Real estate SEO and inbound marketing tips

Real estate SEO enriched by website stickiness

Mike Scotty — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:10:00 GMT

If your users don’t stay on your site – what good are your SEO efforts?

If your prospects didn’t see your website before they’ve made contact with you (unlikely), they’ll be looking at it after they’ve met you. They’ll be looking for clues to your organization skills, your market knowledge, clear explanations of products and services, and a host of other signals that speak to your professionalism and expertise.

Your website is now your personal calling card – and it doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. If you’re deliberating withholding information in the hopes of filling your lead funnel, you’re only irritating your users – not an effective strategy.

Some key website design ideas.

These are the most basic attributes of a good website strategy.

Make it functional

What would a user be looking for? Make sure the answers are in the main menu, preferably in the order of their relevance. What is your best selling point – your community, the unit attributes, yourself as a resource? Whatever it is – put it out front.

Make the navigation work

No information should be more than two clicks deep, if possible. Make it clear where your internal links are going by using appropriate anchor text.

Skip the moving graphics unless they serve a purpose

Any animation on a website should NOT keep the user from proceeding in their quest for information. Don’t make your users have to turn the volume off, or click links like ‘Skip this introduction to proceed’, or worse yet have to wait through a song and dance to get to your home page. You couldn’t make a worse impression – no matter how slick your graphics are.

Attract attention to your expertise through blogs / videos

How do you extend you and/or your company’s personality to your website? Video. There’s nothing like giving your users the opportunity to hear directly from you.

How do extend your expertise in your relevant disciplines to your users? Blog posts and articles that cover current events that are relevant to your business. Posts on your website go beyond the ‘Use me’ or ‘buy here’ requests to ‘My knowledge of this neighborhood/community qualifies me to find you a home here’.

Next week – evaluating your website’s effectiveness through key metrics.

A real estate blogger needs a link strategy

Mike Scotty — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:21:00 GMT

While most bloggers write for a higher purpose than pure SEO, most of us have a secondary purpose (OK, occasionally primary) of helping our sites rank better. We want to throw some link juice at one of our own websites, a client website, or a website we respect – one that shares good information.

But if you’re linking out from your blog to your own site or another with the intention of sending SEO credit, or ‘link juice’ to the destination, there are several SEO guidelines to consider. To writers unfamiliar with some of the finer points of how the search engines break down a page, these tips might help to fine tune your efforts and increase your link strategy's effectiveness.

Use your links sparingly

Too often, writers assume that the more links you have, the more effective your SEO strategy. Not true.

Your opportunity to send off-page SEO from a new page or post on your site to another site is finite – with the limits determined by your domain’s authority. For the sake of this example, let’s say you have 100 points* of available SEO credit to use with an original article on your blog. If you have four links in that article each gets 25 SEO credit points. If you have 20 links, each link gets 5 points.

The trick is to determine which links matter most and concentrate on those links. If your article is all about a new development in Lincoln Park, and during the course of the article you mention a couple of nearby restaurants, you don’t need to link to the restaurants – they aren’t what your article is about. To do so would diminish the authority of the SEO credit you are sending to your most important links – namely the development’s website.

You have to ask yourself the question, “Am I helping my readers understand the gist of my post by linking to the side conversations?” If not, save the juice for the important links.

Important links first

When you can, link to your most important pages early in your post. The first links on a page carry more weight than those later in the post. This isn’t always feasible and it is never worth making your article difficult to read. Just keep in mind that the first links get the most juice.

Incidentally, search engines almost always recognize the core content on a page as the main content. You are NOT competing with sidebar and footer links. Those links do count and pass SEO credit, but their share of the available credit is much less than those in the main content block of the page.

No duplicates

Don’t link twice to the same page. The second link won’t count (for SEO anyway). There are instances when you want to link twice because it just makes sense – you want to give your reader a second chance to see some important information. Just know that the anchor text on the first link is the one that Google is going to associate with the SEO credit given to that destination page.

Don’t forget image links

Your images can link as well and are often at the top of your page. Use these links wisely – it’s a good opportunity to link first to your strongest idea. More often than not – your image will define the main point of your post.

*there is no such thing as SEO credit points. The concept is used as an example.

Social real estate marketing – remember talking to people?

Mike Scotty — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:40:00 GMT

Every so often we stop and think, “Geez how did we ever get anything done before the internet?” Well, we did. And funny thing about that is that, especially in marketing, the fundamentals haven’t changed. The tools have. Reach and frequency – you identify your target audience and you reach out to them at regular intervals with the right message. Eventually when one of those prospects thinks of real estate, you come to mind.

I had the chance to talk to a local Chicago Realtor this week who told me that her consistent use of Facebook alone had built her a steady stream of referrals and a sale every couple of months. But she probably doesn’t do it in the way you’d expect.

Eileen has built her fan base up to over 500 Facebook friends that include personal and professional acquaintances, aka her sphere of influence. She doesn’t post new listings on Facebook, she doesn’t advertise open houses and she doesn’t ask directly for business. She tried building a business page for a while, but felt it was too contrived and went back to focusing on her personal page.

What Eileen does is talk to her sphere. She posts her status and photos, joins groups and talks about what she’s doing day-to-day. Because she’s a busy Realtor – the real estate angle works its way into the conversation – “I’m between appointments and trying to get tonight’s dinner figured out”, “I’m sitting an open house and can’t believe the traffic”, “I just saw the most gorgeous house that went on the market this week”. Never the hard sell.

Every one of her friends knows that she’s a Realtor and knows that she’s busy. And when they’re looking for a real estate expert, Eileen comes to mind.

Remember talking to people? Lots of people? We’re just doing it in a different way now.

Eileen commented on how people who are house-bound, taking care of a family or in a home-based business can really make a connection and build a solid friendship with you on Facebook.

Think about the things you know about your friends and acquaintances that you’d never know were it not for Facebook. If you’re a Realtor, perhaps you should make sure your friends know what you do – conversationally.

Over-the-top real estate SEO in for a wake-up call.

Mike Scotty — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:33:00 GMT

About a month ago, Google search guru Matt Cutts let it ‘slip’ at a mainstream search conference that Google would begin actively seeking out and devaluing sites that over-optimized their web pages, referring to the on-page user experience.

This week, Google made it official with its announcement that a change in its search algorithm would punish sites that violate the company’s quality guidelines. Appropriately, the announcement was headlined ‘Another step to reward high-quality sites’.

From the Google announcement:

The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam” (we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be to be ranked.

Now would be a good time to reassess your on-page SEO for potential problems. An easy place to start is with your use of keywords on your pages.

What is keyword over-optimization?

You’ve probably seen it in your web browsing. Some are more obvious than others:

Title tags that are laden with keywords.
Example: Glenview real estate, real estate in Glenview, Glenview homes for sale
Multiple links to the same page.
Many times a web page will link to the same internal web page using different keyword-rich anchor text, or in blatant cases – the same anchor text over and over again. It’s pretty well documented that search engines only give SEO credit to a link once on a page, and they associate the link with the anchor text of the first link. Red flag.
Link-filled footers.
Many inexperienced SEOs can’t resist the notion to fill the footer with links that contain every possible related keyword or keyword phrase to their site. Not good. Footers should contain links that users are likely to click. Another red flag.
Keyword stuffing in your content blocks.
If your blog post or article reads a little spammy, it is. If you’re inserting keywords in an unnatural way, you’re keyword stuffing.
Check out this page and count the number (ctrl+F) of times the phrase ‘Real estate SEO’ is used. I counted them for you – 43 times. Webspam.

There are many more backlink-related violations to this over-optimization issue that are more technical. But suffice it to say that if you are considering, or your web consultant is endorsing this kind of keyword use, it’s in your best interest to step back.

Black hat SEO, link schemes, Panda. What does it all mean?

Mike Scotty — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:39:00 GMT

Off-page SEO generally consists of link-building. Link building is the process of acquiring inbound links from other authoritative websites to content on your site. Search engine algorithms consider inbound links the highest form of credibility. Acquiring inbound links is never completely in your control – you must work and cajole other parties into linking to your site.

There are a couple ways you can garner these coveted links. You can create great content that gets noticed and linked to organically. Or you can swap links, buy links, and employ other links schemes. The former is generally referred to as white hat SEO, the latter as black hat (or sometimes gray). White hat takes a little more skill and authenticity. Black hat SEO takes a different kind of talent and is more often a financial transaction.

Finding sites with the best content – judged by the online community through its inbound links is what the search algorithms aspire to. In a perfect world, these sites would always surface first on the SERPs. Black hat tactics try to game those aspirations, by using fabricated links in meaningless sites to mimic credible inbound links. The unnatural links (as Google refers to them) are typically on sites that link to each other for ‘authority’ and are often referred to as link farms.

You won’t often find these ‘junk’ sites as I tend to call them while going about your business on the web because they don’t often come up in search results – but when you do find them, you’ll be hitting the back button pretty quickly because, well, they’re junk. Here’s a couple of examples of sites that exist just for the links…

Find the very relevant Chicago real estate listings link on this site:
http://betterdollar.com/
Read the copy on this site – it looks like it could almost be legit, but it’s gibberish. And what’s that Chicago real estate link doing at the bottom? http://www.nationalforsaleorrent.ca/

The unfortunate or fortunate, depending on who you are, aspect of black-hat link building it that it works, to varying degrees. And a fairly large industry has been built on successful black hat tactics. But its effectiveness is starting to wane.

If you follow SEO at all, you’ve heard of Google Panda, actually named after the Google engineer who spearheaded the algorithm updates. While the update as a whole and in parts can be defined many ways, its main objective and what is actually occurring is that low-quality sites with unnatural linking schemes appear to be moving out of the top rankings, rankings that were achieved through deceptive link building. Although the Panda update went global over a year ago, its effect seems to come in waves with occasional updates to the algorithm.

And this is good thing. How many times have you been dissatisfied with the results of a Google search? Chances are, not often. That requires an effort to keep the search results relevant.

The interesting thing about the Panda update is that it started with artificial intelligence built on the basis of human testers rating thousands of websites. Google then used that intelligence to create profiles of high vs. low quality sites. While the Google model is indeed very technical and understood by few, it is all about the human experience – will users keep coming to Google for their search needs? Is the Google engine surfacing the best content for the right query?

If you’re a webmaster, Google suggests that you ask this question before deciding on a link’s validity – “Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?

How to maximize real estate SEO in your headlines

Mike Scotty — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT

SEO consideration in your headline ensures that your post gets front of a relevant audience.

You spend so much time to blogging and building web content that you want it all to count, so if nothing else, take the time to consider important on page SEO factors, especially the title of your post or page.

Given that most people blog specifically for search traffic, identifying and using researched keywords in your title will be a distinct factor in your success. Note that in most blog platforms, the title of your post becomes a part of the page URL (check the URL of this post).

Use long-tail keywords that are easier to rank for but have search volume. These terms are easy to determine using the Google Keyword Tool.
Get as granular as you can. Where you can, use a small niche (Old Town Triangle) over the larger (Lincoln Park).
Front-load your headline with the most relevant keyword phrases, meaning ‘Get to the point in the first few words’.

Like all SEO, getting the right prospects to your content is one thing. Getting them to engage is another. Here are a couple general tips to consider when writing a headline that help engage your prospects:

Write your headline last. Summarize what you’ve said and what your audience will gain from your post. If you’re stumped, you’ve got some re-writing to do.
Write several headlines and pick the one that fulfills these tests:

Is it engaging? Does your target audience care?
Is it believable?
Is the message clear? If you’re vague, your audience is likely to move on.

Optional, but advantageous:

Is it clever? A good twist of phrase adds interest – if the message remains clear.

Use words like ‘how to’, learn, free, maximize, one-time-only, etc.
Use comparisons – 30% higher

Your headline is the doorway to your content – for humans, and for the search engines.

Real estate blog ideas lists

Mike Scotty — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:54:00 GMT

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been covering different ideas for blogging under various categories, citing examples from a variety of real estate blogs. When I got a comment a couple weeks back on one of those posts suggesting that I should have included ideas on the builder community angle (which I had the previous week), I realized that not everyone reads every post I write. Imagine that.

So it occurred to me that I should permanently post all of the ideas in one place where real estate marketers could access an extended list of real estate blog ideas when they needed a jump start. And, of course, it won’t hurt my own SEO either.

I’ve got a landing page named real estate blog ideas and two child pages – one for real estate agents and brokers and another for home builders and real estate developers. You’ll find the series of blog posts and examples in an RSS feed in the right column.

Real estate video property tours get more views, better SEO

Mike Scotty — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:23:00 GMT

Just as a web page’s authority and propensity to be returned in a search query are driven by factors like on-page SEO, domain rank, original content, number of visitors, and inbound links, so too are videos.

When it comes to real estate video, those SEO factors above translate to:

Video SEO –Title, description and tags must be optimized toward a focused keyword set.

Channel popularity – If you can upload your video to a channel that already has a large following, such as a local media outlet, that outlet may be grateful for the additional content as long as your message fits their mission. A Google partner channel will work the best, as the videos from partner channels are used frequently as ‘Featured’ and ‘Related’ videos on YouTube.

Number of views – The more views a video gets, the more likely it is to surface in a blended search (video thumbnails in search results pages). Like inbound links, the number of video views indicates relevance.

Number of inbound links. Inbound links to a video are like links to a web page, as are video embeds on external sites. They tell the search engines that people believe that this video contains relevant information.

Subject popularity – Nothing fosters viewership like an interesting subject. And when it comes to real estate video, that subject is property – home tours, model tours, building tours.

At our YoChicago.com YouTube channel, we now have 2,100+ real estate videos with over 2 million views, so we have a pretty good handle on what works best. While our real estate interviews, neighborhood drives, commentary and exploratory videos have better-than-average value and viewership, property tours are by far the most popular and most watched. And of course some properties get more views than others, but it’s not always what you’d think.

These are property videos posted in the last week with view counts noted on the day this blog was posted – March 22, 2012. Check the view counts over time. Compare to your own view counts.

Buckingham Lofts, great living in the heart of Lakeview Central

Posted yesterday – 90 views

A dramatic 4,100 square foot River North loft

Posted 4 days ago – 380 views

Rent a bright, stylish loft in a transit-friendly location

Posted 6 days ago – 405 views
This property was rented on day 3 from a prospect who watched the video and made contact with the listing agent.

An extra-wide Bucktown home close to Holstein Park

Posted 1 week ago – 282 views

Real estate blog ideas for home builders: the building process

Mike Scotty — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:40:00 GMT

There is a heck of a lot to talk about if you’re a home builder or real estate developer when it comes to your product – how it is built, why it is built in a certain way, the materials you use to build it. Don’t assume that a potential buyer won’t be interested in the minutia of building what may eventually be their home.

Some ideas:

History

Start with your own history

What have you built?
Where have you built it?
How has it stood the test of time?

Your previous projects are your resume – show it to your potential boss (clients).

Specialties

What is your specialty?
Why are your homes or your product superior to your competitors’ in the category?

Construction

Quality subcontractors? Your own crew? Justify your choice
Quality materials? Focus on specifics and why they make a difference.
Builder technique / practices. Here’s why we don’t do it this way

Home design

What is unique about your floor plan?

Designer touches. Where and how they change the look or feel of the home
Landscaping

Video adds a strong legitimacy when you talk about the features of your homes. Viewers love real estate video tours of homes and models. Before and after videos really tell a story, as do good photos. A video chronology of a build supplies fodder for a series of posts.

A few examples:

Up and coming project, barely out of the ground
Touring an under-construction home
Before and after builder projects
More before and after home renovations
This video demonstrates insulation quality

Real estate blog ideas for builder developers: Your neighborhood

Mike Scotty — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:27:00 GMT

Real estate bloggers can only talk so much about what makes one granite countertop better than the next guy’s, but what you can talk about is the community where your granite resides.

Buyers typically choose a neighborhood or community first, then they look consider the buying options in that community. If you can interest that potential buyer in your neighborhood, you could be well on the way to an opportunity to vie for that person’s business.

And there’s so much to talk about – community events, traditions, history. Schools, local government, local business. Neighbors, lifestyle, community gatherings.

Part of any content strategy is to place your reader in your environment:

Talk about the surrounding neighborhood amenities, the lifestyle, the culture
Talk about the nearby shopping and dining opportunities
Talk about the schools, the variety of religious options
Talk about regular events and festivals that neighbors can participate in.
Talk about the small events that neighbors hold – holiday traditions, summer BBQs, block parties
Paint a picture of what it’s like to live in the area – the perfect summer evening, the first snow, the fall weekends.

And don’t try to cover them all in one post – take one at a time.

Here are some examples of community-based blog posts.

Having a convenience market in your Loop high-rise building matters.
Explaining the benefits of living in a club lifestyle community.
All about the great neighborhood park across the street from this townhome community.
Video at a new homeowner’s party speaks volumes about this this development in River East.
A visit to a subdivision-wide annual garage sale in Geneva.
Touting the local farmer’s market by an Evanston condo development.

Real estate blogging for home builders: Your home buyers

Mike Scotty — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:07:00 GMT

Most builder/developers understand the notion that buying a home is an emotional experience for their buyers, and it’s often more about who they are than what they say they may be looking for in a home.

If you’re an active blogger, or have someone blogging for you about your development to build your real estate SEO – it may be just as important that you consider the type of buyer that your development attracts as it is to talk about the product itself. Potential home buyers identify with other buyers and something your subject says about why s/he bought in your community may strike a chord that could lead to a connection.

So, of course, there is the standard anonymous testimonial that looks great in a website sidebar, but like many forms of testimonials – it comes off as sales copywriting; something the marketing people put together.

It’s tricky to make a testimonial seem genuine, but it can be done. Go beyond “The builder and the sales staff were super attentive to details” and talk about a unique requirement(s) that the development fulfilled for that particular buyer:

What was their motivation for looking at your community in the first place?
What’s around the development that is important to the individual buyer – transit access, shopping, schools, night life, etc.?
What aspects of the home was the buyer able to customize beyond the normal finishing choices?
Describe the acquisition / commitment process of buying, customizing, selling current home. You know how important this is to buyers.

Make a connection by using images of the actual buyer if they allow you. As always, a video really goes the extra mile to convey authenticity.

Here’s how some real builder developers use their blogs to convey home buyer satisfaction:

Buyers find vintage and the right neighborhood
This custom builder lets you choose what building experiences you want to consider (see the links). There are about 30 separate blog topics right here on this page.
Lifelong renters buy in a lifestyle community
Real estate developer and his wife downsize
Buyers at this Loop high-rise give the lowdown on the units and the area
River North condo buyer talks about the buying experience
West Loop buyers talk about their home choice and the neighborhood

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.