Real Estate Marketing How To: Effective Keyword Research

Most of the REALTOR® I speak with tend to over look the importance of keyword research.  In most cases they seem to assume that if they have a real estate website the buyers and sellers will just come running. If you do not have a system in place to identify which keyword phrases you should be targeting you’re missing out on many leads!

So how do you exactly develop a strategy for keyword research?  The process is simple – but determining keyword variations is where your brain power will come into play.

Here are the steps you should follow in determining your market-able keywords:

1. Brainstorm
2. Categorize the areas of your market (communities, REO, relocation, retirement, etc.)
3. Research via online tools
4. Compile a final list
5. Make your final picks

Brainstorm

The first thing you need to do is think about what a buyer or seller may type into Google (or other search engines) to find the information they are looking for — what phrases would they type?  Homes in Bergenfield NJ, Bank Owned Properties in Jersey City NJ, Luxury Homes Bergen County NJ.  Compile all the variations on a spreadsheet so it is easier to read.

Don’t limit yourself to just your own ideas.  Seek ideas from other people like your spouse, friends, other family, current clients, neighbors – and think about different age groups as well.

Categorize the Areas of your Market

Using the information that was just discussed above – on your spreadsheet – begin to move these keyword phrases into categories.  Are you targeting a certain age group, community, property type (like age restricted or waterfront homes), lifestyle – the lists can be infinite!

Research via Online Tools

Google has a great keyword research tool that lets you know how many searches are run on a particular keyword phrase and how competitive you have to be to rank among others using your keyword phrases.

So if you chose to use Google’s Keyword Tool enter your keyword phrase, Hackensack Real Estate for example,then look at the ‘Searches per Month’ column. Below you can see that our keyword phrase gets an average of 850 searchers per month – which is a relatively competitive keyword phrase. That means we will have to put more emphasis on our keyword phrase and keyword density throughout our marketing materials.

Phrase	Searches per month	Competitive
hackensack nj real estate	400	Low
Hackensack real estate	850	Medium

The added bonus is that Google will also return related phrases. For example: hackensack nj real estate, real estate in hackensack nj etc.

Compile a Final List

Now that you have all these primary and secondary keyword phrases you can now begin to reduce them into the ones you feel will be most beneficial to your business.  There is no easy way to do this.  You need to focus on many factors such as; competitiveness, searches per month, Adword price (if you are going to use Adwords), and ROI.

Determine the Competitiveness:  The key point here is to figure out which are within your reach.  Some phrases are simply too hard to rank under because they are so competitive or too broad (like new jersey real estate). Determining keyword competitiveness has proven to be one of the trickiest aspects of the keyword research process.

Now that you have your final list, you need to begin to optimize your web pages around these phrases.  Remember do not mix unrelated keyword phrases together or your web content will get diluted in search results (if you are going to focus on a few communities on your website make sure you make a page for each – do not use Community A keywords on Community B’s page).

The bottom line is this: The web page that is MOST relative to the keyword phrase entered generally ranks the best! Good Luck!

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The Intel Ultrabook Platform – New Competition for MacBook Air

Apple has had tremendous success with their MacBook Air line of ultra-thin, ultra-light, “take-anywhere” laptops. Over the years, Apple’s competition has struggled to compete in this market segment. Many manufacturers released their own variants of slim, lightweight notebooks, only to see them fail to command any market share.

Well, Intel plans to change all that. Instead of leaving it up to each manufacturer to design an ultra-light notebook around their low-power chips, Intel has released an entire notebook platform, tightly integrated with features designed to attract customers to the new technology. It’s called the Intel Ultrabook Platform.

Rapid Start Technology

One of the nice features of the MacBook Air is it’s ability to start up quickly. Intel has built this technology into the platform to allow devices to start up in seconds. This also saves on battery life, since the system draws very little power when the notebook is in standby mode. Intel claims an average of 5-6 seconds from hibernate to power on. And it can stay in this new hibernation mode for about 30 days.

Smart Response Technology

While the MacBook Air relies solely on a solid-state drive for data storage, Intel has implemented a unique feature to use traditional hard drives for primary storage, and SSD storage for your most frequently accessed files. They call this Smart Response Technology. Everything you use most frequently will be stored on the SSD drive for ultra-fast performance, all seamlessly and transparent to you, the user.

Smart Connect

With Smart Connect Technology, your social networks, email and apps are automatically updated, even while the system is in sleep mode. When you open the notebook cover, your email and Facebook feed is already up to date and ready for you to see. The technology actually wakes the system up momentarily to update your apps, then puts it back to sleep, saving on battery life.

Anti-Theft Technology and Identity Protection Technology

More and more people are concerned about personal security and identity theft. As we embrace mobile technology, the risk of loss of private information grows considerable, since we store so much of this information on these devices, whether it’s a cell phone, a tablet, or a notebook. Intel’s data claims that a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds. With the new Intel Anti-Theft technology on your laptop, should it get lost or stolen, it can be remotely disabled so that it will no longer function until you reactivate it. The system becomes completely un-bootable since the technology is built into the processor and is active the moment power is turned on. It’s not a part of the operating system, so it can be bypassed by a hacker. It even detects suspicious behavior such as excessive login attempts and will activate itself automatically. And Intel’s new Identity Protection Technology works hand-in-hand with IPT-enabled websites and a unique key built into your Intel system that uniquely identifies you. When you access an IPT-enabled website such as online banking and shopping sites, the technology instantly recognizes your PC, in addition to requiring you to enter a standard username and password. This is an added defense against identity theft and monetary loss.

Time will tell if this new Intel platform will enable PC manufacturers to gain some market-share in this segment. Will end-users embrace this new technology and see it as a true alternative to the MacBook Air? We welcome your comments!

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Marketing Efforts Not Measuring Up – Here Are Some Articles That May Help!

We found this great article we wanted to share – for all the REALTORS who need extra help with web marketing, social media, photography etc. This is a nice collection of articles explaining how to begin and manage your marketing efforts on and off line.

http://www.realtor.org/realtororg.nsf/pages/Technovice?OpenDocument

A great way to brand yourself – and quick – is to sign up for IDX from your local MLS. A good IDX solution will brand you to all listings within that local MLS and make you the first contact home buyers reach out to for more information on real estate. An even better IDX solution will offer your prospects tool to save searches or listings and sign up for ‘new listing emails’. So do some research – if you are looking to create a website, have had one setup for awhile or looking to revamp your internet marketing make IDX a priority!

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Images are Important in SEO too!

I have written many posts on optimizing your web pages and blog posts and most of them revolve around content and meta data, but optimizing images is also important if you truly want to master the SEO in your posts and content.

So here are 4 areas I feel play an important part in optimizing your images.

1:  Keywords in the file name

Just as I wrote about placing your keywords in your web page file names, the same is true for your image names.  You should always use keyword rich image names.  Search engines will read these image names and in doing so will help them with relevancy.  So don’t upload that ‘iStock_345456.jpg’ image when you should be naming it something like Fairfield-Shepards-Park.jpg if the image was about Shepard’s Park in Fairfield.  Of course a lot of images are just decorative and in that case image naming may not be needed.

• Google suggests that you should place your images in one folder on your site, (mydomain.com/images) versus placing them in random folders throughout the site.
• Another suggestion from Google is to make sure you use common image file types such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.

2: Alt Text

Alt text is the alternate text that is to be displayed if the image is not found or rendered. It also pops-up when you hover over an image.  Search engines also read this text so having keyword rich Alt text is very important. 

3: Anchor Text

Anchor text is another important factor in image SEO. If you decide to link to images with text, your anchor text can play a role in how your image is read. Use descriptive anchor text that describes the image.  For example, linking to an image using a generic term like “image” or “photo” or a file name that doesn’t use keywords will not give search engines meaningful information on what the image is. Linking to an image with keywords is helpful to search engines as well as people visiting your site.

4: The Right Image

The image that is placed into your web page should be related to the content in which it is embedded.  This helps the search engines find relevancy and also ensures you are not spamming. I would also like to note, while this is not an SEO tip, having the right image is very important.  Awesome images add depth and flair to your page or post.  While text is usually the first thing seen on a page – the image is what sells the page.

While you are uploading your image you should also think about file size; make them reasonable.  I would also limit the number of images per page to keep the page small in size, in turn making it easier to load.

So the next time you are writing content or a blog post, don’t forget about the images!

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Keyword Density, Formatting and Spamming – EXPLAINED!

I make sure to stress keyword density and formatting when I speak at seminars in the Northeast – but do agents truly understand the importance that keywords have on their search engine optimization?

Keyword Density

Many articles I’ve read and speakers I have listened to suggest keyword density to sit between 1 and 3 percent – more than that is called keyword spamming (which I will speak about below). Keyword density illustrates the ratio between your long tail keywords and the word count of your post of web page. This can be calculated by dividing the number of times you used your long tail keyword by the total number of words in your content/post — then multiply by 100. By sticking to that 1-3% ‘rule’ you increase your chances of ranking before your peers in search engine results.

Keyword Formatting

Making content scannable is a great way to create easy to read, and SEO rich, posts and web content — you should also remember to make your keywords scannable (bolded text etc). By that I mean be sure to bold your keywords and use them in you H1, H2, H3 etc. title tags when applicable.

Keyword Spamming

Keyword spamming/stuffing is the definition of bad web content to both search engines and readers. Keyword spamming basically means you’ve included your long tail keyword more times that makes sense within your content or post. Search engines will actually penalize the website by filtering it from search results.

Other

• Keyword Prominence: Keyword prominence refers to how prominent keywords are within a post. The general rule of thumb is to place important keywords at – or near – the start of a post and sentence.
• Keyword Proximity: Keyword proximity refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. For example: Admiral Walk in Edgewater – Luxury Condo’s vs. Edgewater’s Luxury Condo’s – Admiral Walk

Using the example above, if someone searched for “Admiral Walk Edgewater,” a post containing the first sentence is more likely to rank higher than the second. The reason being that the keywords are placed closer together and towards the beginning of the phrase.
We hope this helped you better understand keywords within your posts! If you’re still stuck please ask us for some more information on our Blog Training Classes.

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