Real Estate Marketing / SEO
What good is a web site if nobody can find it?
It’s all about marketing, baby. I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life studying marketing, with a consistent focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What’s SEO you might ask? Basically, it’s optimizing your site for the search engines so that it ranks well, ideally great, ultimately getting your site to the number 1 spot. It’s not enough to be in the top 10 of Google and the other search engines anymore, although that is very very helpful…You need to be in the top 5, preferably numero uno.
I’ve seen from my own real estate client’s web site how much their inquiries drop when their rankings went from number 1 to number 2 to number 3. A huge difference. Case in point, my awesome client, NorthWest Real Estate (http://www.NWColorado.com), since 1998, was at the top of Google for a very competitive keyword phrase (Fort Collins land) for a couple months. Consequently, they were getting numerous inquiries through their web site, pretty much on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. But then their site rankings dropped to number 2 and the inquiries slowed down a bit. Now they are at number 3 on Google, and while they still get quite a bit of home buyers contacting them, it’s gone down substantially since ranking number 1.
So why don’t I get them back to the number 1 spot you might ask? Well, it’s a 50/50 effort. I do my part in making the your site search engine friendly, then I teach you how to make it even more search engine friendly (no programming involved, just simple instructions) and otherwise market your site. However, it’s up to you to follow this advice and implement. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to stay on top of marketing your site, so I teach you how to do it yourself. This keeps your costs way down as opposed to hiring an outside firm to handle this very important task. For what it’s worth though, I am looking to partner with a real estate web site marketing company for those of you that don’t want to mess with this stuff, although it’s very simple to just do it yourself. So yeah, if you’re good at taking advice and following through on a continual basis, you are bound to rank high, even number 1 on Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines, and ultimately get lots of clients. I’m a total nerd about this stuff and have quite the passion to see my clients succeed. I will gladly pass on this knowledge to you.
SEO is only one part of marketing, but it’s a colossal part. Over time I’ll be writing articles on how to market your site, and company, as well as turning clicks into contacts into clients. Long term clients. Stay tuned!
If you would like some consulting in efforts of making your real estate site more search engine friendly (real estate SEO), you can contact me. I charge $125/hr for this service with a 1/2 hour minimum. Part of this time is inspecting your site, coming up with a plan, and of course speaking with you.
