Need a little boost for your real estate digital presence? Here are five tactics you can start implementing right away that will help you get better results from your real estate website and blog.
1. Use rich snippets.
Rich snippets are essentially a way to dress up your result in a Google search. They change the appearance of your search term from this:
To this:
And that helps you get a whole lot more clicks from a Google search. Why? Just because your website stands out more in the search results.
Go check your own city — do a quick Internet search for to see whether anyone is standing out with rich snippets.
There is also speculation that rich snippets carry weight in Google’s algorithm, which will help you rank higher. But how rich snippets are involved in the algorithm has not been 100 percent confirmed.
2. Create shareable content.
Every time you push out a blog post, it’s a chance for your readers to share your content and show their friends your articles. The problem is that 99 percent of the content on your blog (and mine) isn’t shareable.
That’s not because it’s not good material! But chances are that a lot of people don’t care to share real estate information on their Facebook page (or any other social network).
Let’s take a quick look at the top emotions that get people to share something on social media and how we can build real estate content that will target those emotions:
- Amusement — Did something silly happen at an open house? Are there any (appropriate) jokes going around the office that you can share?
- Interest — Is a celebrity moving in? Is there a local event coming to town?
- Surprised — What awesome quick house tips do you know that might surprise people? What surprising things have you encountered checking out a property?
- Happiness — Do you have any past customer stories about how you’ve helped them succeed in buying a home in a tough situation.
- Delight — Are there past or upcoming charity events, do-gooders in your community or awesome businesses making an impact locally that you can highlight?
3. Join a local forum.
Forums are an excellent way to connect with local people who share your interests. Most forums also allow you to have some type of signature with a link inside of it. This is a great way to get local traffic with people who share the same interest as you.
For example, I love motorcycles and own a couple of them. With a quick Google search, I found the OC Moto forum, filled with local motorcycle enthusiasts like myself — more than 16,000 of them registered in this single forum.
The key to using forums to drive traffic and business is to remember you’re not there to market yourself. You have to join them because it’s something you’re legitimately interested in and you have something valuable to contribute to the discussion. When you enter a forum sincerely, people will naturally be interested in what you do and come to you when they need your services.
4. Join a local social community.
Just like forums, the key to making these communities work for you is actually becoming a contributing member. Think about it as if you are going to join a group in real life. If you joined the group and one of the first things you said was, “Hey, I’m a Realtor, who wants to sell a home?” then you probably wouldn’t win anyone over. Now if you took the time to meet everyone and build a relationship with them, they will be more likely to come to you or say yes when it’s time for you to ask for their business.
Google Plus has great communities.
Facebook also has some really awesome groups to join.
Join one or two, participate and (most importantly) track results in Google Analytics to see which communities are working best for you. Then double down on what’s working.
5. Join your local subreddit.
Reddit is still somewhat new, but it’s essentially a community like Google Plus or Facebook groups.
Measure and test the results of each community by spending a week in each one and tracking the traffic it drives to your website via Google Analytics. After you find out which community works best for you, then spend the most time there (while popping in every now and again to say hello in the other communities).
Have you joined any of these communities and had any success? Leave a comment below!
Andrew Gale is the founder of FlyerCo.