March 29, 2024

SEO – Page Load Time

SEO Page Load Time - Slow Causes FrustrationSEO Page Load Time

Another consideration for optimized content is the SEO page load time. This is the impact on SEO (either positive or negative) related to the time it takes for your page to load when a request is made to display your website pages. The reason page load time is a factor in search engine optimization is that the major search engines want their searchers to have the best experience that they can possibly have when they (the search engines) present a set of website pages in their search results. Slow page load time have a negative impact on the user experience.

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Real Estate SEO – Blogging

Real Estate SEO - BloggingReal Estate SEO – Blogging

6 Great Reasons to Blog

1. Expert Content

A blog gives you a great chance to display your expertise on your topic. As a real estate agent people looking for a home in your community expect you to be an expert on the community. They expect you to be an expert on real estate and you may even have some additional and related expertise that you want o display as a way to differentiate yourself and your company.

A blog is one of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise. This is valuable for you and your business. 

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Real Estate Blogging – Some Great Reasons

Real Estate Blogging

Real Estate BloggingI have a large number of good reasons for you to blog if you are a real estate company. It is work but it will help your business in multiple ways.

Here are more than a few good reasons that you should consider if you are “on the fence” about blogging within your real estate business.

  

 

  • It’s good for Real Estate SEO.     
  • Your blog should be part of your real estate website and therefore your blog posts represent fresh content.
  • Blogs can offer great link bait.
  • Blogs attract visitors (both buyers and sellers).
  • Blogs will help generate leads.
  • Your real estate blog can provide you with inbound links.
  • Inbound links are of huge value in calculating Google’s PageRank.
  • Blog posts will help your website rank for specific keyword phrases.
  • Blog post are like new pages and this adds to the depth of content on your site increasing your authority with the search engines.
  • You can write content and save drafts and set the drafts to publish at a later date. This helps you with time management. You can even schedule a post to be published while you are on vacation and no one will know the difference.
  • You can have multiple people within your real estate office write for you, or someone else all together if writing is not your thing.
  • You have to conduct the research and then think about what you research and then write about it. This makes you more knowledgeable. This makes you better!
  • Experts blog. Blog to demonstrate that you are an expert in your field.
  • Help to educate and solve the problems of your clients and customers by blogging.
  • It is yet another way to present you and your company.
  • It is a great way to get others involved. If you ask the other agents what they are passionate about in your real estate niche then this is a great focus for their blogging contribution.
  • Blogging is cost effective.
  • You can do a special expose on a new or unusual listing in your blog.

Blogging equates to fresh content which helps search position. Blogging results in more inbound links which adds authority to your website/business. This leads to more traffic.

People, now more than ever, are looking for that trusted resource – that trusted expert. They do research online prior to engaging. Blogging enables you to be that trusted resource and expert. Simply by blogging people will be able to read your materials and gain insights about you and your company that they would not be able to get if you do not blog.

Download our Real Estate Blogging Guide that will provide you with some great ideas on how to generate great attention-grabbing content for your real estate blog. 

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Blogging Tips for Real Estate

Blogging Tips for Real EstateBlogging Tips for Real Estate

Here are some tips for you if you are a real estate agent or broker and are blogging or are considering blogging. It is fun and can be very rewarding.

 

1.) Establish Goals and Track Them

You need to have goals for your business activities and blogging for real estate is a business activity. Take a minute to think about where you are trying to go with your blog and what statement you want to make. Here are some possible goals that would work for a real estate company:

  • Build your brand
  • Increase your brand influence
  • Increase the number of leads
  • Increase the perception of you as a real estate expert
  • Be the voice of your real estate niche
  • Develop the perception as the superior local real estate resource

Your goals will shape your blogging strategy. Define your goals and then develop your blogging strategy and performance metrics and then blog to achieve them.

2.) Organize Your Resources

Identify your resources. Are all your agents expected to be a blog resource or just you? If you don’t have a blog yet, start small and test-run a blog for 6 months to see how your business benefits. Redefine your resources if you have to.

3.) Define Your Real Estate Blogging Niche

As with almost any business it is much better to be focused on a special niche. The same applies to your blog. Be targeted in your blog posts. The less targeted your message the less targeted your audience will be. Think about your target market and what they want. Think about their problems and how you can help to solve them.

4.) Listen to Your Clients – Listen to Your Customers

Blogging is one of the best ways to assert yourself as an expert in your real estate niche. Think about the problems of your clients and customers. Be an educator and help them to solve their problems. There are great “listening” tools such as Google Alerts and Google Trends or research RSS feeds on your niche real estate topic. After researching your blog topic make is relevant to your niche marketplace.

5.) Be Interesting

Many people (real estate agents and brokers included) are not really writers. The content of your blog may then reflect this. It may be worth bringing in some fresh perspective with younger agents. Interview them to see if they have an interest in writing and if so then ask for examples of their work. New young talent will help to stimulate interesting blog ideas and provide your company with different angles to blog about.

If you think about it stories are everywhere. Interacting with buyers and sellers can become insightful. A local sporting event can become a real estate story as well as a trip to the local market. You can lace in recent local news or news on a real estate market development. The more timely you are with these blog posts the better.

Develop a well defined and committed point of view. Use a great headline and then provide some key advice if you can.

6.) Use Your Voice – No Easy Republishing

Write in your voice and use genuine stories. I once visited a home with one of my areas prominent real estate brokers. The homes kitchen was very outdated but was clean and neat and well preserved. He explained that a kitchen such as this would be very hard to duplicate. He explained that to get appliances in the condition of the appliances was just not possible even on eBay. This is a story from the distant past about 10 years ago but I remember it well and have tremendous respect for this real estate broker.

When you are writing your blog tell a story. Be humorous. Speak from your experience and provide your insights. Your blog is not the place to a rewrite of a press release. Be creative. Be true to yourself. Remember client and customers prefer to work with “real” people.

7.) Develop A System

Consistent blogging is very important important. You will need a system. Start by monitoring relevant and trending topics. Organize materials into categories. Publish to your schedule (perhaps this was a stated goal) and then measure with your analytics software as to what is popular (and what isn’t) and provide your readers with more of what they want.

Block out time to do this well.

As you continue to blog you will become more efficient.

8.) Write a Strong Conclusion

Remember when your 10th Grade high school when your teacher told you to write a captivating conclusion. She was preparing you for your future blogging. Pull it all together and if you have a call-to-action then use it.

If you want to gain additional insights into how to blog for your real estate business then we invite you to download our free guide – Real Estate Blogging Guide. Blogging is a great way to gain more exposure. I believe that once you start you won’t want to stop!

 

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Real Estate SEO – 8 SEO Tips

Real Estate SEOReal Estate SEO – 8 SEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization of a real estate website is critical for success.

If you site is not optimized then no one will find it. Sellers when they evaluate who to list with will not be satisfied if they try to find your site using keywords for real estate in their geographic area.

If you have a real estate website then it is essential that you are property utilizing search engine optimization (SEO) to its fullest. Here are six SEO concepts that should be applied for strong SEO and the search position that comes along with strong SEO.

Real Estate SEO Tip #1: Do Your Keyword Research

When creating (or promoting) your real estate website, it is essential that you pick the most effective keyword phrases. You can use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to do this.

Make sure that you log into your Google account as this will make it easier for you to conduct this research.

Effective keywords are those that have sufficient search volume to make them commercially valuable and that have relatively weak levels of competition. These keywords are golden for you but no matter what select keywords that have search volume associated with them

Real Estate SEO Tip #2: Effectively Utilize Your Keywords

Now that you have your primary keywords use these keywords effectively. Use these keywords in the following locations:

  • Title Tag
  • Description Tag
  • H1 Tag
  • H2 Tag
  • URL for the page
  • Use them at a 1-2% density in the page copy

If you use them in this manner then the search engines will pick up on this SEO content and move your website higher in search position.

Real Estate SEO Tip #3: Include Internal Links

This is a SEO tip that is often overlooked but is incredibly important for search engine optimization. When you create blog posts (or website pages) that are related to other content on your website, include an internal link back to that blog post or website page.

The Search Engines love keyword phrase links that link to relevant content.

Real Estate SEO Tip #4: Increase Content

Consistently create great content for your website and blog. Do not stop once you have attained a strong position in search with many keyword phrases.

Without fresh, relevant high-quality content you run the risk of losing search position. Effective real estate SEO means creating fresh content.

Real Estate SEO Tip #5: Intelligently Set Up Internal Links

It is important to include internal links in your blog posts and website content. It is also essential that you do not over link. Just like having too high a keyword density can raise a flag with search engines so can too many internal links.

I think that to play it safe do not create more that two links per blog post and perhaps no more than one link per paragraph on your website pages.

Real Estate SEO Tip #6: Utilize Images

This is a great leveraging opportunity for a real estate website.

Make your images name keyword phrases and put them in a folder with a keyword phrase. Use the image alt tag function as well and if all three items are the same phrase then you are clearly indicating to the search engines what that image is about.

This is a great way to receive a search engine reward which will be higher search position.

Real Estate SEO Tip #7: Obtain Backlinks

One of the ways that search engines determine the quality of your website is by the number of authoritative backlinks you receive to your website from other quality websites. Keep in mind that not just any link to your website will work; instead, they should be from quality websites that has relevant content to real estate.

Real Estate SEO Tip #8: Be Patient

It is essential to realize that it takes time and effort to increase your search engine ranking; therefore, patience is required. Your website will not go from nonexistent on search engines to the #1 spot without some time and effort.

Stay with it and you will be rewarded with higher search position and the traffic that will make a difference to your business.

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Why Real Estate SEO is so Challenging

Real Estate SEO - A Real ChallengeWhy Real Estate SEO is so Challenging

There are many factors that make SEO of Real Estate a bit more challenging for a SEO Professional. In many cases – even within a given local real estate company – the real estate agents compete against one another, yet they are united as “team members” under a larger brokerage (like Remax or Century21). Individual agents rely on the combination of brand recognition of their parent brokerage, personal branding, and team branding to acquire business. Real estate agents will often target specific locations or regions, and try to differentiate their services based on certain needs or demographics. For example: first-time home buyers or luxury real estate.

Real estate brokerages have to manage and promote the individual agents while marketing their brand. They want their agents to differentiate themselves, to have success within their demographic and to bring in business to the company. But the company also needs to create and maintain consistent marketing of the brand. The goals of a real estate company organized in this manner can be in direct opposition of one another.

As you can see, real estate SEO becomes very complex due to the very nature of the industry. Moreover, real estate websites are often large and complex due to the high level of home search and display functions that are needed to appeal to home buyers. This is especially the case with larger multi-area real estate companies. These real estate companies need to have content on multiple geographic areas and regions to perform well in search and real estate websites need to appeal to multiple demographics as well.

Real Estate SEO is further complicated by the fact that many Multiple Listing Service (MLS IDX) solutions providers have not designed their IDX feed with search engine optimization in mind. To have so much content (IDX Home offering content) poorly optimized makes the task of real estate SEO even more difficult.

To add more challenges, keyword competition in real estate can be extremely high as real estate companies and their individual agents are all competing for the same targeted keywords (usually “location + real estate” or “location + homes for sale”). I know of many examples of disreputable search engine placement companies that try to convince real estate companies to enter into expensive monthly programs that promise high rankings for obscure keywords that will not result in appreciable traffic to their website.

A real estate company always needs to be certain of their keywords before initiating a search engine optimization program.

Given that real estate web design and SEO can be so difficult and complicated, I recommend that real estate companies and large real estate teams hire an experienced SEO consultant to design and implement a comprehensive SEO strategy. From what I have seen, many firms rely on the expertise of their IT departments for SEO advice. While many IT professionals have a working knowledge of standard SEO techniques, they are not always able to spot key site structure or content issues that will affect rankings. Again, I have seen this first hand.

It is also good if the SEO professional has some manner to work on gaining high-quality in-coming links. This is often the missing ingredient in the quest for high search position for a real estate company.

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Are You Ready To Blog

Web Content - BlogAre You Ready To Blog?

Before you start your blog you need to determine if blogging is right for you. Here are some questions to ask before you start.

Do You Enjoy Spending Time Surfing the Web?

To blog you need to conduct research. You will do much of this online. To keep you blog post relevant and up-to-date you need to be up-to-date. This takes some time and effort. If you enjoy conducting research online then you have an important characteristic of a successful blogger.

Do You Like to Write?

If you dislike writing or if writing does not come easy to you then blogging might not be for you. Building a successful blog requires frequent and meaningful updates. This requires you to write. To be a successful blogger, you must be able to write easily enough to write often. You need to satisfy your readers and this means to write well and often enough to keep them interested and to provide up-to-date insights.

Have You Defined Your Overall Blog Topic and Do You Have Passion For It?

Successful blogging requires that you write frequent and interesting posts about your blog’s topic. You need to have topic that enables you to be prolific and you need to be genuinely interested in your topic to truly enjoy the research and then to have passion for writing about it.  

If you do not have a passion about your topic then I will predict that you will have a hard time keeping your interest and the interest of your visitors.

Conversely, if your make sure that you select a topic that you have a passion for then it will be easier for you to conduct the necessary research and then to write about it (with passion). If you have a smile on your face when you are conducting your research and writing about it and can’t wait to the next time you can research and write about your topic then you are in a great spot to blog.

Can You Commit The Time?

To be successful at blogging you need to commit to the time to do it well. You need to be motivated and have self-discipline. You need to fit blogging into your schedule and be committed to sticking to your schedule.

Are You Comfortable Publishing Your Thoughts, Opinions and Ideas?

As a blogger, you will be publishing your opinions for anyone to read. Are you comfortable with this? Can you take criticism if someone comments on one of your posts in a negative way? 

Are You Comfortable With Technology and Are You Willing to Learn?

To operate a successful blog requires some knowledge of the Internet and simple software. If you often struggle with your computer, then blogging may not be for you. If you are willing to learn, you can blog. Blogging and the Internet as a whole are ever-changing, and successful bloggers are committed to learning. To promote your blog you will also need to have an understanding of search engine optimization and web copy.

Are You Ready and Willing to Take Risks?

 Much of successful blogging is related to taking risks with your topics, your posts and your opinions. To be a successful blogger, you have to be willing to try new things explore topics in new ways and try various ways to enhance and promote your blog.

If you are a real estate agent then we have written a Blogging Guide just for you. However, almost any business could benefit from the advice. Click in this link to download your Blogging Guide. If you are blogging now or just thinking about it you will gain some practical insight from this guide.

 

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Real Estate SEO – Keyword Research

Real Estate SEOReal Estate SEO – Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the building block of any Real Estate SEO strategy. You do not want to define your SEO strategy blind and this is what you would be doing without adequate keyword research.

If you do not set up your website and linking SEO with a knowledge of the keywords that people actually use when they search then you will miss a great deal of valuable traffic. 

Upfront Keyword Research – Optimize your Real Estate SEO

First, realize that the target audience you want to attract night not use the same terms to describe things as you would – they may not be aware of industry terminology – hence they will not use industry language when they conduct a search.

Second, with the right keywords defined, you can optimize your website by using these keywords in your link building, your web copy and in your on-page real estate SEO. These 3 factors need to be optimized for your real estate website to achieve a higher search engine position.

How to Research Keywords

Good keywords have the following characteristics:

  • They are associated with sufficiently high search traffic
  • They relate well to your business
  • The competition level allows you to be competitive

To do this keyword research is a fun task and also often an eye-opener.

By conducting keyword research you will be learning more about your market and this is always good for business.

A way I often start is to write down some phrases that I feel are relevant and that I think have search volume. Once you have this list go to Google Adwords and use the Google keyword tool to confirm your ideas and to get more (and perhaps better) ideas.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

The Google free keyword tool is a good place to start to associate some numbers to your keywords. Enter your core keywords and run the search…

When the search has run I like to observe the following:

Competition: The relative number of advertisers worldwide bidding on each keyword. It is purely quantitative. It says nothing about the “quality” of the competition nor does it have to if you will enter into the auction. Since the focus of this post is organic (non auction) search positioning we do care about the quality level of the competition.

Global Monthly Searches: The approximate 12-month average number of search terms matching each keyword. This statistic includes traffic in all countries and all languages.

Local Monthly Searches: The approximate 12-month average number of search terms matching each keyword. This statistic is specific to your targeted country and language.

If you have logged into your Google account you will also see approximate CPC (cost per click). In the adwords program this is a number averaged over all the ad positions. It does tell you about the monetary level that competitors are willing to pay for a click.

Now it is time to focus your research a bit more and move away from more generic terms. You can select three options for specific match types based on broad, exact and phrase.

Broad: This is the sum of the search volumes for the keyword idea, related grammatical forms, synonyms and related words. For example search results for commercial real estate would show up with any searches including commercial or real estate.

Phrase: This is the sum of the search volumes for all terms that include that whole phrase. Therefore if your targeted phrase was commercial real estate anyone who typed in commercial real estate with or without additional keywords would be counted.

Exact: This is the search volume for that specific keyword idea. It means these exact words in this exact order.

It is difficult to get high position for generic terms. These terms may also be of little value as more specific phrases indicate more passionate searchers who really know what they are looking for.

Narrow down your real estate SEO keyword list to 10-15 terms that make a great deal of commercial sense for your optimization project.

Look for additional posts on keyword research as this is a very important topic.

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