85% of the searches for real estate in United States and Canada starts on the Internet. This means that real estate agents must compete for visitors to their web sites otherwise they will not be considered. Similar to most small businesses real estate professionals do not have good brand recognition. Unlike big brands Nike, Reebok and Walmart, a real estate agents name is probably relatively unknown. So how does a real estate agent need to get found online? They need to brand themselves to the most popular real estate searches for their city. This is a guide for search engine optimization for real estate agents.
SEO For Real Estate Agents
In This Section
a. Introduction to Real Estate SEO
b. Define Your Goals - Real Estate SEO
c. User Centric Website
d. Email Marketing For Real Estate Agents
e. Intro to Search Engines
f. Real Estate Keywords
g. MetaTags
h. Search Engine Optimization Approach
i. Link Building
j. Basic SEO For Real Estate Agents
k. Site Assessment Worksheet
l. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services
Learn the absolute basics of search engine optimization (SEO) for the real estate industry; the definitions, terminology and even why you should bother to focus on search engine optimization and positioning as a real estate agent.
What is the most important thing to a real estate agent's web site? It's traffic... since traffic leads to consideration which leads to a lead which leads to a sale. You could have the most beautiful web site but without traffic you have nothing. It's like creating a TV commercial without being able to show it on TV.
As a real estate agent your web site should be targeted. Make sure to know your target audience and create a web site that addresses them. Whether you're a community expert or a relocation expert or an investment expert, create a web site that speaks to what you offer. Remember that there are hundreds or thousands of competitors even in your city.
Real estate email marketing is an excellent way to keep in touch with your prospective and current clients. Make sure that you provide value... and not your perceived value, otherwise your email will end up unread and trashed.
Learn the basics of search engines, spiders, indexing and more. As a real estate agent you don't need to be an expert in this but you do have to know the basics, because what you don't know can hurt the way you do your marketing.
You can get found using your name but how many people actually search for your name. Make sure you are choosing the right real estate keywords to use in your web site because there are popular ones that home buyers and home sellers use. If you don't know what they are, you may be wasting your marketing dollars.
Meta-tags... what's that? Are they important? Is it all you have to do to get traffic to your web site?
During your review of the past five chapters, you’ve had to take in a lot of information. It was necessary to detail all of the information for you so that you will now know what to consider when determining your approach to SEO. Without that information, it would be difficult for you to come with a plan since you would essentially be flying blind.
Every company is different and the best way to use SEO for your particular company’s needs is largely based on how big or small your company is. Every company will have individual SEO requirements, so it’s best to utilize those that are geared for your company’s size, budget and specialties, if any.
We’ve covered just about all of the basic information that you need to know to help you begin to understand how SEO works. We’ve defined text, links, pay per click ads and the basics of online and off-line optimization. We’ve also discussed how and why you need to build a user focused site including content, articles and blogs and how to design your site to obtain more leads, using email links, newsletters, freebies and the information request form.
Larger real estate agencies have their to do lists and so do the smaller ones and hopefully by now you have formed concrete ideas that you can put into practice to begin the optimization of your website.
You should have a list of goals, both short term and long term, that you hope to achieve and have a roadmap that will help you to reach your goals that much more effectively.
It was important to explain all of that to you first so that it will be easier for you to start to utilize the techniques and understand what and why you are doing them.
Now its time for the next step that will further increase your understanding the intricacies of SEO. This includes a deeper look into links and effective off-line optimization for real estate agents.
Learn the most basic things you should be doing to optimize your real estate agent web site for search engines.
Use this SEO checklist to assess your real estate web site. Learn whether you or your web site designer have met all the necessary steps required for optimizing your web site.
Pick the right SEO consultant or company or web site designer for your site. There are many web site providers to choose from. Learn what you should be looking out for and the right questions to ask. Your online marketing success depends on it.
Pages In This Section
The Internet is called the information highway and in order to travel it effectively, you will need to gather some information yourself. The best place to start is at the website that you already have in place. Look at your website from the standpoint of your prospective clients.
No one has to tell you that getting qualified leads is essential to any real estate practice. Since you already know that, I won’t go into all the reason that you need leads. What I will do is make suggestions on how to use your site to get qualified leads.
One of the main purposes of optimizing your website is to improve its position in the search engine rankings and thus on the search results page. While I encourage you to employ these techniques to achieve this, it’s important not to over emphasize your website’s position.
Once upon a time, long before the advent of the Internet, a person just like you had a great idea for a service to sell. It didn’t matter that others had the same idea and had already begun to capitalize on it. This person just knew that he could do a much better job at it and success was in the bag.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is exactly what the term sounds like. It’s a series of techniques designed to help move your web site off the 50th search result page to the top of the first page where it belongs. You’ve heard the term, “first come, first served”.
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