To stay at the top of their game, REALTORS® need to expand their SEO with new tools and capabilities.
By Donna Shryer
The search for homes has gone digital. The National Association of REALTORS® 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers reports that 42 percent of buyers begin their home hunt online, and only 14 percent first contacted a real estate agent. The report adds that 54 percent of homebuyers kick off their web-based hunt on a mobile device. In fact, Google recently announced what many suspected: “More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan.”
That means the majority of homebuyers are shopping the latest listings at any time, any place and from the palm of their hand. The ease of online browsing explains why more than 90 percent of real estate agencies today host websites. But is your website receiving the web traffic it deserves?
A Steeper Learning Curve
Once upon a time, the inclusion of keywords within your website’s content was enough to put you on a search engine’s first page. That about covered search engine optimization, or SEO.
However, in today’s search landscape the level of sophistication has increased significantly. “The path to conversion is not a straight line anymore. You need to follow—and connect—multiple paths to land on a search engine’s first page,” explains Chris Humber, head of search at Catalyst, a digital performance marketing agency headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.
Today’s SEO paths twist, turn and overlap to the point where a refresher course, a professional expert’s help or both is a good idea. “I began implementing SEO several years ago,” says Theresa Walters, CRS, of RE/MAX Trinity in Brecksville, Ohio. “It remains a top priority, and to stay ahead of the competition with new SEO tools, I just invested in education so my videos and online ads work to help me land on Google’s first page—sometimes ahead of Zillow and Trulia.”
Making Memories
SEO has evolved. Search engine software programs, called “crawlers,” “robots” or “spiders,” now have juiced-up memories. Content remains king, but today, search engines remember how often a website crosses its path. The more linked digital properties you have, the more often a search engine sees and remembers you. “It’s just one missed opportunity after another when you have orphaned profiles across a multitude of social networks,” Humber emphasizes. “Connecting, or linking, all your digital properties and continually promoting these properties—particularly through blogs—positively impacts your search engine rankings.”
Humber explains how to flip missed opportunities into connections. “If you upload a video to YouTube that promotes a listing, you need a link that goes to a blog post about that listing. As part of the blog, you need a link that points back to the video content on YouTube. And everything links to your website. It’s a continuous circle.”
Search engines remember these circles. So when a search engine encounters links to your website content via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, your visibility surges and your search engine ranking jumps.
Jodi Bakst, CRS, and owner of Real Estate Experts in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, agrees. “Today, I use strategies to boost my brand for leads that are focused on building better content,” Bakst says. “I am also implementing strategies through social media to give visibility to my brand, my listings and open houses.”
Connecting the Dots
While your website is where homebuyers find the most robust information, blogging is an essential way to get homebuyers to your site, emphasizes Jason Fox, SEO expert at Jason Fox Real Estate Marketing. “I believe the most important task when building good real estate SEO is blogging about neighborhoods and communities.” This is the best way to connect with your local audience and drive more traffic to your site—the more clicks, the higher your site will be ranked on the search engine results.
HubSpot, a software developer for inbound marketing, supports Fox. In a recent report, HubSpot cites that companies with active blogs generate 55 percent more site visits and 97 percent more links to their websites, and their pages get indexed 434 percent more often.
ORGANIC VS. PPC
There are two ways to command top billing in search results. You can go for “organic search results,” which rely on SEO best practices. Organic search results cost you nothing—it’s a matter of you feeding search engines what they need to see. However, with SEO’s new capabilities, you may want to invest in classes or a website expert.
Your other option is to go with pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, which guarantee a top spot in search results. These ads are clearly labeled as ads, and today’s savvy web surfer knows you didn’t earn that top spot. For that reason, Jason Fox, SEO expert at Jason Fox Real Estate Marketing, says the results you get from PPC can be quite different than results from SEO.
Organic vs. PPC search results get two different reactions, Fox adds. “I explain it as the difference between a lead and a referral. PPC is a lead, and leads are OK. But what we all really want are referrals. When people contact you via organic top placement, they are contacting you because they feel they know you and trust you. You earned that top spot.”
On the Move
The new hot topic in search engine optimization is mobile SEO, which is specific to searches performed on mobile devices. Mobile SEO is similar to general SEO, although there are differences worth noting.
A vital difference comes down to location, location, location. In other words, smartphones track your movements and when someone searches on a smartphone, the smartphone shares your location with the search engine. The search engine delivers results relevant to both content and location.
“You’ve got a couple in the market for their first home, and they’re driving around a neighborhood,” Humber says. “As they’re driving around, they’re also on their smartphone performing searches. Maybe they want information about schools in this district; is it a walkable neighborhood; how’s the public transportation? If a particular REALTOR® has blogs that speak to these common searches and the search engine sees that the couple is in this particular REALTOR®‘s neighborhood, the search engine responds with results that match the end user’s content and location. Promote your website, social media and blogs properly, and those results will likely be your website!”
A Few More Mobile Points
It’s important to note that most search engines favor smartphone-friendly websites—as opposed to websites designed for desktops and merely downsized for a smartphone’s small screen. It may be time to investigate a website designed specifically for mobile devices.
Here are additional mobile SEO best practices to lighten the search engine’s load and boost your ranking for homebuyers on the move.
- Forget about popups that block site access without first doing something, like downloading an app or supplying contact information.
- Lose the Flash elements, such as banners, videos and audio. Mobile devices can’t typically support Flash, and its very presence lowers your rank in search results from mobile devices.
- Set up the bi-directional redirects between your mobile and desktop sites. If your mobile site sends a visitor to your desktop site for a video, make sure the link works.
- Tighten your mobile site’s content, but the message on both your mobile and desktop sites has to be consistent.
Check It Out
Analytics also play a vital role in today’s empowered SEO capabilities. Analytics tell you whether your digital presence is working for or against you. Fox suggests registering your site with Google Webmasters and Google Analytics. “These services track how many clicks your site is getting, what keywords are ranking and how many pages are being indexed.”
When your website is doing its job, invite home sellers to check it out. Walters says by doing so, “You show potential sellers you have the tools to make their property appear on Google’s first page and gain optimal exposure. That’s how you can win the listing almost every time.”
Want more tips for SEO? Check out CRS.com for a bevy of blog posts, Inman Select articles and relevant webinars and classes.
