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What do you want from Google?

In my last post I stated that when doing Internet marketing for real estate you don’t want to be found for a very popular search term.  I stand by that statement with two exceptions:  1) You might do this if you are building a brand, like you would at a very large brokerage firm, or 2) You might do this if you have a lot of under utilized resources on your payroll and you don’t want o fire anyone.  Either way optimizing for very popular search terms will not result in a positive return on your investment in the short term.

Before I go into why, let’s discuss “very popular search terms.”  Clearly “Chicago real estate” (with 31.1 million results) or “Las Vegas homes for sale” (with 9.7 million results) qualify as very popular search terms.  What about “Bethesda real estate” (with 869 thousand results) or “Homes for sale in Traverse City” (with 159 thousand results)?  Probably yes, still quite popular.  Even a search for “Granby CO homes for sale” with only 30 thousand results looks pretty popular.  These search results can seem very daunting for those of us with pretty small marketing budgets.  On the other hand I would suggest that this is not where you want to compete anyway.  These simple search queries “,city. +  real estate” are the targets of all the internet aggregators like Zillow and Trulia but this is not where you want to be.

Let’s now switch our focus to “How prospects use the internet.”  We have examined user behavior and classified searches into three phases:

1)       General Searches, like the ones mentioned are the place where many prospects begin their research process. To position your website to be found for this type of search will typically require the largest investment.

2)       Searches for specific locations (subdivisions, in a specific school district, etc.) or Searches for features (waterfront, granite counter tops, etc.) and

3)       Searches for streets or specific addresses

Now let’s build a profile for a typical visitor that comes to your site from each of the Three Phases of Search:

General Search Visitor: This person has typically just started their quest.  They are early in research mode.  They often don’t even know what they are looking for themselves.  Someone searching for a home in Chicago by typing in “Chicago homes for sale” still has to decide on the best area, features, etc.  The one advantage of connecting with a visitor at this time is that they probably have not engaged a real estate agent yet.  If they do give you their information at this time and you are able to set up an appointment you should expect to show this customer a lot of properties before they are ready to make an offer.  Of course there are always exceptions to this rule.   I’m just not sure I would spend the money on SEO to find those exceptions.

Visitor Searching for Specific Locations and Features: At this point your visitor has an understanding of what they want and where they want it.  They are still looking but are now zeroing in on what they feel will be their perfect home.  For example someone looking for “the Links at Poplar Creek” Hoffman Estates has done enough research to know where they want to live and here’s the best part – your website will be competing with under 6,000 other results on Google.  Another actual search example: four bedroom double bay window houses for sale in Birmingham brought a customer to our site. Search visitors in Phase 2 have enough information to be ready to make an offer when they find the right property.  Now is when the guidance and support of a real estate agent is most needed and will add the most value.

Searches for Streets or Specific Addresses: These visitors are in buy mode.  They think they know exactly what they want and have their wallets out and on the table.  The fact that they are still searching on the internet is an indication they still need an expert to help them close the deal on the perfect home.  But these visitors are so far down the search process they are the ones most likely to already be working with an agent.  We can not read people’s minds,  sometimes people start with a narrow focus but then broaden their search parameters.  For example the search: Hazel Drive house for sale in Petoskey brought a visitor to our site that spent the next 18 minutes viewing 45 different pages.  And the visitor that searched for: 9107 East Starhill, Lonetree then spent the next hour and a half viewing different homes listed on our site.  BTW only 21 websites showed up for this search.

Okay now we know what Google wants and we know what we want from Google, next we discuss how to match this up and achieve SEO success with your website.

The answer to this question is relatively simple.  While Google has a very complex algorithm it can be simplified into three critical components. Google wants:

1)       Unique content that searches and visitors find useful.

2)       Content that is considered by other webmasters in your community to be credible/valuable (back-links are one of the tools for achieving this).

3)       A website infrastructure must be user friendly so that Google can find and understand the content.

However, anyone who has ever done any SEO work knows that it is not that simple.  The devil is in the details.  The complexity of working with Google comes not from understanding what Google wants but rather from defining what you want from Google.

For example, it is easy to get front page search results from Google, even in the very competitive real estate market when the search term is complex and not very competitive.  As long as your content is relatively unique you can accomplish with minimal effort.  We tested this on a property address: we created a page for 1095 Pine Meadow ct. and within a couple of weeks we were on the front page of Google with our page: http://1095pinemeadowct.agents123.com/.  Interestingly enough, we were able to do this entirely based upon the content of the web page.  We used no inbound links at all for improving the search results for this page.  (During the past week this result comes up between number one and number four, of the organic results on the first page of a Google search.  Of course this will all be changed as soon as this blog post hits because the links from here will give that page a boost.  But I digress from my original point . . .) When optimizing a more competitive search phrase it becomes more difficult to achieve front page search success.  No surprise there.

So how do you achieve success in a very competitive market for a very popular search term?  This is a two part answer: 1) YOU DON’T and 2) YOU DON’T WANT TO.

I will explain “Why” in my next blog.