Real estate SEO and inbound marketing tips

Real estate blog ideas for brokers: Community news

Mike Scotty — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:16:00 GMT

If you’re a real estate agent or broker and want to generate interest from the prospects in your market area, talk about your market area. Better yet, talk about housing in your market area. Talk about the activities and policies that affect residents in your community.

That’s the knowledge a prospect will be looking for from you, the real estate professional, to deliver when the time comes to choose a Realtor to represent them. Sellers will look for someone who can effectively sell the community to prospective buyers. Buyers will look for someone who can direct them to areas that will best serve their family’s needs.

Start helping them now.

Help your prospects learn:

What are the schools are like? What areas are walking distance to local schools? What schools are winning awards? Talk about special school programs.
Local business gems. Which businesses support the community? Where are the great restaurants?
Where do the kids hang out? What is there for teenagers to do? Where is the nightlife?
What distinguishes different sub-neighborhoods or subdivisions? Try neighborhood video tours to shed light on little-known neighborhood treasures.
Are there nearby senior facilities and active community programs for seniors?

Look at how these bloggers target their communities and see if you can adapt the topics to your own neighborhoods:

Real estate blog ideas for brokers: Home listings

Mike Scotty — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:44:00 GMT

Homes for sale or rent. Consumers will stop to read about an interesting property.

If you’re a real estate agent or broker, you have a ready supply of blog topics. And the keyword terms you use to describe your properties are typically all long tail phrases that are important to your website SEO thus your blogging efforts.

Neighborhoods, property types, architects, builders, city names, local parks, even street names. It’s very easy to work these terms into your key on-page SEO generators (titles, copy, image alt text, tags) while describing your listings. Heck, you can even describe your competitors’ listings if there is a particularly noteworthy property on the market – why not use it to generate traffic to your site?

The trick is to make a property post interesting. It’s best if you can find an angle to start the conversation:

Built by a famous architect
Has an unusual feature or features
Near a notable park or community landmark
Part of a trend in a neighborhood – teardowns, façade improvements, etc.
So-and-so once lived here, etc.

Start with the angle then work into a description of the best features. Try to avoid making the post look like a listing description – give your readers a reason to link into the listing data. And show just one or two of the best images.

These actual examples show how easy it is to work a listing into a blog post:

Real estate video adds a whole new dimension to property tours – and increased interest of course. More about video next post.

Real estate blog ideas for brokers: Your marketplace

Mike Scotty — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:48:00 GMT

Local, local, local. You’re a local expert. You talk about trends in your market area every day. This is the information that uncommitted buyers and sellers want desperately - and they’re looking for a source to give it to them.

All real estate bloggers are re-posting the Case Schiller numbers every month or to referencing the IAR stats article on Facebook - because its easy. But most readers get those stats without even trying - and they don't mean much locally. What they’d really like to know is:

How is a home like mine selling right now in my neighborhood?
If I list, how long can I expect my home to be on the market?
What have others like me done to get their similar home sold?

Don’t be afraid to dish out some less-than-optimal news about a property type or area. If you’re looking for future clients (why else would you be doing this?), they are going to put more credence in someone who’s honest about what’s happening and can offer solutions and a plan of action.

Here is how some local brokers and agents approach local market trends in their blogs:

If you’re a 2-bedroom condo owner in Lincoln Park, the data figures in this post will mean something to you.
This agent blogged about 2011 market changes in four Winnetka micro-neighborhoods (scroll down).
If you’re considering selling in Elmhurst, you can expect a monthly post on Elmhurst real estate market conditions from this agent group.
This agent does a recap of the two North Shore markets she serves.
This Orland Park Realtor defines supply and demand influences and interpretation.

Access to this type of information is available to most if not all agents. Mix it up with a bit of personal insight and you’ve got an easy post that captivates your readers.

Real estate blogging ideas that improve SEO

Mike Scotty — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:56:00 GMT

Blogging does many things. It gives you and/or your company a voice, displays expertise and portrays a personality. So the marketing exposure benefits are all there.

But the reason most businesses take the blogging plunge is to optimize their position in the search engine results. Blogging adds new content to your site that attracts the search engine crawlers and it adds additional links into your existing content that gives old content fresh relevance. Blogging should be a part of any real estate business' website strategy.

But geez, it’s hard to come up with the content on a continual basis.

Coming up with new real estate-related blogging content may not be as difficult as you think, though. Think about the things you talk to your clients about on a daily basis – then put them down on video or in a blog.

Over the next few weeks, I will post about each of the following topics individually with more detail and good examples. Now might be a great time to subscribe to this blog – so that you’ll get the posts as they’re written. Yes, subtle self-promotion can be a blogging tactic.

Real estate agents / brokers topics

Your marketplace

Your readers always want to know how the market’s doing. The more granular, the better. Most everyone sees the national statistics – but they rarely have much meaning in a local market beyond a general trend. Give local readers what they really want to know. Talk about day-to-day market realities, experiences with clients and the effects of local trends.

Properties

Our experience with blogging and video is that posts about properties get the most attention. People like to look at property. Give them what they want. You certainly have access to property and blogs promote the listing as well as the listing agent.

Community

How do community goings-on affect real estate? The simple events in a community attract buyers interested in an event. When you can, look at deeper community government decisions that actually affect the economic health of a neighborhood or city.

Homebuilder / Developer topics

Home buyers

No marketing can compare to a new home buyer telling a camera why they bought at a particular development.

New home community lifestyle

You know that your buyers are buying more than your home. People are buying into the neighborhood or community. Tell them how a community serves different buyer types – family, single, young professionals, etc.

Home designs / Model tours

They want to see the models. They want to know how they can customize. Cite options. Show how one of your buyers took advantage of upgrades or floor plan adjustments.

Construction techniques

Buyers are fascinated by the construction process. Images and video of start-to-finish projects and before and after comparisons are great topics.

How a real estate blog helps your SEO - and your business

Mike Scotty — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:57:00 GMT

So you’re a real estate business owner who wants to up his SEO rankings and everyone says you’ve got to write a blog. Good move. But what exactly does a blog do for your SEO? And is it ever going to be enough to affect your bottom line? I say that it does both – in measured progression, but the cumulative effect can be enormous.

Here’s how a blog helps your SEO.

People read it – that means visitors to your site. Ideally you encourage your visitors to link deeper into your site.
Search engines read it. A blog is a great source of fresh new content. Search crawlers like new content. If your website is changing, you’re attracting the search crawlers. If a search engine crawls your site and nothing has changed it a month, they’ll schedule their next visit for a month from now. If it still hasn’t changed next month, they’ll schedule their next visit in 3 months. You get the pattern. Activity begets indexing.
People find your blog on search engines. You’re able to penetrate the finer search topics that your audience is looking for in posts. If you’re a real estate agent specializing in a specific town, you talk about neighborhoods in town by name, community ordinances that residents might be ‘googling’, even streets, parks, schools and sports teams.
Reciprocal linking opportunities. The best kind of inbound link is the kind you earn when a website naturally link to your blog content because it helps them enhance their own site. Short of uninvited inbound links, a requested link to your site from a community site after mentioning and linking to that site in one of your posts is not unheard of. In fact it can be beneficial to both sites’ readers.

Here’s how a blog helps your business.

Your prospects get to know you. Making a connection with a potential client is the most important hurdle to a business relationship. Your personality will come out in your blog posts. You’re giving your readers a bit of yourself while you’re demonstrating your market knowledge. A good blog speaks to and answers questions about the buying or selection process for whatever product (a home) or service (yourself) your business sells. Your blog lets you feed a prospect the answers and educate them. They’ll appreciate that and be more likely to reward you with their business.
Your blog can serve as a resume. If you meet someone at a party or a business function giving them a card or a follow up call is one thing. Directing them to your blog can demonstrate your expertise on a range of topics. You can even direct them to certain posts that are more relevant to their situation.

The grim reaper of real estate SEO: bounce rate

Mike Scotty — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:14:00 GMT

OK so the bounce rate doesn’t kill your SEO effort – it’s really just the messenger. And the message could be that something’s not right.

The bounce rate is a significant website SEO metric that is expressed as a percentage - the percentage of users who leave a site after viewing only one page. If you build it and optimize it, they will come. But will they stay?

Your SEO effort, if you describe SEO as optimizing your pages for the search engines, has been successful if you get someone to one of your website pages. But your marketing job is only just beginning. If you’re in sales, your SEO effort is equivalent to getting the first meeting.

Building out your website navigation and creating the right content are going to have a considerable effect on how long your visitors engage with your site – and how close they get to contact.

The bounce rate on your site as a whole is a good indicator of visitor interest, but you should dig a little deeper for many reasons. Check the bounce rate on individual pages or site paths.

Your blog

The very nature of a blog make is susceptible to short reads. If you’ve successfully gotten your blog out to the masses, it’s often through inbound links, RSS feeds, email alerts or social media posts. The visitor links in, reads your stuff, and then goes back to their feed. A higher bounce rate (>50%) on a blog is not uncommon.

But don’t just chalk it up to fate. Each blog post should link to expanded content on your site when possible. Your blog sidebars should offer good options – like a list of your most popular posts (they’re popular for a reason), or related articles/pages to your post topic.

Your most viewed pages

These are the critical pages. If most of your visitors are entering your site through these pages, there’s a reason. If they’re leaving immediately, there’s definitely a problem.

If you’re too close to your site (if you’re the author/designer/programmer), ask others to honestly evaluate a page or pages on your site. Is the content poor? Is the navigation clunky? Is there no clear path to additional info? Is there too much clutter on the pages?

If there is a high bounce rate, something is usually not right. More often than not it is a lack of links to related content. Don’t ignore what these metrics tell you.

Trends

Bounce rate, of course, is not the only metric you should look at. You can have a high bounce rate, but find that those visitors who do engage read a high amount of pages-per-visit or their average-time-on-site is unusually high.

Different sites have different purposes, which is why I am refraining from giving a specific bounce rate percentage that is too high or low. A site that deals with a complex topic with a narrow audience might find a high bounce rate, but a high engagement with those who do stay on. It is up to the site owner with help from his/her marketing/SEO team to evaluate the metrics based on their goals for their site .

Bounce rate, along with pages-per-visit and average-time-on-site metrics can be found in Google Analytics (free) or in your webmaster’s reports.

Questions to answer before you start a real estate SEO effort

Mike Scotty — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:24:00 GMT

Before you go out and look for someone to help you with SEO on your real estate site, do a little preliminary exploration. Knowing where you stand amongst your competitors and what you believe you can achieve, will give an SEO professional guidance that will ultimately help him or her give you the best advice.

Your website

Your SEO effort is going to center around your website so start there.

If you use SEO tactics to get people to your site, will they stay?
Is your website easy to navigate? Free of clutter?
Can you look at each page and understand in the blink of an eye what that page is about?
Do you have a clear path to a contact form or conversion opportunities?
Do you have the ability to expand the pages of your site? To add relevant content to support your selected keyword targets?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, you’d be wise to work on these issues before you spend hard earned marketing dollars to attract traffic.

Keyword identification

Your SEO is going to ask you what keyword phrases your target prospects will use to search for your type of business. The typical response is very inclusive, but the more inclusive you are, the larger your site will need to be, which typically correlates with the size of your business.

What terms most accurately describe your business?
How granular can you get?

Be specific. The broader the term, the more people are competing for it.

Thinking Naperville real estate? Think your best Naperville neighborhood(s) instead. Thinking Lincoln Park homes for sale? Think Lincoln Park high-rise condos or DePaul student apartments. Starting with small achievable segments allows a path to expansion with additional segments over time.

Content

Creating new content on a regular basis is very important to search engine ranking and important to supporting your targeted keywords.

Do you have a plan to build content through blog postings and/or video?
Are you willing to commit the resources necessary to achieve a regular influx of quality content?

Whether it’s your own time commitment or a commitment of funds to a professional content builder, new content can be the most important component of an SEO program.

Five vital real estate SEO services

Mike Scotty — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:26:00 GMT

If you’re going to start off 2012 with a reinvigorated SEO effort, be sure to ask your agency or consultant about these five SEO services and what their plan is for your real estate business.

Keyword research

SEO is NOT optimizing for the obvious. A solid keyword strategy evaluates the terms that your potential prospects are using to find businesses like yours through a variety of techniques and existing data –then evaluates your potential to gain search position if you decide to target those terms.

If you can’t reasonably assume that you can make it to the front page of results for a keyword phrase in a given time period, your consultant should be refining your targets to phrases that are less popular, but achievable. Those keyword phrases are known in search as long tail search terms.

SEO strategy

Make sure that your consultant has a total SEO strategy, on-page and off, that will focus on driving traffic to and through your site to a conversion opportunity. The content of your site, your targeted keywords, your inbound (off-page SEO) strategy and the ability to navigate your site effortlessly must work together to give you your best shot at SEO success.

Content strategy

Your content will make the difference between a one-click visitor and a multi-click visitor. Your pages must be interesting, finding a balance between engaging copy and keyword richness.

And your content strategy must address the visitor’s needs. If your visitor got to you by searching for Glen Ellyn townhomes – you better show them some Glen Ellyn townhomes and/or some information about them – a list of developments, recent solds – or they won’t be long for your site. Your content must focus on what your visitors want – helping them make the buying decision at hand.

Inbound link strategy

An inbound link strategy incorporates more than just getting links to your home page. It’s about delivering deep links into the pages of your site that relate to the specific search terms at hand. If possible, using the targeted keywords designated by your SEO strategy in the anchor text of that link. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of your strategy, and the value of those incoming links can be exponentially enhanced when they are a part of an overall strategy.

Web design strategy

You can use SEO to get prospects to your site, but only good content and an uncluttered, easy-to-navigate website strategy can keep them there. Your site design can be one of the most crucial elements of your SEO effort. If you’re developing a new website – consult your SEO expert before you build. The platforms you use can have large implications on your efforts. The way you segregate your pages can facilitate targeting specific audiences.

Don’t be misled by personalized real estate search results

Mike Scotty — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:05:00 GMT

Real estate marketers who follow their search engine results page positions via an actual live search on Google may sometimes be misled as to the actual rankings if they’re not paying attention to the factors that influence Google’s personalized search.

Web history / personalized search

Personalized search is always being refined, but in a nutshell, if you are signed into your Google account or using the Google toolbar in your browser with the page tracking feature enabled, then Google has kept a record of all the pages you’ve viewed over time, i.e., your web history. That history is what is used to, in Google’s words, get the search results most relevant to you. Not a bad thing, unless you’re trying to assess your real position in search results or monitor an SEO effort by doing live searches.

Logging out of your Google account and/or deleting your web history will give you a truer picture of where you stand in the results. In this example of the effects of personalized search, you can see one browser where I am logged in to my Google account and one where I am not (click on the image to view). I am searching on the term ‘Glenview real estate’. You can see that two sites that I frequent (clients of my firm) are given enhanced positions in this search because I have searched and/or visited them while logged into my Google account.

The effects on search can be subtle as seen here, or more dramatic in some cases, as in my second example. You will note that the general order of the results is fairly consistent. Google will not say exactly what percentage of results are based on web history.

Social connections

Your social connections have a similar effect on your results. Sharing on Facebook, following on Twitter, ‘plus-one’ on Google+, subscribing on YouTube and a host of other social activities have an effect on personal results, as evidenced in this search on ‘Chicago real estate video’. You can see that sites that my social connections have connected with are featured more prominently in my search results.

In this previous post on the importance of social signals to real estate SEO, I talked about the positive effect that social signals can have for your followers and how this phenomenon can enhance and reinforce your social connections.

The same benefit would apply to personalized search. Your site coming up higher in a personalized search of a potential prospect is an SEO win. All the more reason to engage them with your site earlier – a prospect researching a real estate purchase is typically going to repeat similar searches again and again.

Note (added 12/28/11): I should have noted in this article that if you'd like to turn off personalized search, try adding &pws=0 in the address bar at the end of a google search URL. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago+real+estate&pws=0

Is SEO the most effective real estate marketing channel?

Mike Scotty — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:02:00 GMT

This recent article references a survey that asks small and medium businesses which marketing channel they would choose, if they could only choose one.

Clearly, search engine optimization is considered the most important. Further evidence of how websites are the driving marketing force for all business.

A major concern for small to mid-sized real estate businesses, like regional or custom home builders, or local one- to two-office real estate brokerages and even individual agent businesses is ‘How do I compete with those big national guys?’

On the search engine result s pages, in specific categories, the playing field is leveled. These real estate businesses find that they have the ability to compete in the niche markets they serve by carefully analyzing their website content, maximizing the user experience on their sites, and creating local, relevant content that enhances their search engine results presence.

The key to a growing business is new customers. Catching potential prospects’ attention comes from being in the right place (search engine results page), with the right information (relevance) when they are actively searching for your product or service.

3 key SEO components of an inbound link

Mike Scotty — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:46:00 GMT

Inbound links are the fuel behind a successful SEO effort. These links are the signals that tell the search engines that your website and/or pages are important. But all inbound links are not equal.

Where the link comes from, what it says and where on your site it lands all have a hand in determining its effectiveness toward helping your ranking.

Domain authority of the incoming link

The authority of the originating site from which the inbound link comes will determine the amount of SEO credit passed to your site. That authority depends on how many links are coming from other sites into that site. And so on…

Let’s say that you have 2 links coming into one of your pages – one is from your cousin’s new real estate blog, and one is from CNBC. Doesn’t take much imagination to guess which link carries more weight.

So when you’re researching inbound link opportunities, check out the link authority before you spend a lot of time cultivating that webmaster or blogger. Most of us don’t have the sway to influence CNBC, but set your sights as high as you’re able.

Anchor text

The anchor text is important because it tells the engines the focus of your link and that the destination page speaks to that focus. If your website has a well-thought out SEO strategy, you have a specific page focused on the keyword phrase embodied in your anchor text.

Destination page

The link’s destination page is not necessarily your home page – it’s the page you’ve identified to rank for your specific keyword phrase.

You’ve identified a keyword phrase that you want to rank for, you’ve built a page with content that supports the page, and you’ve addressed the core on-page SEO objectives on that page.

Now enhance that keyword effort with a solid off-page SEO effort by using authoritative inbound links to drive SEO credit for that keyword phrase to the page that has the best chance to rank with the search engines.

Off-page real estate SEO – one page at a time.

Mike Scotty — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:32:00 GMT

In last week’s on-page SEO post, we talked about the perfectly-optimized web page – if there is such a thing.

Last week’s example is an attempt at simplistic perfection, based on the known, but often ignored fact that the fewer keywords targeted (preferably one) with a single page on your website, the better your opportunity to rank for that keyword phrase or phrases with that specific page. The same goes for off-page SEO.

When cultivating inbound links to support the more significant off-page SEO, many think only of links to the home page, and don’t think enough about other key pages and phrases. If you’ve spread your best keywords across several pages as you should, you need to attempt to support each of those pages with inbound links, anchored (anchor text) with your keyword phrases or partial keyword phrases targeted for that page.

Take our perfectly optimized on-page example from last week targeting ‘Bridgeport townhomes’ and support it with inbound links. Much closer to perfection.

On-page SEO for your real estate website – one page at a time.

Mike Scotty — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:51:00 GMT

Search engines surface web pages, not websites. For each search term you want to focus on, dedicate a web page to it specifically, with the content on that page supporting it.

That’s what the search engines are looking to fill the top SERP positions – a page that is specifically dedicated to the subject of the search term. And, oh yes, the human searcher is looking for that too!

Go about building your individual pages with a focus on a single keyword phrase whenever you can. The more specific you can be with your keyword targeting on each page of your site, the more success you will have ranking for each keyword.

Focus on these key on-page SEO attributes to craft the perfectly optimized page for ‘Bridgeport townhomes’:

It's worth noting that the above example is an illustration of ideal circumstances and that readability should not suffer due to an abundance of keyword placements. When you make a page unreadable or contrived, you invite people to exit your site. There is a balance that needs to occur between keyword placement and readability.

Your real estate prospects: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”

Mike Scotty — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:29:00 GMT

If you don’t believe this headline, your website strategy is probably a little off.

As little as 10 years ago, Realtors, builders and developers were withholding price and location information in their ads, even on the internet – “if you want the information, you need to call me”. Boy, have things changed.

The business-to-consumer relationship has 360’d in the last few years – with no industry left behind, including and especially real estate. This paradigm shift is largely due to changing buyer behavior, fueled by rapidly changing web access.

Image source: Technoligence LLC

Today’s buyer wants to consume information when they want and how they want and primarily without the involvement of a sales person. And more importantly, they want to be educated and not sold to.

Producing quality content on an ongoing basis is not an easy task, but it’s a consumer expectation.
If you want them – you need to provide them with more than a stagnant website. Content is typically where a good portion of a real estate marketer’s efforts should be concentrated, along with the SEO that gets that content listed in the places your prospects are looking for it.

Engaging content typically is found in the form of blogs, videos, and web pages focused on amenities and community-oriented benefits of using your business. Think about it this way – what do you talk to your prospects about when you’re face-to-face? That’s the kind of information you need to convey on your searchable web pages.

You are forming your relationship or connection by giving each prospect the tools he needs to make an educated decision related to the product or service you provide – without singing your own praises. A prospect that spends quality time on your site forming his decision at his own pace is a prospect that is more likely to fill out your contact form or pick up the phone to make an inquiry.

On-page SEO works a whole lot better with engaging content

Mike Scotty — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:02:00 GMT

There is rarely a viable SEO substitute for interesting relevant content. Engaging real estate content, be it a blog post, video or imagery will naturally command search engine attention in the search categories related to it, though it doesn’t hurt to double back and make sure you have the good on-page SEO ‘flags’.

Here’s a short guide to creating a new page or a blog post that doesn’t become mired in SEO terms:

First things first - craft a message that will interest your target audience.
Check for keyword phrases that occur naturally in your writing
Identify what search phrases a prospect might type in the search box to get to this page
Use a keyword research tool (the Google Adwords keyword tool is free) to see if real people actually search on that term. The tool should also give you suggestions on variations of the term that people do search on.
Go ahead and insert those keywords into the right places where it does not disrupt the reader experience

This is not to say that you should not say “I want a page that ranks for a term like ‘Naperville custom builder’”, and write content relevant to that keyword term. Just try writing without thinking about SEO, but about engaging the reader. Then go back and make any SEO modifications that will help the search engines find you, but won’t make your SEO efforts apparent to your readers.

There is more than one real estate blog in town trying to rank for the term ‘Chicago real estate’ or ‘Chicago Homes’. Some of the blog titles themselves would discourage readership given that they look like they’re written by someone without command of the language. Some real blog titles I’ve seen – ‘Enjoy summer festivals near your Chicago real estate’; ‘Notorious Chicago Real Estate Hits MLS’. Really?

There is no substitute for great content. It engages your readers and encourages them to follow your links deeper into your site. Don’t hide good real estate content behind contrived SEO phrases loaded into your post. Poorly-written content is a bounce inducer – and then whatever SEO efforts you've made on that page are for naught.

Background Flickr image courtesy of respres

Website navigation an extension of real estate SEO

Mike Scotty — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:25:00 GMT

So you’ve managed to get good SERP position and you’ve got a new visitor to your site. The question you should contemplate now is whether you can keep him there – and engage him toward conversion. In a recent survey, over 75% of respondents said that the most important element in website design is ‘ease in finding information’.

Visitors to your real estate site are typically there to find something specific. As a business seeking the confidence of and a connection to a new prospect, you want to make it a no-brainer for that prospect to find what s/he wants. You do that with a clear and familiar navigation scheme.

Skip the fancy graphics unless they support function. Don’t do anything ‘cute’ that interrupts their mission of finding information. And NEVER make them wait for the music to stop or for your fancy flash movie to finish.

You typically won’t know what your prospects are seeking, so everything has to be accessible – especially the pages that get the most traffic.

When you DO know what your user is looking for – send her there. Make sure that when you optimize a page for a particular keyword phrase – that it’s the right page. If you’re a LaGrange Realtor who has worked your SEO to rank for ‘LaGrange real estate’ – don’t send a prospect who has deliberately typed 'LaGrange real estate' in the search box to your realtor profile page, or to your home page, or to your Chicagoland property search page and make them enter search parameters. Deep link them to the page that incorporates a mix of community information, new listings and recent solds in LaGrange. They’ll be able to navigate from there when you provide a clear menu path. And they’ll appreciate you giving them what they came for – ideally with their business.

Your real estate website – SEO sales generator or online brochure?

Mike Scotty — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:38:00 GMT

Consider the utility of a printed brochure these days. Yes, ‘limited value’ would be an optimistic assessment. And yet many real estate websites are nothing more than an online brochure. Just as a stack of printed brochures sits on a credenza in your sales office, your online brochure sits in the abyss of the internet – untouched, unread, marginally effective.

Sure, having something online is better than not, but in 2011 the internet is the first place consumers go to search for information and service providers, if not the only place, and if your website can’t be found in a search, you’re missing an opportunity. If a consumer gets to your site and leaves, same result.

Some key ideas to help make your website work for you:

Get found

Optimizing your site for the search engines (on-page SEO) cannot be stressed enough. Determining your sales niche and optimizing pages to target that niche will get your site found online when prospects search for something you offer.

It’s easy to throw your hands up in frustration and peg this task as impossible – how do I compete with the national websites? The answer is “you don’t”. You find your market niche and concentrate on getting found there. For example, if you’re a homebuilder who has built most of your homes in one town or even one subdivision – optimize your site for people looking to build in that town or subdivision. You’re much more likely to come up in the results of those long tail searches. The alternative that many businesses attempt is to try to compete with builders in a much broader area, hoping to reach more prospects. But because of the extended competition, they may never come up on page one of the search results. Better to target the few that you are well-qualified to serve and may actually reach, than the many that may never see you.

Design and usability

Your site must navigate clearly. Make sure prospects can move around your site effortlessly and find what they’re looking for.

Functional navigation is much more important than how pretty the site looks. In most if not all cases, your prospects have come to your site to look for something specific, not to be entertained. Make sure they can find what they came for. Make sure that when a searcher types in ‘Park Ridge real estate’ and click on your site link, that they land on a page that offers them options – homes for sale in Park Ridge, market conditions in Park Ridge, recent solds in Park Ridge, Park Ridge community information, etc. - with links that draw them farther into your site.

Content

New content is key. The more content / pages you add, the more often the search engines will crawl and index your site pages, and the more content and SEO credit your pages will generate. Blogging is a great way to add content and reinforce the target searches (keywords) you are optimizing your site and pages for.

Conversion

The ‘contact us’ page is a given on most sites, but is often an afterthought and not placed well or referenced in the right places. Instead of generic contact forms, consider offering items that prospects may want during their search process in exchange for their contact information – ‘Free market conditions report’, ‘Free market analysis’, ‘List of homebuilder lots for sale in Anytown’. Make a connection with potential prospects by providing them with information that will help them make the buying decision they are engaged in.

Sound like a tough job? Try tackling one aspect at a time. You can often work within the framework of your current website and implement improvements over time.

On-page SEO for real estate – more of less

Mike Scotty — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:07:00 GMT

Today while I was working on a website SEO review, I encountered something I often run into – a site trying to rank for too many keyword phrases on its front page. And more often than not, the mistake is repeated on pages throughout the site. Instead of saying “I’m an Oak Park Realtor”, they want to say “I’m an Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park realtor who is a real estate expert in the near western suburbs including Hinsdale, LaGrange, Western Springs and Elmhurst.” You get it – you’ve seen it.

Ever heard that expression about trying to be everything to everyone and ending up being nothing to anyone? It most definitely applies to on-page SEO and real estate sites.

Search engines do not search websites, they search web pages. When a user enters a particular keyword phrase, the search engines will look for pages with frequency and placement of that keyword phrase in specific places on-page and in the code. They’ll also look for different forms of the keyword phrase – exact and partial matches, even broad matches. Ranking for a phrase requires that variations of that phrase appear at least a few times on a page – you’ll often be hard-pressed to work multiple phrases, multiple times on a single page without confusing and/or annoying the reader. And granted, the engines will also look at many other on- and off-page factors, including inbound links to that page, but without the core on-page SEO, ranking for a term will be difficult.

Whether you’re creating a website or re-evaluating your SEO on your current site, follow these basic steps:

Identify the keywords phrases you want to target with your site
Narrow them down to those that have substantial search volume (use free Google keyword tool)
Prioritize the most meaningful keywords and work to match them to your pages with the most traffic.
Decide which pages you’ll optimize for which keywords

If you have keywords that you want to rank for, but no logical pages to apply them to, create a page. If the keyword phrase is relevant enough to rank for, you should be able to create relevant content around it.

Will a YouTube channel help your real estate video SEO?

Mike Scotty — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:40:00 GMT

As a matter of fact, it will. Given that YouTube is the #2 search engine on the internet, simply uploading your video to YouTube is going to be a plus.

But don’t expect instant gratification. Like anything in SEO, interesting relevant content begets user engagement, which plays a big part in whether your video(s) come up in the search engine results. And, the channel that your video is on can add significant SEO value.

Besides the essential task of optimizing the title and description of your video, these factors come into play regarding viewer engagement with your video:

Video factors

Views – the number of views indicates popularity
Ratings – Likes over dislikes
Playlist additions – How many YouTube users have added your video to a playlist on their channel?
Embeds – How many YouTube users have embedded your video in their blog, website or other content?
Shares – How many users have shared your video through their social networks?
Comments – How many comments?
Inbound links – How many other sites are linking to the video?

Channel factors

Channel views – How active is the channel?
Subscribers – How many users subscribe to the channel? Subscribers receive alerts to new videos at a chosen interval.
Inbound links – How many external sites link to the channel?

It's important to note that better channel factors have a definitive influence on the video factors, just as the SEO credit of an inbound link is affected by the authority of the link’s domain.

So you may be thinking – how can I ever compete with a personal YouTube channel? The answer is engaging video. You will notice that all the factors above depend on your video being interesting and relevant. Forget the slideshow with music – be conversational, display opinion, tell your audience something they don’t know.

When you can, play off the SEO strength of an established channel. If your company has a real estate video channel that pools the efforts of several brokerages or developments – upload your video there – you’re then able to embed that same video in your website(s), blogs, and share it through social media. You can also playlist it on your own YouTube channel – building your own channel display on YouTube, while playing off the SEO strength of the larger channel. Third-party real estate channels are also an option. Your video provider may have an established channel of their own that not only provides video creation and production, but hosts your video on its popular channel.

Vlogging? Blogging your real estate video pays SEO dividends

Mike Scotty — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT

So you’ve put your video on YouTube and the views aren’t exactly piling up. Could be inadequate search optimization, but more likely it’s that your video is vying for position with hundreds of others in line for the same keyword phrases.

First take these basic steps to get your video found:

Optimize your title, your description, your tags – Google looks at them all. Work your keywords in without sounding contrived.
Put your video on YouTube. People search video – and they most often do it on YouTube.
Embed your video in as many places as you can – your own website, your YouTube channel, your Facebook page.
Link to your video, when possible, from other sites – inbound links work for video too.

Then go one step further, help it along…

Use a blog post to summarize your video and get a whole second chance to rank in the regular Google search. Provide the highlights of the video in title and text – entice your viewers to watch. A few tips:

Embed your video in your post – don’t just provide a link. But make the title link back to the origin (YouTube) so that your video gets SEO credit from the inbound link.
Use the word video in the title and/or the meta description that shows in the search results – “Take a guided video tour of a historic townhome”, or “Video: tour the neighborhood around 200 River North”
Offer to be a guest blogger on sites where your video may be relevant.

A word to the wise – use different title and text in your blog post than in your video description. Duplicate content gets discovered by the search engines and cancels one out, sometimes both. Take each as an opportunity to concentrate on alternative keywords that relate to the video content.

Next post in a few days: Building a real estate YouTube channel boosts video SEO.

Real estate video is an SEO tool

Mike Scotty — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:35:00 GMT

In the fickle moments of decision during the search process, getting someone to engage with your page is part of the SEO challenge. You get them to your page – you need them to stay a while and hear/see what you have to say.

Video on your landing page is great way to do that. Let’s face it – people like to watch and listen more than they like to read. Not a hard concept to grasp. Video can make the difference during the 5-10 second decision phase when a prospect lands on your page.

Video has a wealth of SEO benefits among them:

When SEO principles are applied to the video tagging and content, you have a good chance of your video thumbnail showing up on the search engine results page. Doesn’t take much imagination to guess where the searcher’s eyes go first.
YouTube is the #2 search engine on the internet. Every major search engine has a video search. With no video – you’re missing many potential prospects, some who may search ONLY for video.

Check out this eye-tracking study result. Enough said. Searchers zero in on the images, perhaps even at the expense of the #1 result.

Rent vs buy: a real estate SEO dilemma

Mike Scotty — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:44:00 GMT

Historically, the real estate mantra has always been ‘Why throw your money away on rent, when you can build equity in a home of your own?’ Despite the popularity of renting these days as the housing market fluctuates, that notion still rings true.

It also rings true in the online marketing sector, where many real estate companies ‘rent’ search engine position, but are building no equity.

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads come in many forms – most prominently as text ads directly in the search results. Each of the main search engines has their own programs for purchasing and monitoring these ads – and it’s big business for each of them.

But the problem with PPC programs is – you’re renting. As soon as you stop paying, your position is gone. No equity. You’re once again invisible.

Not so with the long-term alternative. Organic search optimization and inbound marketing stays on the web and continues to draw clicks and attention.

By working to position your site in the organic search results through SEO and new content creation, you’re making an investment in your future. Equity in your ‘house’.

Your investment in organic exposure not only represents your greatest marketing opportunity – but it retains its value, which increases exponentially as you continue to add content, acquire inbound links and gain SEO authority with the major search engines. Not to mention that it builds your credibility with your readers in an ever increasing array of long tail search environments.

Should you rent until you’ve got the down payment to buy? It may make sense for you.

Try splitting your efforts – mixing short-term PPC results with a long-term organic SEO strategy until you have enough organic authority to wean and then shed PPC.

How important are social signals to real estate SEO?

Mike Scotty — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:12:00 GMT

There is a plethora of data and opinion out there on the impact of social signals on search results. If anything is changing in the world of SEO right now, it’s the influence of social media on search results. What you can be certain of however, is that it matters, and that it will continue to matter.

Despite the fact that most social networks make use of the nofollow attribute on individual links, there is a connection made based on the overall activity on social pages, which passes some authority to the social page itself, but also to the URL associated with the account.

If you’ve seen this in your search results (see graphic at right), you know that what people’s peers and ‘circles’ are looking at is going to influence how your content is analyzed and positioned in the search engine results.

I’ve rounded up some guidelines for the top three.

Facebook

First of all, be sure to include your business URL in the profile of your business page. The total number of ‘Likes’ (formerly fans) adds value to your URL. Second, engagement – it’s great to have people ‘like’ your individual posts, it’s better to have them comment and/or share.

Twitter

The more followers you have the more authority for your Twitter persona and the associated URL. Like inbound links, the more authority your followers have, the more authority gets passed to you. And the engines can detect followers in the same industry. It’s more relevant to have followers with ‘real estate’ or other appropriate terms in their profiles. And retweets count – not only on quantity, but as a ratio to your total tweets.

YouTube

Videos should always include a link back to your site in the description, despite the lack of link juice. Numbers of videos on your channel, number of views on each, comments and ratio of likes to dislikes all have an impact on rank.

And any social media network, including blogs, that includes social mentions of your web content and positive brand mentions is going to have a positive effect.

If you’re looking for the secret to getting this kind of activity going on your social networks, it typically depends on one primary factor – practical, relevant, engaging content. And sharing your remarkable website content on your social networks. This recent study shows that social sharing increases blog page views 160%!

Five SEO essentials for new real estate websites

Mike Scotty — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:54:00 GMT

Building a new website? Good for you. If you’re investing money in marketing – your website is a good place to focus. And you’re never in a better place to evaluate your website SEO strategy than when you’re about to embark on a total website revamp.

Whether you’re a single agent or a large broker or builder, your beautiful new website won’t attract or retain new prospects unless you have a sound SEO strategy in place that gets your site to the top of key search positions.

Put some energy into analyzing these key components before you begin development:

1. Design quality

A site needs to look good, but more importantly it needs to function well. It needs to be fast, the navigation needs to be clear, and the graphics need to be sharp and relevant, but not distracting.

A good design is functional and familiar. Don’t push your prospects out of their normal web habits because you think a menu on the right rail will be ‘innovative’ or you think that a pop-up showing your latest model or listing will ‘grab’ their attention. Simple and straightforward keeps visitors engaged. Help them get where they’re going.

2. Keyword targeting

Decide on the areas you want to target, then create your sitemap accordingly. Select long tail keywords that define your expertise, then make sure you have a page or pages that you can optimize for each of those expert areas.

If you’re a small team of Lincoln Park brokers, forget about ranking for the South Loop – it will be an exercise in frustration. Put all your resources into the area you know best – and find success.

Keyword identification and optimization is the path to rising in the search results. You may want to consult with an SEO specialist on targeting and how to make it work – it will be well worth your while.

3. Content quality

Your content needs to address your prospects questions, not just what you want to tell them. Give them information that they cannot get elsewhere – that’s how a prospect comes to rely on you for your expertise.

To break away from the normal, you need to provide current information. What’s happening in your marketplace right now? What’s selling? What’s not? What steps should a seller take right now if they need to sell their mid-rise two-bedroom condo? What should you ask your builder about resale competition in the area?

How do you get current info on your website? Easy - blog posts and video. Each post becomes a page that is search-optimized for its topic. As you blog, you add more and more optimized content to your domain. And search engines reward sites that add and update their content on a regular basis.

4. Social media accounts

Having social signals associated with your website is becoming much more SEO-relevant. Despite the fact that most do not pass SEO credit (link juice) to your site due to nofollow links, the search engines do account for the volume of shares and connections with the larger social sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, and more recently Google Plus. It is important to plan your strategy for social media integration as you build your new site.

More on social signals in upcoming posts.

5. Link building

Link building is perhaps the most challenging, but has the biggest payoff. Link building is the process of acquiring inbound links to your site from other authoritative websites. Those links tell the search engines that other sites value the information you provide on your site and the engines reward your site with improved position in the search engine results pages.

Although link building takes place after the site is built and online, acquiring links requires that you have quality content within your site. Better content = better inbound links.

Does all this sound too complicated? To some extent it is complicated and it takes time and effort, but it’s well worth learning about or consulting with an expert. Even the smallest real estate business can effectively compete in their niche market with the right SEO strategy.

Your on-page SEO opportunity – a real estate site primer

Mike Scotty — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:36:00 GMT

There are hundreds of factors that comprise the science and the art of on-page SEO. But you don’t need to know them all to make your mark in the search engine results pages. Let’s look at the most basic. I’ll break these down further in later posts for those who are interested.

On-page SEO equates to about 50% of your SEO opportunity. The great thing about on-page SEO is that you or your webmaster has complete power to enhance the search engine optimization directly (off-page SEO – not so easy).

On-page SEO refers to the steps you can take on your page to enhance your visibility for a particular search term. Ideally, the pages on your site should all aim at ranking for terms relevant to the content on that page.

After identifying the appropriate keyword phrases, use that phrase or varieties of that phrase in the following places:

Title tag – The title tag is in the code, but shows up at the top of your browser window. Google looks at this first. Pay attention.
URL – make the file path (http://realestatesite.com/this-is-the-file-path) relevant to the content of the page.
Header tag (H1) – H1 is the technical term for the visible title on your page. Typically every page has a title – and it should contain some form of your targeted keyword phrase.
Links in your copy – when you can, link to more information about your subject, within your site or outside it, using the keyword phrase or part of it as anchor text. Internal links have slightly more impact - confirming to the engines that your site has some authority on the subject in question.
Usage in copy – repeat the phrase or parts of it within the copy. Use appropriately – once or twice does the trick.
Use in image alt text – images should include the keyword phrase or parts of it in their alt text – which is the behind-the-scenes naming mechanism for images. Alt text, in effect, tells the search engines what the image is.

Using keyword phrases in your title (h1), copy, images, and links on your page can at times be challenging. The thing you do NOT want to do is make your copy unreadable because you’ve inserted too many keywords. Only insert when it fits naturally into the page content.

These tactics are part of the process of telling the search engine crawlers that ‘This is what this page is about’. Resist the temptation to load up your content with other terms that are covered on other pages of your website. You want searchers who search those other terms to land on another page that directly addresses the terms they searched – this fosters engagement and decreases bounce rate.

The keyword phrase I am targeting with this blog post is “on-page SEO”. Based on the 5 points, observe how the term is weaved into the post in the manner described.