Article Description: 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.
Copyright © 2005 Richard D. Bailey |
