Real Estate SEO

Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

I received this inquiry from a real estate SEO client, and thought I would share my response -

Q: “I recently read an interesting pointer in Realtor Magazine regarding naming photos. It recommends taking care with image names and not to leave camera-coded numerical file names on the images – rather retitling with relevant words. It further claims Google will recognize the keywords associated with those images and direct consumers to your website. I wanted to ask what technique/strategy you would recommend when naming photos during the download process. I noticed that when I hold my cursor on the photos on our blog, the photo title is revealed. Any insight or guidance is appreciated.”

A: Yes, it is very important to re-name images when you upload an image to your real estate website or blog! This is known as image optimization, and it is similar to optimizing a blog post or web page. Search engines do crawl photos (i.e., when you conduct a Google Image Search) so it’s best to optimize the photos when you upload them. You can do this by using your SEO keywords whenever possible: in the title, alt. text, or description.

Take a look at the image below – which is a screen shot of an image upload on WordPress – to see the steps involved in optimizing an image:

It’s also important to make sure that the keywords you are using are relevant. If you have an image of a generic beach – Wesagussett Beach, for example – title it as such. Using one of your keywords that has nothing to do with the image such as “Weymouth Homes for Sale” will not help your rankings and will not drive the relevant traffic that you are looking for. Additionally, the image alternate text (alt. text) and descriptions should be relevant and accurate.

To give an example, if you have an interior kitchen photo of 1482 Elm Street, don’t name the image <1482ElmStreetKitchenWeymouth>

• Make sure that the words have spaces so the search engines can crawl them as words and not 1 giant keyword
• You can make a title that specific, but if you are looking to increase your SEO rankings, you can name it something like “Elm Street Interior Kitchen Weymouth Home”. That way, you have the specifics of what street it is on if people are searching for it, as well as one of your SEO keywords  (“weymouth homes”) incorporated into the title.

I think there are a lot of people who think they know something about online marketing. The fact is, most of them really aren’t qualified to call themselves online marketing professionals.

As a side note, we’re trying to hire an online marketer right now. If you want to learn more about the position, please click here: Online Marketing Analyst. In fact, it’s the slew of resumes better used as kindling that we’ve received for this position that has inspired this post.

First, let’s start with the difference between marketing and advertising. I’ve written about this before on this blog. Advertising is salesmanship expressed through a different medium. Advertising is the practice of taking whatever you’re selling, and expressing its virtues through print, TV, radio, you name it. Advertising is the message.

Marketing, on the other had, is the practice of getting your advertising message in front of as large an audience of the right people as your budget will allow. So, once you have that message, you need to figure out how to put it in front of potential customers. You need to ask where your potential client spends their time? What media do they consume? Which websites do they visit? What keywords do they search on? How expensive is it to bid on those keywords or optimize my site to rank organically for those terms? What does an ad cost in a specific publication and how many people get that publication?

In short, marketing is a lot more than just advertising.

If you’ve never had a job that required you to be results accountable and measured the effectiveness of your marketing or advertising campaign (regardless of what you called it) then you haven’t been in marketing. You’ve been in advertising or copy writing or PR.

Often, Marketing and Product Management go hand-in-hand. Why? Well, a Product Manager is going to look at costs and what those costs get them. The cost of building a new feature and how many new customers that might satisfy or existing customer the new feature may help to retain. A marketer is going to look at an ad buy or the amount spent monthly on, say, SEO, and then look at what sales were produced by that component of their budget. Both are trying to maximize or optimize their budget to get the most positive effect on the business.

If you want experience with marketing, but no one is going to give you the job, you can do this yourself – that is, if you’re in one of those non-marketing “marketing” jobs;

1. Start by figuring out what you think is success: maybe it’s traffic to a website or the number of users who fill out a form on your website. Maybe it’s the number of people who open your email newsletter or the number of folks who click on a link in that newsletter.
2. Now, take a benchmark. Look at a few newsletters and look at your open rate, look at your click-through rate, and write these metrics down. Next, ask yourself, what can I do to improve these numbers?
3. Make an “Educated Guess” Change. If there are 12 things you could do, pick the one which you think will have the biggest impact and make only that change. Now, compare your numbers. You may have to do this several times to see a change.
4. Benchmark and Repeat. Now, with your new benchmark, make another change. Repeat.

Now, you’re optimizing. Now, you’re a marketer. If you’ve made a measurable difference in the success rate of the campaign, now you have some experience that you can talk about when you interview for a real online marketing job.

Good luck.

Writing blogs consistently and often is a great way for your website to get noticed by search engines. We recommend, and place our clients on, the WordPress platform, which is an easy to use posting system that provides tons of great features for SEO. So how do you get started?

We break down the basics of publishing a post here:

1) From your WordPress Dashboard, select “Posts” from the far left sidebar, then “Add New”

2) Write Your Content. This is where you will write all of your content. It’s important for your to take your keywords that you’ve researched (or that Boston Logic has given you!) and use them in your title, and as bold and links to relevant pages on your website in your content.

3) Add and Image. Once you’ve written your blog content, it’s optimal to break up your content for readers with an image: optimizing images are also a great opportunity for optimization, as well!

Right above where you write the body of your content you’ll see “Upload / Insert”. To upload an image, click the 1st rectangle shape. From here, a box will pop up where you click the “Select” button to choose an image to upload from your computer. Once it’s uploaded, you can optimize your image by adding Alt. Text and a Description that contain your keywords that are descriptive of your text – it also helps to have keywords in your Image Title.

You can also add a URL so that when a user clicks the image, they will land on a page of your website. If you are doing a featured listing and have an image of the apartment located in Boston, you can place the URL of the listing here so they can click to read more.

4) Tag and Categorize your post. Now that you’ve got the body of your post written, time to Tag and Categorize it. You can find both the Categories and Post Tags section on the far right of your “Edit Post” dashboard.

Your categories should be based on your SEO keywords that you’d like to rank for – select the checkbox next to the appropriate categories that your blog post fits into. These are more broad, and you should only add another category when you have a whole new topic with multiple blog posts.

Tagging allows you to be a bit more descriptive with your posts. Here, you can take the level of detail to describe your post to the next level. For real estate SEO for example, let’s say that you’ve written a Featured Blog on one of your properties in Back Bay, Boston. Check off the “Back Bay Apartments”, “Back Bay 2 Bedrooms”, etc. Your “Post Tags” are located right beneath your “Categories”.

5) Fill out the SEO pack. Depending on what version of WordPress you have, the All in One SEO Pack may be available. This is a great SEO tool that WordPress uses for you to describe your own content: add a Title, Description, and Keywords – and be sure to include yout SEO keywords that you want to rank for in all three sections.

Blogging is an important aspect of your real estate online marketing strategy, and takes a lot of work. Sign up for Boston Logic’s real estate SEO services today to help you blog consistently for website success!

In a recent research webinar presentation from Hubspot on Inbound Marketing, one of the most impressive data revelations was the amount of leads that corresponded to the amount of blogging the company did.

As you can see from the graph below, the numbers are quite impressive – those who blog daily receive 89% more leads than those who only blog once a month (49% customer acquisition). These numbers also happen to back up what we always tell our real estate SEO clients: blog consistently and regularly! It can sometimes be difficult to get clients to blog at least once a week, but when you blog once a month, not only does it not impress the visitors that come to your site, but you will also get less leads. And we know that leads for real estate brokers and agents is extremely important.

This also begs the question, “But HOW can we blog multiple times per day?” It’s really a matter of getting into routine and a mindset. Make a time commitment to blog as soon as you wake up, or to blog when you get home from work – and make it fun. You’re the expert: blog about what you think your clients want to read about while assuring your expertise as a real estate agent or brokerage.

Blogs also don’t have to be lengthy books of content and text: in fact, users prefer smaller blogs which contain helpful information for them. Being in real estate, consider the amount of questions you get from buyers and sellers: if these are in email form, you can literally copy and paste their question and response into your blog – done!

Blogging and real estate SEO are as easy as ever with our Sequoia real estate websites and integrated WordPress blogging system. If you are interested in a new real estate website or wish to inquire about our SEO services for your real estate website or blog, contact Boston Logic today!

Good Luck!

Graph Source: The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot

Leveraging social media is an important part of any real estate marketing campaign. Facebook is the most popular of all social media networks, and utilizing its features and applications will help you reach potential leads and get them to visit your real estate website.

You can read about all the benefits of marketing your real estate business on Facebook in this Sequoia Blog Post on Facebook Marketing. While this post is still informative with relevant data, Boston Logic knows that Facebook never stops updating its user interface – and you no doubt have noticed the recent Facebook visual upgrades for your user profile.

Thus, the steps in which you create your own Facebook Page – for a brokerage or individual real estate agent – has changed. Follow the steps below to create your own Facebook Page: it’s easy, we promise!

1.      From your ‘Home’ Page of your Personal Profile, select the ‘Ads and Pages’ menu below your thumbnail photo.

2. From the ‘Pages You Admin’ screen, click the ‘+Create Page’ button at the top right corner of the page.

3. For most real estate agencies or real estate agents, you will select the “Local Business or Place of Interest” section.

4.       Once you click this item, a form will pop up to prompt you to complete important information regarding your business.

Select ‘Real Estate’ from the drop-down menu, and fill out the relevant business information, like address and phone number. Check the box stating you have read the Facebook terms, then click “Get Started”.

5.       And you’re done!

Once you’ve created a page, Facebook provides you with helpful steps to help enhance your Page. You can begin by filling out your Information Tab, suggesting your friends and family become Fans by ‘Liking’ your Page (click the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link below your Fan Page Profile Image), and uploading Photos!

Good Luck!

Looking for a new real estate website? Contact us for more info on our real estate web design, or to discuss our further real estate SEO services.