple of major SEO topics. Why am I tackling 2 in one blog post, because they jumped off my computer screen in rapid succession!

First, I’m going to call out another snake oil seo salesman. The first thing I saw was that their ad read “Good SEO = More Traffic.” This immediately screamed AMATEUR SEO. Then I clicked through to their website (yes, the PPC click probably cost them a couple of bucks) and I started reading. I immediately thought, this was not written by someone who speaks english as a first language.

I couldn’t believe it, I was reading what was supposed to be marketing copy and I could immediately tell that it was written by someone who wasn’t qualified to be writing it. So, I clicked on the contact page on the site. Sure enough, they gave an address in Mumbia, India.

The company is called Convonix. I’d never heard of them before, so that’s why I decided to click on their ad. It’s a bad sign when we’ve never heard of an SEO firm. We’re pretty well aware of who the players are in the industry. It’s not hard for us to suss out the riff raff. Like I said, I knew they were snake oils salesmen. Here are two major reasons why.

“Good SEO = More Traffic” is how their PPC ad read. THIS IS FALSE!!!

GOOD SEO = MORE CUSTOMERS

Results are what matter. I would shout this from the rooftops if I could. Any SEO firm that’s trying to sell you on placement is behind the times and should not be allowed to practice SEO. Who cares where you place and how many users come to your site if you don’t gain any customers as a result? Good SEO = Revenue. Good SEO = Business Growth. Good SEO = Speaking the language.

This brings me to my next point on SEO and really marketing in general. Years ago, one of the fathers of direct marketing described the practice of marketing as “salesmanship in print.” In the 21st century, we can expand this definition to say “salesmanship through another medium.” The medium could be a website, print, radio, you name it. The marketer’s job is to help promote and sell the offering.

Now, let me ask you bright people the following question. Is it wise to have someone who doesn’t have a good command over the language write your marketing copy? Do you want the content of your website to be written by someone in India? Will they understand idioms? Slang? Irony? Let’s remember, when we talk about SEO, content is King! The answer is simple. You need someone with a healthy command of the language to do the SEO work. SEO is not something that should be outsourced to Mumbia or Paris or Moscow. Marketing requires someone who knows your language and your market and SEO is marketing!

This is twice as true for the real estate industry. You need someone who speaks your “language.” I’m using the word language a little more loosely here. The language of real estate, which is required for good real estate seo, is specific to the industry, your geography, and to your market. The home buyer or seller, whom you want to click on your listing in the search engine results, is going to search using works and phrases particular to the real estate industry. They’re also going to use real estate terminology specific to your area and the current market condition.

This brings me to my last point. We’ve had clients in the real estate industry ask us how we can work with multiple real estate companies in the same market, which we do all the time. The answer is pretty simple. You can work with a real estate seo firm, like Boston Logic, who speaks the language, with domestic staff, who know the real estate vertical extremely well, or you can pay someone else to ride a learning curve on your dime. Also, it’s a big market out there. If we can help a few clients in each market gain more market share, then we’re doing our job.

That’s what good SEO equals…more market share. Not just more traffic.

Many people out there may have a hard time thinking of SEO as anything other than being the business of ranking. For years that was the measure by which you assessed the strength of your online marketing presence. Well, at this point you’ve probably heard it before…ranking is not the be-all and end-all it once was.

Search engine algorithms are (the formula by which search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo! qualify and display relevant search results - by the way algorithms vary from search engine to search engine - it’s like grandma’s secret sauce!) ever changing. While at one point it may have been enough to only add and occasionally update “meta data”, there are many more factors that take the stage these days. Some are more obvious than others, and then again some are debatable. (Little secret: if you are not already, you should be following Google Guru, now Head of Webspam, Matt Cutts.)

A few key items that come into play: page meta title and description, SERP friendly URLs, H1 and H2 tags, quality/relevant content, keyword usage and variation (on and off page), a good internal linking structure, proper HTML coding, your domain age (strength lies in older domains), number of quality inbound links, user data (number of visits, time spent on page etc), and overall good housekeeping aka. keeping the site alive and current (or “fresh” as I like to call it).

SEO involves ongoing work, tweaking, and sharing, and once you’ve done that - you do it again. All of this time and work, though I’m not saying it’s guess work just because search algorithms are not publicly shared, will play out and make your site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers, which means more traffic.

Measuring success…

It’s not to say that successful search marketing doesn’t help a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases. It does. We know that. However, rankings alone do not equal traffic. While a search engine presence is essential in order to generate user traffic, a successful SEO campaign is measured by the increase in search engine traffic and the rate at which that traffic performs the desired actions on your site (ie. sales leads, purchases, sign-ups etc). My advice to you (wether you are a do-it-yourselfer or a SEO professional) measure and track your site’s increase in traffic over time, follow where traffic is coming from and where its going, and make sure you track conversions/leads. That’s the goal!