Real Estate SEO Myth #8

So my new year resolution is to finish this post out ;-)

The 10 Myths about Real Estate SEO Continued:
#8  SEO is the single most important action you can do for your website.

Years ago I wrote an Ebook called the 5 steps to Online Real Estate Success.

The whole premise of the book was that your online success cannot come from just a high Search Engine Results Page/Position (SERP). As I have kiddingly quipped, "A high SERP and 50 Cents will get you a cup of coffee".

The idea of the book was that you have to start with the end in mind? So why have a web site or presence at all? Instead of following the herd, ask yourself that question.

The Ultimate Goal of a Website?

To get a lead? Or better yet a sale? Or how about an ongoing flow of business for years to come!

So where does that on line generated sale come from? Good Follow up.

Real Estate Lead Gen

Okay. Now how do you get the lead in the first place? You can buy it from places like Homegain, and other Lead Generation Companies. You can also generate those real estate prospects from your own web sites.

So you need to have a lead capture mechanism in place that will get these potential buyers and sellers to register to see listings or to call you. This is what we call lead optimization and can be testing anything from a short or long reg form, to the color scheme. Some agents are testing video and audio at the registration.

But lead optimization also comes from the real estate keyword phrase that the visitor finds you under. It may be a general phrase like "City Real Estate". Or a more specific real estate word like " Canyon Hills California Craftsman home in Fullerton California". (Almost the exact phrase a friend of mine used to find his house. He called the broker and would have bought it over the phone if he could).

This phenomenon- many are calling the "Long Tail". It tends to convert much better than more generalized words. The only Asterisk to put next to that statement is in the case of Relocation. The relocator only know Generalized words and will tend to react faster than the typical generalized lead.

The idea of specifics or long tail words has become popular in the blogs. And a realty blog can go after these specifics in great detail because a blog by its nature is continually updated. However, if the writing is not focused for an end result IE. brand building and/or lead capture, then its the ole "50 cents" slogan again.

Real Estate SEO

So now you can see that SEO is only a piece of a much larger cog. Good SEO can get the wider phrases for your real estate market, and it can go deeper with the more specific long tail type realty words.

Web Site

The website is the starting pad, but because many start here, instead of with the end in mind, many dollars are wasted chasing opportunities without understanding how it can help you over the long run.

We will fill the rest of the ten myths in over the next couple days.

1. PageRank & Metatags are everything
2. A top ten position will solve all your sales problems
3. SEO is metatag manipulation
4. Content is King
5. The engines love blogs more than regular webpages
6. Get ranked for the top 20 most voluminous words and you will be successful
7. If you just get rankings and Traffic you will be Successful
8. SEO is the single most important action  you can do for your website
9. Its all about more links!
10. There are magical shortcuts to getting SEO traffic