| Effective website promotion is a critical to the success | | | | results. Specifically, it must be on the first page of the |
| of virtually any business in today's digital era. And it is | | | | organic search results because organic search results |
| especially important to real estate marketing | | | | get far more clicks than paid search results and first |
| professionals due to the fact that the Internet plays | | | | page of organic search results gets about 90% of all |
| such a huge role in connecting home buyers and | | | | of the clicks for every search. |
| sellers with real estate marketing pros, as a study | | | | And while many real estate marketing professionals - |
| published on Realtor.org found: | | | | especially those that are new to the business or are |
| - 87% of home buyers use the Internet to search for | | | | only just starting to really promote their websites on |
| properties | | | | the Internet - may think that a top Google ranking is |
| - 32% of home buyers first learned about the home | | | | unattainable, the truth is that it can be a lot easier than |
| they purchased through the Internet - compared with | | | | you think. The reality is that Google can only work with |
| only 3% who first learned about the home they | | | | what it's given and what it's given by many industries |
| purchased through a newspaper or other print ad | | | | isn't, by and large, very good. |
| - 87% of home buyers who used the Internet to | | | | In fact, many of the top ranking websites for key |
| search for a home ended up purchasing their home | | | | search terms rank where they do more by default |
| through a real estate agent | | | | than by design. They are, in effect, the "best of the |
| And every month, there are millions of people using | | | | worst." This is as true of the real estate profession as |
| search engines like Google to help them find the | | | | many others. |
| information they're looking for. Even at the local level | | | | This means two things: |
| the monthly average search volume for key terms | | | | - If your website currently has few or no pages |
| related to "Vancouver real estate" is high as you can | | | | ranking at or near the top of Google, it's highly likely |
| see from just five search terms out of a total of 72 | | | | that you're in a great position to be able to quickly and |
| for June 2010 (taken directly from Google's Selection | | | | significantly improve your rankings |
| Tool): | | | | - If your website currently has a few or many pages |
| - 40,500 searches for "Vancouver real estate" | | | | ranking at or near the top of Google, it's highly likely |
| - 18,100 searches for "homes Vancouver" | | | | that you're in a vulnerable position and need to take |
| - 9,900 searches for "realty Vancouver" | | | | action to secure your rankings |
| - 9,900 searches for "Vancouver property" | | | | The bottom line is that if you decide to simply take |
| - 4,400 searches for "homes for sale in Vancouver | | | | care of some of the fundamentals you can improve |
| And while there's no way that all of these searches | | | | your rankings for keywords for which you're currently |
| are carried out by present or future buyers and sellers, | | | | not ranking well and you can solidify your rankings for |
| there is no doubt that a good percentage of them are. | | | | keywords for which you are currently ranking well. |
| Of course, if the people who use Google (and other | | | | And you can do this in relatively short order and |
| search engines) every month are going to find your | | | | minimal "heavy lifting" in most cases. |
| website, then it must be extremely visible in the search | | | | |
