{"id":1375,"date":"2019-05-19T09:54:42","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T13:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beingbobblog.com\/?p=1375"},"modified":"2019-11-12T21:31:22","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T01:31:22","slug":"realtor-marketing-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beingbobblog.com\/happy-holidays\/realtor-marketing-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Realtor Marketing SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SEO_image_2\"<\/a>SEO for Realtors is a hot topic in Realtor Marketing circles. I spend a lot of time talking to Realtors who are totally confused about what Realtor SEO is today and how they can get their website to the top of the rankings on Google.\u00c2\u00a0This post is long, but worth reading in its entirety if you are going to be spending time marketing your website with SEO.<\/p>\n

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A History of Realtor SEO<\/h2>\n

If you are paying attention to the Realtors who have top Google rankings in your marketplace, you probably notice one or two have all the top listings.\u00c2\u00a0Whenever I find this, I can guess a couple of things that will make a difference for you now.<\/p>\n

First off, they have older sites that have been around for a while. Google thinks domain age (how long your URL has been in existence) is a good indicator of quality content.<\/p>\n

Secondly, they probably got those rankings sometime in the past when there was less competition. For example, I rank in Google because I have been writing \u00c2\u00a0since 2011 and because my content is old.<\/p>\n

If you are going to try and knock off those old sites and take their top spots, just know that you are going to have to do more work to beat them than they will have to do to stay there.<\/p>\n

The good news.<\/strong> I have to say that many of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153old dog\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sites that have those rankings are now taking them for granted. They are not working as aggressively to keep their rankings as they did in the past to get them. This leaves the door open for an aggressive Realtor (like you) to step in and start taking them away.<\/p>\n

To dos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Check your competition\u2019s domain age. I like using Webconfs.com<\/a> for this.<\/p>\n

2. One thing that you can do to make Google more confident in the longevity of your site is to register it for 5 years or more (paying for your domain name or URL for 5 years)<\/em>. The cost is minimal (about $60) but the benefits are HUGE. By paying for it for 5 years or more, you are signaling to Google that you will not be just a flash in the pan.<\/p>\n

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Paid Listings and The Aggregators<\/h2>\n

In what\u00c2\u00a0I have talked about so far, I am specifically talking about your local competition. But if you pull up a Google search for something like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fayetteville Real Estate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you will see that there are some heavy hitters competing for that term.<\/p>\n

The first three on the top and the ones down the side are paid listings done through Google Adwords. Now, it may be worth your while to pay for these, but that is a post for another day.<\/p>\n

The next ones are Realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia and finally there is one little independent site, Townsend Real Estate.<\/p>\n

\"SEO<\/a><\/p>\n

As an independent agent or broker, I am sure you would like it if those spots weren\u2019t all taken up by the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Dogs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but they are. Those sites like Zillow, Trulia and Homes.com are called aggregators because they combine the data from all of the different MLSs and put it in one place.<\/p>\n

And it is kind of okay that they are there. If someone is searching for Fayetteville Real Estate, they are probably REALLY early in a home search and will probably not settle on an agent for a while. Plus, there is no use belly-aching about it, that is just the way Google works.<\/p>\n

Additionally, if there are no ads at all, that is probably not a keyword that converts well for getting buyers or sellers. People who are spending money want to know for a fact that their hard earned dollars will return them revenue. At least early on, if there are no paid keywords ignore that term for now.<\/p>\n

To dos.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153actual\u00e2\u20ac\u009d competition like Townsend rather than focusing on the big aggregator sites like Realtor.com and Zillow.<\/p>\n

Checking Out The Competition<\/h2>\n

So next you will want to see what kind of site your competition has.<\/p>\n

Rank In The World<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first stop is always Alexa.com<\/a>. Put the domain name in there and hit submit.<\/p>\n

WOW! According to the Alexa search, this site is not actually all that popular (4,638,250, having just lost 2,206,222 places). This means that a Realtor in Fayetteville would have a chance!<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/a><\/p>\n

Domain\u00c2\u00a0Age<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at Webconfs.com<\/a> and see how old the site is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6OVER 17 YEARS old. So Jimmy Townsend was a smart cookie back in the 1990\u2019s and established himself as a player with his site. He DESERVES that ranking for how long he has had it. (not to say we would try to pick him off!)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Domain<\/a><\/p>\n

Incoming Links\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google uses an algorithm (a computer program)<\/em> to rank websites and one of the key things that they think is important are the number of sites that link to a\u00c2\u00a0website.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, we have to find out how many incoming links your competitors website has. For this I like to use a tool from Moz,\u00c2\u00a0https:\/\/moz.com\/researchtools\/ose\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"MOZ<\/a><\/p>\n

For such a high ranking site I am surprised that they have so few incoming links! That is good news for anyone trying to compete for this keyword!<\/p>\n

Site\u2019s Number of Pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now we want to know how big the website is. This will help us to know how many pages we might need to be able to compete with the current top ranking site. To do this we will go to Google.com and type in site:domainname.com. This is what it looks like:<\/p>\n

\"Checking<\/a><\/p>\n

Once I\u00c2\u00a0do the search I\u00c2\u00a0get a result that looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"Fayetteville<\/a><\/p>\n

Holy cow they have a lot of pages! Not to get too technical, but the site is made in ASP which is an older programming language (many sites are now made in PHP which is what WordPress is built in). Even so that is a lot pages! I would not try to compete directly with Jimmy on that top ranking term right off the bat.<\/p>\n

Site Keywords<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now we want to find out what Google thinks his site is about. To do this we need to use the Keyword Planner Tool in Google Adwords<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Note: it can be a little scary to log into Adwords for the first time, I think you need to add a credit card, but if you don\u2019t set up any campaigns it doesn\u2019t cost anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adwords<\/a><\/p>\n

Ohhh another interesting little nugget here, they are really ranking most highly for charlotte keywords terms and not so much for Fayetteville.<\/p>\n

Site Research With Long Tail Pro<\/strong><\/p>\n

I KNOW, this much research seems like it could take a long time. There are many paid sites out there that will give you some or all of this at once but what I don\u2019t like is that they are subscriptions that cost money each month. What I do like is Long Tail Pro, which is a program that you can buy outright and use as much as you like without costing more money!<\/p>\n

\"Long<\/a><\/p>\n

This one tool will help you check out your competition MUCH more easily giving you the site age and number of links all in one place (it does even more that we will talk about later!)<\/p>\n

> Check outLong Tail Pro<\/a> now!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Beating A High Ranking Site<\/h2>\n

Before I go on to talk about what keywords to target yourself, let\u2019s talk in general about how to beat a high ranking Realtor website that is already established in your marketplace.<\/p>\n

1. All the little boats method.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My first suggestion is to have LOTS of little keywords that you rank for that add up to a bigger keyword you would like to target. So instead of trying to rank for Minneapolis real estate, you write posts to rank for:<\/p>\n