Real Estate search engine optimization. The word has taken on a new life beyond its orignal meaning.
Back in the day (pre-Google), SEO or search engine optimization meant that you optimized your page(s) to reflect and represent your keyword. Software packages such as WebPosition Gold promised that you could pump out perfectly optimized pages based on a reverse engineering of the top positioned pages for that keyword.
Thus, if you matched keyword densities, proximities, weights, and so on then you could win the search engine game. As time moved forward, engines like Inktomi started the move toward link relationships. The term link popularity was used to describe simply how many links pointed to your site. Thus, the idea was that you must be popular and deserve extra favor for your keywords.
As Google became more important, linking became more sophisticated as the idea of page rank and reputation grew. Page Rank (not web page-Larry Page of Google) is simply the relative importance of a page. Reputation is simply what does the link say about the page it is pointing.
Thus, Search Engine Optimization does not really suffice when describing the act of marketing a website thru the engines. Therefore perhaps a better phrase is Search Engine Marketing or SEM. The die hards still like to call it SEO, but they will refer to it accurately as on page and off page optimization (page rank and reputation).
Unfortunately as marketers we are being mislead by the SEO & SEM industry to pay attention to the wrong "metrics". We are taught to look at a few positions for a keyword(s). I don't know anyone who made money for being number one for a keyword.
I recently listened to a recording of a fellow who has a very successful online store. He was asked if he keeps track of his positions, or even his traffic. He replied, "nope, I look at one thing, how much money I made that day". In real estate, we are not selling products. In fact, we are selling access in most cases to our IDX-MLS data. The transaction is the listings for the visitors contact information.
Yet, the SEO's of the world want to get us to pay attention to positions. Positions in and of themselves are OK to look at, but as a goal they make some big assumptions. The goal is a sale. A sale can only come from a qualified lead, which will come from good follow up. The good lead will come only from qualified traffic. Which may or may not come from a number one position, or even a top ten position. It will probably come from a phrase other than what you might think. I understand this is counter intuitive, but it is true for many keywords.
As real estate pros you must look at the SEO process as only a process. Albeit a complicated one. But positions are only a cog in a much larger machine.
Your time should be spent on followup and conversion of your leads into an appointment or contract. That is time consuming. So there is little time to spend on anything else like SEO and positions.
Instead, consider concentrating on the following numbers:
Traffic
Leads
Appoinments
Sales
I remember going to Mike Ferry Seminars and he got me to look at my prospecting numbers and how they related to my sales. The formula I took was:
How many calls= an appoinment;how many appoinments=a listing; how many listings=1 sale
Do the same here: How much unique traffic = 1 lead. Is it 15 to 1, 30 to 1?.
How many leads convert to an appointment? How many appointments = a sale?
You hit the nail on the head. A lot of real estate webmasters are too busy looking at designing the site for search engines that they forget the actual customer. Its hard to hit a good balance between the two and as the market for online business increases, its just going to get worse.
Posted by: Crichey | November 7, 2004 at 03:28 PM