seo (3)

4359197401?profile=originalIt goes without saying that potential home buyers take to the Internet to search for homes, but just to make it official, REALTOR.org reports a staggering 92% of home seekers utilize the Internet in some capacity and 50% use mobile websites or applications in their efforts. You can view the highlights here

Real estate agents want to get found online, but many find Real Estate SEO to be esoteric or an exercise in frustration, so I wanted to avail a post that covers the basics, without getting bogged down in technical details (those will come later). 

Let's put aside the arcane speak for a moment, and at the risk of over simplicity, consider the over-arching goal of search engines. It is to provide relevant, targeted search results for users. When someone searches for something, they are seeking information. The search engine attempts to match the searcher with repositories of the information their users seek. Since the search engines want to provide a positive user experience, they will evaluate the credibility of the site that is spewing out information.Is the site credible? If so, it is ranked high. 

There are many metrics they will use to gauge the credibility of a site, and gone are the days from yesteryear where you can simply stuff keywords on a page and guarantee that you appear at the top of search results. The biggest metric is fresh, updated, and unique content, and I know this from experience. 

For the better part of a decade, I sold real estate and other leads and had half a dozen or so websites that showed up on the front page of Google for pre-foreclosure leads, mortgage leads, and other keywords. I rarely had to make cold calls, because people would find me. What is remarkable about that is that I made no attempt to do any SEO. That's right, I did not try to optimize my websites for Google, yet my pages appeared at the forefront of search results. Why? 

There are two audiences to write for. One is a Google robot that crawls the web. The other, human beings to engage, inform, and converse with, and for a long time I ignored the former and wrote for human beings. By writing prolifically and often, Google notices that. 

SEO gurus will tell you that when generating content, you should branch out a little and mention keywords that are related to your main keyword. So, for example, since it's October, maybe you are searching for Halloween costumes. People searching for this very broad, competitive term may also be searching for "scary Halloween costumes", "Halloween costumes for kids", "Ideas for Halloween costumes", "best Halloween costumes", etc etc.

But if you have a passion for Halloween costumes and have a business selling costumes, these related phrases will be mentioned naturally. Naturally is the operative term. You wouldn't necessarily have to forensically analyze content, keyword count, etc, because these terms would appear organically. 

This is a lead in to what your real estate website is about. 

Many real estate professionals have taken the easy route by putting up a generic website, a prefab and uninspiring website furnished by their brokerage firm or some third-party company that makes every site look the same, merely changing a few things. This cookie-cutter sites are nearly impossible to be indexed by the search engines, much less to be viewed as a credible site with all of the duplicate content. Again, Google loves fresh, unique content. If you want to be found, you have to set yourself apart and have more than an expensive business card.

This requires a concerted approach to write about local schools, hang-out places, neighborhoods, attractions, the local yogurt shop. New developments sprouting up, changes in the rental market and so forth. It's been said that all politics are local. To that I would say all search is local. The search engines eat up locally specific information, and this need not be an arduous task, and I want to part with this thought. 

SEO should be fun, to the extent that you are communicating with the visitor and establishing yourself as a local real estate expert. It's the start of a conversation that leads to relationships and profits. If you view SEO as being a technical task to get found online, get some Ibuprofen. If you have a paradigm shift and view content as informing/engaging, you will succeed. I guarantee it. 

In the next posts, I'll try to tackle some of the nitty gritty details, putting a little structure to your real estate content. 

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I have all of Google’s Top 10!

WOW, I just was looking over some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stuff for a question recently sent to me by a member and I noticed, in Google’s search Engine, if you type, Jesse Gonzalez Nashville, you get 293,000 results of which, I am all of the top 10, first page!!!!

The best part of all this, I didn’t have to pay a dime for it. Yes, it was completely free.

So, how did I do it?

Blogs.

That’s right, all I did was blog at least once a week and now my brand, my name, is the top 10 for Jesse Gonzalez Nashville. In fact, I started looking over other possible searches for me like, Jesse Gonzalez, Jesse D. Gonzalez, Jesse Gonzalez Realtor, Jesse Realtor in Nashville, Jesse Foreclosure Realtor, Jesse Foreclosure and it seems that no matter how you word it, I pop up at least twice in the top 10 and at least once in the top 5.

Once again, if you want to become a local real estate expert, if you want to SEO optimize your brand, you can’t underestimate the power of blogging.

For goodness sake, what is stopping you? Are you just sooooo busy that you can’t spend at least 20 minutes a week writing at least a three paragraph blog. Are you soooo busy that you can’t post your blog on AgentNewsWire for even greater SEO Optimization are just soooo busy all that is just too much? Are you sooooo scared that you might write something wrong or misspell something or offend someone or (insert your excuse here).

I got one thing to say…………..just remember that your competition isn’t.

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REOPro – How Can We All Benefit?

REOPRO is a new site that is focused on REO Agent education. At the time of this writing, there are about 150 members. From a very rough review of the site, my guess is about half of us have little or no REO experience and want to break into the niche du jour while the other half has been doing this long enough to think they know what they are doing. I like to think I fall into the later category.As with any new site, our success depends on one another. I hope that we do not fall into two different camps – those in the know and those wanting to know. We are all here, I assume, to grow and better perfect our trade.MY METHOD - BLOGA method that I have been very successful with in my own personal growth is to teach. When I teach, I am forced to research and know the answers before I share them. Now, I don’t teach in a traditional classroom or even with traditional students. Rather I write.That’s right, I will find a topic of interest to me – typically one that I know enough about to be dangerous – but not an expert. What usually prompts me is I question something that I think I know, but am not sure of. So, I research and I document my research. Other times, I write about my experiences as I go through a certain aspect of my business / life.If you are a seasoned REO Agent, then you have something to share. I know you are busy, but this is an effort that will come back and reward you many times over – if you do it right.If you were to Google my name, you’d find that I have over 400 articles published – most on my primary blog – HemetRealEstateBlog.Com. I do have 4 or 5 other blogs that I write to on occasion, plus I am a guest author on another handful of blogs. When you Google me, make sure you check out Video as a search option and you’ll find that I have nearly 200 videos published as well – all of them from the very early days of video on the internet – March to June 2006. I quit, because I was not satisfied with my editing capabilities and I thought I looked goofy. However, there is not a month that goes by when I still don’t receive a phone call or email asking a specific question about the content of one of my videos.I share this because a public forum like REOPro can give you instant credibility and it helps everyone else who participates.MAKE THE MOST OF REOPRONow, this is a site that is dedicated to REO real estate and not all aspects of real estate. So, I for one truly hope that we will not see a bunch of articles that are off topic – you know what I mean…no one cares bout new home sales, FSBO’s, or any other real estate topic that cannot be tied to REO’s.OK, so if you are new, what can you write about? Well that’s easy…document your journey. Write a diary of what you go through to build your business. When you see something that someone in your market is doing good, let us know…then again if you see something that someone in your agent is doing that gives REO’s a bad name, let us know that too.Being new to the niche will mean you have the most questions. Instead of asking the same questions over and over again in different blogs, why not turn your question into your won blog post and solicit help from readers. I would suggest a format where you ask the question and give your best idea of what the answer is – and ask for clarification and further input.GOOGLE AND SEOBy generating your own blog, you are now generating your own credibility – both here in the REOPro community as well as in your own market. The good news, the more article that are written the more Google and the other search engines will respect this site and give us higher search engines in our own market. I’ll add some article here about blogging and the search engines – but believe me when I say, the more the merrier for everyone.The second step you can take to make REOPro a more productive networking platform is to add comments to others blogs. If you read something that makes sense to you – or maybe it doesn’t….leave a comment for the author. As a blog writer I can tell you that comments on my blog validate me which encourage me to write more. Maybe you missed Stacie Cunninghams blog article about me - well, I've got to tell you it motivated me to start contributing here.Way to network Stacie!Another task you can take on yourself is to invite others to REOPro - remember, the Team spirit - Together Everyone Achieves More!Finally, the way I see it, REOPro is so new that we are on the ground floor. This can get as big and as important in our industry as we make it. Can you imagine the clout the agents who started NRBA or REOMAC have in those organizations today?So, to all of those REO REALTORS and those who want to be, welcome to this site and I hope you will make it your own.John Occhi, REO REALTOR®Century 21 Crest – CrestREOJohn Occhi is a REO REALTOR® thatspecializes in the sale of bankowned homes in the Inland Empireregion of Southern California. Hehas helped many buyers acquiregreat deals on these REO homes.His company, CrestREO, the REODivision of Century 21 Crest – the77th largest C21 in the Nation, hasSold Over $1Billion in REO Sales.

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