After reading this article you will have learned a simple
technique as discussed in my e-book, “Top 10 Search Engine
Positioning Secrets For Real Estate Web Sites,” that can
significantly increase the number of motivated targeted visitors
to your web site and directly increase your sales.
It is a proven fact that visitors who find your site through a
search are often the most informed and best prospects. These
prospective buyers and sellers work hard to find your site and
as a result of a direct and immediate need are ready and anxious
to use your services. They visit your site with the intention of
not only looking for property buying/selling services but also
to learn as much as required about (YOU) their prospective agent
and how YOU relate to their specific needs in as little time as
possible. With this thought in mind, strategically developed,
search engine friendly site content can deliver more motivated
and informed prospects to your door than most any other form of
media.
The problem is that developing such Marketing driven content
normally requires a lot of time, experience and experimentation.
For this reason, many site owners pay a lot of money and turn to
professional SEOs (Search Engine Optimization Experts) like
myself, to give their Web Site a prospect targeted,
search-engine-friendly content-make-over. This is all fine when
you need professional help to save time and to give you a boost
from a fresh perspective, however there are times when a
personal touch is required, especially during a budget crunch.
I find that Site owners are often intimidated by the idea of
creating Web Site content, believing that this requires the
skill of a professional writer/editor. This could be true if you
envision content as a massive work. However, if you think of
content as smaller pieces of a pie that make up a much larger
pie, then a whole new world of possibilities will open up. For
that reason, this article will only focus on one important
content-changing technique that can be done to boost your Real
Estate Web Site’s performance.
I believe that everything in life has a reason and this became
even more evident when I had the privilege of getting great
speaker training from “Mr. Motivator” himself, Les Brown, during
a special tele-class. While sharing thoughts and strategies
regarding his incredible gift of speaking, Les shared a very
simple tip. When making a real-world presentation, most speakers
are trained and taught to always follow Aristotle’s method, that
says:
· Tell your audience what you're going to tell them ·
. Tell them.
· Then tell them what you told them.
But Les puts an extra twist on this, saying it’s better to “Tell
them what they want to hear!” And he’s made millions of dollars
over the past 25 years doing just that.
Wondering how this could be applied to the Internet I refocused
my efforts on creating web pages for my clients that give their
web site visitors exactly what they are looking for. I do this
by building prospect-pulling search engine relevance into my
client’s web pages.
You see, the goal and objective of all major search engines is
to deliver relevant and useful results. To achieve this goal and
to maintain the integrity of their results, search engines
attempt to filter out listings that are not what the search
engine user was looking for.
Search engines attempt to rank pages that appear near the top of
their results by comparing them to what users/searchers are
looking for. They compare the typed keywords/search phrases to
the millions of Web Pages within their databases to find the
best or most relevant results. This is usually done
automatically (true of most search engines) and sometimes by
result of human review (in the case of search directories).
The trick is to get your pages to become relevant, to get pushed
to the top of search results and more importantly to be found by
prospects looking for your services.
This sounds easier than it actually is - as search engines are
continuously updating their systems to improve the quality of
search results. Many sites even drop out of search engines upon
these updates as a result of improper search engine optimization
techniques or irrelevance. Only the ones that follow the golden
rule of “staying relevant” will actually survive these updates
and continue to bring in droves of traffic.
The best way to illustrate this is to give you a real-world
example of an issue that many Real Estate Professionals can
relate to, one that many of my clients faced prior to updating
their techniques.
Example:
Dallas Texas, Real Estate Agent, Laura Sellzhomes was frustrated
by the fact that her web site could hardly be found on search
engines and only seemed to attract people who wasted her time
looking at homes with no real intent to buy.
Laura thought she had all the “right stuff” on her web pages,
even her home page title seemed ok. It read, “Call Laura to
check out homes in Dallas Texas”
She couldn’t figure out why her sales were down and why her time
was so pressured and limited.
Laura decided to make a few changes to her site to see if
anything would make a difference and chose to forget about all
the fancy imagery and gimmicks on her award winning (but zero
prospect pulling) Web Site. She started from the basics and
asked herself a fundamental business question:
Question, “What is the primary goal of any prospect that visits
my office?”
Answer: To buy or sell properties
Laura wondered how this simple fact could be used to her
advantage and decided to put off any further thought until she
could call a very close friend for advice.
Well, after dialing her friend’s office number, Laura was
greeted by a voice prompt giving her the most important options…
“If you know your parties extension you may dial it at any time…
Or Press # For a directory…” Even though she knew the extension,
Laura continued to listen… “Press 1 for Sales… Press 2 for
Support…” Suddenly, a light bulb went off in Laura’s mind as she
realized something important. When done properly, those voice
prompts weren’t really designed to annoy and scare away callers.
They are really part of a pre-screening process that also puts
the caller into a proper mind-set. Anyone pressing sales will
probably want to buy something and anyone pressing support will
have support related questions to ask. She realized that an
additional benefit (when done properly) of this form of steering
a caller directly to what they need, is that the person
receiving the call will have a general idea of what the caller
is looking for even before any words are spoken.
Laura began to realize that her site had always been very
relevant, sadly it was only relevant for people who wanted to do
nothing more than “check out homes.” Her site was barely pulling
traffic and worse, she was attracting the wrong search engine
crowd.
Laura, inspired by this thought and even more determined to make
changes to her site, decided to learn everything she could about
the basics of web pages and search engine optimization and
quickly put her new found knowledge to work.
First, Laura identified a page on her site that described both
her buying and selling services and experience. Not wanting to
have to re-write anything she chose to simply break the page
into two separate pages and re-use the content.
To do this, Laura created two new web pages and dedicated one to
people looking to buy a property and the other to visitors
looking to sell a property. It was a simple matter of using her
Web Site editing software’s cut/paste tools to create a new page
and then move the content from one page to another (though a
do-it-yourselfer, she could have also called her favorite Web
Design company to do this).
Laura then added the finishing touches to her pages by doing
some keyword research and then modifying her Web Page titles and
content to reflect the purpose of each page “Buy a home in
Dallas” and “Sell a Home In Dallas” which is what her visitors
wanted to do-- all the while being careful not to mix the two
topics of buying and selling. She then added links to the newly
dedicated pages from her home page, who’s title she also changed
to something more related to its page content. “Laura Sellzhomes
– Dallas, Texas Real Estate Services.”
Her original purpose was simply to not confuse her visitors with
too much information and just to give them what they were
looking for, however Laura didn’t realize that through her
efforts she was also laying a strong foundation and creating
focused keyword-relevant pages, that the search engines give
best ranking and positions to.
By not mixing the concepts of buying and selling on one page and
instead focusing her page topics and content on these individual
subjects she was able to create relevant targeted pages
fine-tuned to attract the type of visitors she was looking for.
Laura was experiencing greater freedom and less stress as she
was getting fewer requests to go out and “check out” homes.
Visitors finding her site in search results were coming to her
with a real objective in mind, to “buy a home” or to “sell a
home.”
A few weeks after resubmitting her home page and new web pages
to search engines, Laura began to receive a sudden and steady
surge of traffic and both phone and email inquiries from eager
prospects looking to either buy or sell homes and other
properties. They were finding her site through the same search
engines that she could barely find her own site in--only weeks
before. Laura had finally found a way for her site to poke its
head through the stiff competition in search results for
keywords that were profitable and meaningful to her business.
Laura’s Real Estate Web Site, is now getting an increase of
visits by people wanting to take specific actions. When they
arrive at her site with an action in mind, she is sure to give
them the specific information and details they need, by quickly
making it clear that she is the professional they are looking
for. Laura also took time to learn how to really promote her
business offline and made sure that she put the same emphasis on
targeting into her brochures, newsletters and business card.
Three $500,000+ sales and a $1,000,000 dollar sale later, Laura
happily looked back and wished she had made the changes a whole
lot sooner.
You now realize (if you didn’t already) that web page
optimization coupled with the right Internet/Search Engine and
offline promotion techniques can really give your Real Estate
business the prospect drawing, sales boosting edge it needs. It
is well worth your time to learn the closely guarded secrets and
techniques used by SEOs to achieve top search engine rankings
and also to give your web pages their greatest level of magnetic
traffic pulling relevance.
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