This is a how-to blog post. It outlines a step-by-step process which will help you – the real estate agent – move through the process of the initial call to having the listing agreement. This approach will help any home owner to feel comfortable listing their property with you.
If you are a real estate agent and want to promote your business by blogging, then there are a few clear objectives you need to have in mind.
These are:
Here are some ideas for your real estate blog content that will help you to achieve all of the above.
Real Estate SEO – Steady Wins the Race
To be effective at gaining and maintaining position in a competitive real estate market you need a SEO plan that covers all the bases. Real Estate SEO needs to be a multi-dimensional approach.
Here are some thoughts to consider when photographing your wonderful real estate listings. In fact, to photograph a listing in a stunning way will also help you to gain more and better listings.
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The digital real estate competitive landscape is getting tougher and more sophisticated. There are big names such as Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com that have vast resources and are committed to online dominance.
Without a well designed SEO strategy followed by consistent execution, it’s very difficult for a real estate company to maintain position in search let alone improve it.
Real Estate SEO AdvantageIf you are a real estate company you know that your exposure in the search engines is vital to success. What can be better than search exposure? It makes everything easier. It is easier to have buyers contact you and easier for people thinking about listing to find you.
Moreover, when home owners can easily find your site it provides them with more confidence that you are the one to list their property. Home owners crave exposure for their home when it is on the market.
With Google changing to new search technologies that make the process of finding what seekers want more precise, it’s necessary to be aware of what can help you gain position in search.
Blog Postings for the Relocating BuyerIf you want to attract an audience then you have to write and relate to that audience. How much thought have you given the buyer that is relocating to your area? This is a specialized niche if you are a real estate agent.
This niche could be a valuable one as you know that they are an interested and perhaps very motivated buyer.
Real Estate SEO – Keyword ResearchKeyword 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.
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.
Good keywords have the following characteristics:
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.
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.