July 2014 | By Jona Jone
With the vast majority of house hunters researching homes for sale online, here’s how to make sure they get to your website.
If you’re trying to recognize the value of putting in the time and effort to optimize your website for Google search results, consider this: A joint study by Google and the National Association of REALTORS® in January 2013 found that 90 percent of home buyers search for homes online, with real estate–related searches on Google up 253 percent in the four years prior to the study.
You can bet there are even more people combing the Internet for homes since this study was done. Overall, pending home sales surged 6.1 percent in May of this year, the largest month-over-month gain since April 2010, according to NAR. At the same time, new-home sales shot up 18.6 percent to its highest rate since May 2008.
What all this means is that, with sales activity rebounding at a healthy pace as the market continues its recovery, there are a lot of people surfing the Web for your services. With home shoppers performing an average of 11 searches before taking action on a real estate site, the NAR/Google study found, it’s important that you get yourself front-and-center on the Internet. Here are five things you should be doing to get your website at the top of Google search results and win the digital marketing game.
Use Local Terms in Your Marketing
House hunters are searching for local terms when they’re perusing the Web for a property for sale. Sixty-nine percent of shoppers who took action on a real estate site began their search with a local term, such as “Houston homes for sale,” according to the NAR/Google study. Furthermore, 52 percent of actions taken on a real estate site came directly from a local search on a search engine.
This should tell you that you need to make as many local references as possible on your website and in your marketing. This will improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your website, and your brand will appear higher in the results when people search for those terms.
Provide Relevant Content
Once someone lands on your website from a search engine, you want to give them a reason to come back. This is where quality content comes in. Link to your favorite magazine articles and news websites. Make your website visitors want to come back because they know they will find fresh and relevant content there.
“Deep linking” is also a solid SEO technique and a way to add more content. For example, if you’re blogging about houses for sale in Houston, you can link to other blogs talking about related topics, such as shopping malls or events in the area.
In addition, consider using internal links and site maps for more activity on your website.
Read the entire article at: http://realtormag.realtor.org/sales-and-marketing/feature/article/2014/07/4-tricks-blowing-up-your-online-presence
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