Real Estate Lead Generation & Conversion

Archive for the ‘Real Estate SEO’ Category

Anyone that has even the slightest involvement with real estate lead generation has some interaction with search engines. The search engine landscape in the US has changed dramatically with Yahoo search indexing now being powered by MSN. Yahoo’s pay per click program is also in the process of transitioning to being powered by MSN. While a case can be made that Ask is a third player, their share 2.14% of US searches (as reported by Hitwise) makes them so minor that they can be easily dismissed. Although there are other services, such as Wolfram Alpha, that fill useful niches, when it comes to mainstream text based search, Google and MSN powered search dominate the US market with a 97% share.

It seems stunning that Yahoo has given up trying to compete with Google’s search indexing and pay per click programs when one considers the search providers and technology Yahoo has acquired over the years. The following is a list of some of Yahoo’s search related acquisitions and estimated acquisition price. And this list would be larger if it included acquisitions made by companies that Yahoo acquired. Overture was on an acquisition binge in 2003 prior to being purchased by Yahoo. Overture’s acquisitions included Alta Vista and FAST (All The Web).

Yahoo’s Search Related Acquisitions

Year      Company                  Value
1997      Net Controls      $       1,400,000
2002      Inktomi              $   235,000,000
2003      Overture            $1,630,000,000
2006      Search Fox                  N/A

Combining Yahoo’s spending on acquiring search related technology companies and spending on in-house development, it seems likely that they spent over $2 billion on search technology. While Yahoo asserts that they are still a seach company, if indexing the Web has become such a gargantuan task that even with $2 billion in spending, Yahoo chooses to no longer continue to attempt to keep pace with Google, it seems questionable if any company other than Microsoft has the resources to do so in the US. Even Ask’s well funded parent company, IAC/Interactive Corp, with $3.7 billion in assets, is reluctant go toe to toe with Google.

From a lead generation standpoint, the reduction in search engines that matter from three down to two probably simplifies seach engine optimization and search engine marketing. Obviously, it is easier to focus on just two search engines. For smaller programs conserving resources by only targetting Google, it may now make sense to expand the effort to include MSN since it will also power Yahoo’s organic search and pay per click.

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.