Real Estate SEO

Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

If you are not already among the many Realtors on Twitter then let me ask this, what’s keeping you? If you are on Twitter, are you posting regularly? Besides SEO experts, Realtors are among the highest proffessionals “micro-blogging” on Twitter.

Here’s why: it’s an easy account to set up, only 160 characters for your profile, though that seems to be a challenge for some, you can link to virtually anything or anyone, it drives traffic, establish a direct connect to your blog, and could generate leads…

I digress…

This post is actually meant to remind, nay urge, you to keep up with your writing.  Whether you are on Twitter, Active Rain, your own blog or any other forum for that matter, you have to stick to your guns! I know that we’ve said this before, we’ve even given you tips on things to write about.

The reason I bring up Twitter, again as I said there are lots of Realtors using it, is that I noticed that there is a large number of Realtors who join and then post once or twice, or otherwise only once every few weeks. Really, to gain more followers and potential leads you have to keep writing. If people see that you are genuinely connecting to the readers and/or followers then they will keep coming back, not to mention they will share what you write. And really what is the excuse, Twitter after all is a “micro” blog where each post only requires 140 characters. You can also download (most free, just google twitter applications) applications to your desktop or smartphone, just so you can twitter at your own convenience any time you want, from anywhere too.

If you follow us on Twitter we even give you tips on things you can talk about. Our tips don’t only apply to Twitter either. Tips such as: talked about a featured property, pose questions to your readers and/or yourself, give advice, neighborhood news, current events etc., can be practiced on any forum. So, give it a try, you never know unless you give it a try and stick to it.

I think everyone reading this blog would agree that, at the end of the day, results are what really matter. You could be performing real estate SEO and appearing at the top of the search engine results, but if you’re not getting good leads and closing deals from them, then all that SEO effort is probably a waste. What matters are results.

I’m going to tell you all something that may shock you. Yes, this blog has good search engine ranking and high placement in the SERPs, but (here’s the shocker) search engines are not our largest source of inbound traffic. Believe it or not, social media sites are our biggest traffic source. I’m talking about Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Digg, Reddit, Technorati, Stumble Upon, the list goes on. When you aggregate the visitor traffic that these sites generate for us, it adds up to more than either the search engine traffic or direct traffic that we receive, which are our other largest sources.

Now, it’s critical that you understand which traffic sources are effectively converting for you and which are not. Also, it’s very important that you have a good lead follow up system. Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is as important as your SEO, if not more important, in improving your close rate. All that said, I’m not going to follow this tangent in this post. Boston Logic, our parent company, offers great real estate CRM and lead management tools, check out the ONE Lead Management System, but I’m not here to advertise.

So, let’s get back to our premise. Yes, SEO is bringing us traffic, but we must notice and nurture the opportunities that social media sites can bring us. Every effective online marketing campaign should include heavy engagement with social media. SEO is crucial, but a holistic approach, which includes Real Estate SEO, social media, email marketing, and other online media, is going to bring you the best ROI every time.

Here is some supporting evidence:

• We’ve written before on this blog about how SEO is a lot like voting. Search engine algorithms take into account link counts, clicks on their results pages, keyword density on a page, and many other factors. All of these can be paralleled to voting. Social media sites work in much the same way. For example, the more people who Digg a page, the more popular it becomes and the more visitor traffic it will receive.
• Similarly, Twitter is all about followers and popularity. If your real estate blog has 1,000 followers on twitter then every time you post, they’ll be notified. That will mean a steady flow of traffic to your site.
• Also, let’s not forget about the opt-in advantage. When a person chooses to follow you on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, etc, it’s their choice. They’re virtually raising their hand and telling you that they’re interested in what you’re doing and what you have to say. If we could always identify parties who are interested in what we do, marketing would be a lot easier.
• Using social media will help you gather inbound links to your site. This will help your search engine placement and your referral traffic.
• Similar to SEO, you need to produce good, relevant, unique content in order to get noticed and gain popularity and traffic on social media sites. Smart online marketers know that this is a requirement for good SEO and to achieve search engine ranking. So, while you’re working on your SEO campaign and generating good content, your efforts can be at least twice as valuable when they also contribute to your social media presence.

The goals when performing SEO and Social Media marketing are the same: Get noticed. Generate relevant traffic. Do more business. Come to think of it, these are the goals for most marketing efforts. My point is, with all of these similarities and benefits, you can generate traffic through SEO and through the use of social media at the same time. You can also analyze the traffic and the ROI of your effort using similar tools and methods. It’s a win, no mater how you slice it.

If you’re not leveraging social media as part of your marketing campaign and would like some help, or if you are, but you’re not seeing the results, drop us a note. We’re here to help.