SEO is a journey, not a destination, and this idea has proven itself true time and time again. Most real estate agents’ websites got left behind after Google Panda and Penguin updates — not because Google prefers big brands such as Zillow, realtor.com and Trulia websites.
Because real estate agents are very slow at adjusting their websites andonline marketing tactics to the present realities, here are the common mistakes most real estate agents make on their site that make their websites perform poorly on any given search engine results page (SERP).
Not building on a brand
After the Panda update, most of the sites that came out unhurt were all big brands. That shows us Google algorithms are designed to favor brands over other types of business.
What Google Panda and Penguin mean for SEO
The Google Panda update, which lowers the rankings of low-quality websites, means that webmasters are now mandated to produce user-oriented content as opposed to Google bot-oriented content.
Penguin, which targets websites spamming Google with low-value links and over-optimization of anchor tests, means that acquiring links from any source is no longer the norm.
What tells Google a website is a brand?
Branded websites have one thing in common that other sites don’t: they all have branded searches — people searching for their brand directly onGoogle.
Branded searches are Google searches with your brand name or a variation of your brand name.
Examples are: Zillow, Zillow.com, Zillow homes value by address.
Branded websites have lots and lots of valuable local information that keeps visitors coming back, searching for the brand, clicking on deeper internal links, staying longer, sharing on social networks and linking to it on other sites.
How to become a brand in your niche
Create lots and lots of valuable local content such as blog posts, videos and infographics. When producing great content, I recommend using theskyscraper approach by Brian Dean.
The skyscraper approach is all about finding a piece of old content that performed well and crushing it by producing a longer and better piece.
It aims at studying your competitors’ best-performing content with the aim of finding shortcomings or areas not properly covered and filling in the gap by creating longer and better content.
Thinking SEO ends with a website
Most real estate website vendors advertise their product by saying their website will rank easily on Google.
Although this might be true, I’m sorry to tell you that just having a website isn’t a sure ticket to Google top rankings.
It is just the beginning of more work to come. SEO isn’t an easy job, which is why I always advise real estate agents to hire an SEO expert.
SEO requires time and effort to study your competitors’ strength and weaknesses and using it to build a viable SEO strategy.
Believing SEO is cheap and easy
SEO is not cheap and easy, and it requires time and resources to discover linkable assets. The average price of hiring an SEO expert is $500 per month.
Any SEO company you hire below $500 maybe automating the link building or building links on assets with very low DA and PA.
What are DA and PA?
DA is domain authority; it’s a score on a 100-point scale developed by MOZ to predict how well an entire domain will perform on Google.
PA is page authority; it’s a score on a 100-point scale developed by MOZ that predicts how well a web page will perform on Google.
The higher the score of a domain or web page, the more likely it will perform well on SERP.
It’s not cheap to get links from high relevant DA and PA domains nor is it easy to locate them
But the good thing about SEO is the reward is worth the time and resources put into it. SEO is targeted, unlike traditional advertising where you try to catch the attention of anybody and try to convince him or her to buy.
With search marketing, the buyers are ready to buy and are looking for you. They convert far higher than traditional or any other kind of advertising.
Note: The more competitive your niche is, the more resources you have to invest to outrank your competitors.
About the author:
Ibemere Obinna is a real estate agent and a digital marketing expert and blogger. Check out his blog realtymarketingtool.com.
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