In order to compete with other real estate agents in your farming area, to bring in a targeted audience of potential buyers/sellers and more importantly to generate LEADS, it is essential that you have an online real estate social network marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goals. One of the biggest challenges of getting your strategy to work for you is knowing where to start. Getting started is a big task but definitely something you can do on your own. Let’s make this a bit easier and break it up into 3 steps.
Step 1. DIY Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search engine optimization is simply the process of making your website appear more favorably in search engines for specific keywords or phrases. Just ‘wanting’ your website to show on the first page of results isn’t going to get it there. There are specific changes to your website that you need to make to rank better in search engines and draw more targeted traffic to your website. These are changes that you can make yourself.
Now, before I go further in detail about these changes, let me point out that each page on your website has a separate chance to rank in the search engines for keywords or phrases. So as you read through these recommendations, remember that you have several pages on your website, so don’t try to rank for all keywords or phrases on any one page. Be sure to choose between 2-4 keywords or phrases for each page.
Look at the title and description of your page. Make sure that the main keyword or phrase is included in both the title and description of the page. Ordering of the keywords is also important here, so you want to order the words in the order that someone would actually type it into a search engine. Although you are optimizing for better placement in a search engine, it’s also important to remember the reason you are optimizing it that way; because people will be looking for your business. Use clear and descriptive wording that makes sense to people; not just search engines.
Include interesting content related to the keywords and phrases that you have chosen for that page. Although many people get ‘hung up’ on repeating a keyword X number of times to get proper ‘keyword density’ for a page, they tend to forget (or don’t realize) that search engines today use latent semantic indexing. Meaning that you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) use the same words over and over again throughout the text of a page to rank highly for the selected keywords. The placement of your keywords is much more important. Be sure to use your selected keywords or phrases early in the page, preferably in the first sentence or paragraph, and then write the content to support those keywords. Always use anchor text linking to link to other pages on your website, social networks, and your blog.
Step 2. ‘Get Social’
Before you jump into social networking, be sure to read my post on Facebook profiles, fan pages and groups.
First, just like in my Social MAX program, we are going to focus on six social networking sites and set up our profiles. Getting your profiles set up is the most important step because when people read your posts, status updates and decide that they like what they are reading, you will want to give them something more to read to pull them over to your website. Your profile is not only a place to tell people who you are; it is also a place to tell them what you can do for them. They are much more interested in what it is that you can do for them, so be sure to keep your intro short and authoritative and concentrate more on your services and how they may benefit your potential client.
Once you have all your profiles setup, it is time to connect your social networks. Getting your social networks connected means that you will only have to post a blog once and it will automatically be posted to all your social networks. There’s no need to post the same blog over and over or do status updates on several social networks. Just post once and you are done.
If you are not sure how to properly connect all your social networks, then keep an eye out for my Real Estate Social BOOTCAMP which will be announced to ‘fans’ of my social networking for real estate agents page on Facebook.
Once you have all of your social networks connected, you are ready to get your ‘blog on’.
Step 3. ‘Get your Blog on’
Now that your website has been fine-tuned and your social networks are ready to work for you, we are going to work on your blog. Your blog is an extension of your website that you will be using to direct traffic to your website. When you first start your blog you will need to fill it with content. Start out by blogging at least 5 times a week for 6 months. If you aren’t able to dedicate the time to blog that many times a week, you can check out my Social JUICE program or hire someone through freelancer or elance. If you do choose to have someone else write content for you, then be sure you are familiar with and like their writing style. They will be representing you and your business for the next 6 months.
Whether you write your blog posts yourself or have someone write them for you, each blog you post should be based on a topic (keyword or phrase) that is discussed on your website. Use anchor text linking to point to your website and always include links to your social networks somewhere on your blog. This is very important in building relevance and authority for your website and blog.
With new blogs, it will take time for you to see results in the search engines but sometime around the third or fourth month you will see favorable changes to your ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages). Do not get discouraged if you do not see results right away. Keep blogging, creating content, and linking back to your website and social networks and you will see results.
Cheryl Waller
Marketing Consultant SEO, SEM, SMM
www.CherylWaller.com
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