Old Rule: Optimizing your site for search engines is the key to traffic.
New Rule: Offline promotion, strategic links, and search marketing combined maximize traffic.
Search marketing is not the Golden Egg it once was. It’s still there, and it still works, but you have to work harder to reap the benefits that used to be easy pickings. Paid search is pushing out free placement. More aggregators are skimming the early search traffic. Simply more competition from more sites reduces search results.
Today, with more than 8 billion pages searched by Google, competition for search engine placement is fierce. Search engines are the Yellow Pages and Card Catalogs of the 21st Century, used by most prospects as a basic “first visit” reference tool. Yet statistics as of December 17, 2004 from WebSideStory, a leading provider of on-demand web analytics, reveal only 15 percent of prospects use search engines to find particular websites (69% use direct navigation typing the web address or using a bookmark, and 16% click strategic links in e-mails or other websites).
By far the most successful traffic building strategy – especially if you want local prospects -- is a marketing plan that combines offline website promotion and strategic links, plus search marketing to attract first-time visitors and prospects with a purpose.
How to Tip the Scales in Your Favor
Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL are responsible for more than 90 percent of all search engine referrals. For the real estate professional that wants to expand their e-business with search marketing here are six strategies e-Rainmakers use to consistently show up in the top listings of these four major search engines.
- Get technical. If you have a tech staff or a tech-minded virtual assistant, buy one of the user-friendly software programs, such as WebPosition Gold, that take you step-by-step through the process of adapting your website pages to meet search engine criteria. If you don’t have that kind of talent on hand, there are experts available who specialize in what is called SEO (search-engine optimization). They will design, implement, and monitor pages on your website to increase your search engine ranking.
- Get verbal. The first 500 words on each web page are the most important because search engines typically scan that many words to determine a page’s relevance to search terms entered by prospects. Keywords are critical, so weave them into your content as often as possible. Keep your target audience in mind and focus on quality content.
- Get curious. Keyword analysis software will help you find the best keywords in two ways:
· A root or top level keyword search determines what words prospects type into search fields most often.
· Related keyword searches determine what words competitor sites use or don’t use in their keyword metatags.
Strive to use keywords in your web pages that are used by consumers but not used by your competition. Keyword analysis software can be rented for as short a time as one day.
- Get specific. Use metatgags, title tags, and description tags in your web pages.
- HTML metatags are imbedded in the source code at the top of most web pages and help describe the document. Title tags and description tags are metatags that include the keywords search engines use to determine a web page’s relevance for search phrases entered by a prospect.
- Title tags appear as blue headlines in a searcher’s web browser and help prospects determine which web page to select. In fewer than 80 characters, your title tag should include keywords that clearly describe your services, specialty and market area.
- Description tags immediately follow title tags and are up to 250-character explanations of a web page and its contents. Use specific and accurate keywords to convince prospects that you provide exactly what they’re looking for. Description tags should compel prospects to click through to your web page.
- Get creative. Just as you provide accurate street directions and signage to attract viewers to an open house, you must create clean link navigation to draw search prospects to your website. Search engines use your navigation links like a road map to organize, index, and pull up pages that contain key words used by prospects in web searches.
- Get going. Search engines create multiple entry points into your website. Home buyers and sellers who are looking for specific information are often more attracted to your site’s interior pages than they are to your home page. Those prospects who are motivated to look for information on topics such as relocation, individual communities, school districts, or neighborhood churches are more likely to request a service or submit a response form from a targeted interior page.
The secret to capturing maximum targeted prospect traffic: Use services that analyze your site traffic and identify your most popular entry pages. Once that information is known, launch aggressive online and offline promotions of those most popular interior pages. Consider registering unique URLs (feeder domains) that describe and link to those lead-generating pages.
Search marketing is not for the faint of heart.
Search marketing is a tool that packs a powerful punch if you approach it with purpose and planning. It’s one more way you can reach out and focus on what’s important to your prospects.
