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Today’s “In The Lead” show is all about focusing your marketing efforts. And getting great results from social media, SEO, and single property websites. I’m even going to pull back the curtain on a real estate SEO project I’ve started that’s getting page 1 results.
Cory Fast from Foundations Agency asked:
Quick question about promoting a property listing.
Does it make sense to create a post about an individual listing?
My plan would be to have a YouTube video, longer description than the MLS one, links to other blog posts about the area, etc.
Or would this be overkill and should I just use the listing generated by the IDX?
My thoughts were that with that type of post, it could be shared on social media by me and my clients and I could use it as a feature that is a benefit for listing with me.
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This is a really good question, and I’m thrilled to provide some insight into it.
Here’s what I think of single property websites:
Why would you invest time and energy into a platform that is only to exist for 1-3 months? And if you do your job correctly, might not even be useful for 1 week.
The idea with single property websites is that you’ll have a place where prospects can learn more about the individual property than what they can find through IDX. And this is useful. But rarely do I see a website where the information is that much more useful than IDX information.
In other words:
It’s really hard to bring TONS of value through single property websites. And thus, it’s hard to get social shares, SEO rankings, and leads. Because online, you need to give value in order to get leads.
So to put my money where my mouth was, I ranked a website on Google for a neighborhood in under 3 days.
Focus on the SEO of subdivisions, luxury condos, and neighborhoods more than individual properties
YouTube videos are a great way to help people out and get your message out there. But it takes time for them to get views. The same goes with website pages and other lead capture tools.
This means, that it is just not a profitable enough idea to invest time into single property landing pages. Here’s what to do instead.
Here’s an example I just built this week:
This page is already starting to rank on Google for it’s main SEO keyword. And it’s less than 3 days old.
Today’s 9/11/2015 and I registered the domain on 9/8/2015:
I found a community called “Grey Oaks” outside of Kansas City. This community had very little information about it. And a home there cost anywhere from $300,000-600,000 dollars.
Like I’ve been telling you on previous blog posts, it’s not that hard to rank for terms related to Grey Oaks specifically.
Here’s exactly what I did:
- Pick a niche keyword with low competition
- Write ~1000 words of text on the home page
- Write 3 (really, terribly) lame blog posts on the site
- Include a video
- Include 5+ images
In fact, it took 3 days to get these results:
As you can see, I’ll easily get onto the first page of Google within the next couple of weeks. And then slowly climb to slot 1 for these search terms from there.
These keywords have anywhere from 10 searches a month to 50 searches a month. I estimate my SEO landing page to get anywhere from 10-40 luxury buyer leads per month.
What’s my point?
If you’re thinking of investing the time and energy to create single property websites, why not create a more permanent page on your URL or a separate one for a community?
It’ll get you infinitely more leads and more marketing life. And you can even use the leads you get from that page to market your listing too.
Or, you can even put the information about your specific listing on that neighborhood landing page.
Either of these options, are much better than simply creating a single property landing page.
Social Media: Why do people share things?
The other reason I simply don’t like single property landing pages is that they aren’t intrinsically shareable.
What do people share?
- Things that are helpful
- Things that are funny
- Things that are educational
- Things that are cute
- Things that are useful
They rarely share static documents or pure information sources.
Single property websites typically end up looking like pure information sources. They’re like an Amazon product page. Hardly anyone is going to share that page on Facebook.
But you get people all the time who are willing to share a post called: “The Top 10 Books To Read As A Realtor” or “The Top 5 Funniest Gifts On Amazon.”
These curated sources perform much better and get people sharing your information.
Pro Tips:
- Backlinking Tips: I was able to rank my SEO landing page without backlinks. But that’s not always possible. You should read this backlink article after you’re done getting your real estate content up.
- Keyword Advice: When it comes to Keywords, I really advice not getting fancy or using a keyword planner. Find a subdivision, condo development, luxury neighborhood, location nearby, and simply create a web property that’s all about that location. You don’t need fancy keyword research if you know your local market. This article will teach you how to think about real estate keywords a lot better.
- Description Of Neighborhood Pages: If you’re looking for good tips on what to include for your neighborhood pages, go check out this article by Bill Gassett. He really dives deep on the top things to include with quality content. If you’re really stumped…go look at the site I setup at thegreyoaks .com. (I haven’t linked it up, because I don’t want people to claim I’m cheating by linking to the site from Easy Agent Pro.)
Quote of the day:
“When it comes to SEO, just go publish content.”
What do you think?
Are you ready to go conquer the world?
What marketing tactics are you going to start working on? Let me know in the comments below! If you have questions, please email the too me. You could be featured on our next show!