Google can drive a large amount of targeted people to your website if you can rank on the front page for multiple search terms.

It can be a great way to reach more people and position yourself as the local expert.

There are a few things that if done correctly can drastically improve your presence in the search engines.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at how you can correctly optimise your real estate content to get found in Google.

How Google Ranks Websites

Before you can start optimising your website you need to understand what Google is looking for in order for your website to be featured on the first page.

To do this lets put ourselves in Google’s shoes. Google is a tool that people use to help them to find things and learn more about certain topics.

So let’s say Sally is coming to Google searching for “best ways to add value to your home”

Google had better provide some good content on ways to add value to your home. If Google doesn’t provide Sally with what she is looking for or the websites that Google says are relevant have a poor user experience (eg. they are old, take ages to load or don’t work on a mobile phone.) Then Sally is going to be unhappy with Google.

This is the reason that people use Google over other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. People trust that Google is going to deliver the best information to help solve their problem.

Google is a robot that uses an algorithm to sort through the billions of webpages on the internet.

Google’s algorithm then determines what the content on each of your pages of your website is about and how authoritative your website is in regards to other websites that are also talking about that content.

Content Relevance

If you are looking to be found in Google for a search term, Google wants to make sure that your content is relevant to that search. Back to the example before, if you want to be found when Sally is searches “best ways to add value to your home”

Then you need to have content on your website about the Best Ways To Add Value To Your Home. There are a number of ways that you can show Google that your content is relevant to a search term which we will cover later in this article.

Having content that is really relevant to the search term is the first step to getting your website ranking on Google.

Content Authority

So lets say that you have a page on your website that is all about “best ways to add value to your home”

You should then appear in Google right? Possibly not.

There are lots of websites out there on the internet that could all be competing for that same spot at the top of the first page of Google.

And they might all have content that is about the “best ways to add value to your home.” So how does Google decide who deserves to be on the first page?

Google also looks at the authority of the website that the content is on. For example if you are searching for the “temperature of mars” you would see results from Space.com, NASA, Wikepedia, Sciencemag.org

These are all sites that have a high level of authority around the topic.

Google has a range of factors that it uses to determine the authority of a website.

• Age of the website – The older the website the more Google trusts it.
• Number of pages – If a website has lots of pages that are all about similar topics this helps to show authority.
• Social media shares – If people are liking and sharing your website it tells Google that you have content that other people might want to read too.
• Number Backlinks – This is when other websites link back to your website. This shows trust to Google as other websites are saying that your website is a credible source of information.

The authority of your website combined with the relevance of your content on the page provides Google with an idea of where they should rank your website. This is why realestate.com.au ranks at the top for pretty much every real estate related search term. They are an old website, with lots of pages, social media shares and thousands of backlinks.

Introducing Blogging

What is a blog?

A blog is short for web log. It is a place where you can post articles and videos to your website.

Blog’s are extremely beneficial to help increase your websites search engine rankings in Google.

Google loves blogs, they provide great content for people to read and watch.

Blogs also allow you as a real estate agent to provide valuable information to your local marketplace, which can be shared on social media to get in front of more of the people that matter to you.

And the more helpful content that your website has the more authoritative Google will find it.

Strategy

If your website has been setup correctly, all of your current pages should be optimised for keywords that you are looking to rank for.

Keyword selection is important. If you don’t get this right you will struggle to get found in Google.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner to get a rough idea of what people are searching for.

A keyword (or search term) is the words that people enter into a Google search. eg. real estate agents Aspley is a different search to Aspley real estate agents and will show up different results in a different order.

Obviously you want your website to be found for the keyword “your area real estate agent” but there are also many other search terms that can bring you in traffic and leads that are less competitive.

For example here is an article that Haydn Meyer posted on Brisbane’s most expensive suburbs

This article is ranking on the first page for the keyword “Brisbane’s Most Expensive Suburbs.”

Let’s look at the traffic that this blog post has received. (This is just one article’s stats not the entire website)

The article was published on the 31st of March 2016. In the 6 months since this article has been published it has generated 953 page views to Haydn’s website.

You can see that initially the post got a bit of traffic when it was posted. Most likely from social media and his email list. Then the traffic is quiet for a bit. There is two months in April and June where the post doesn’t get much traffic at all.

This is because Google hasn’t ranked the page yet. Google doesn’t usually put articles on the front page as soon as they are posted to prevent spammy articles from appearing. After the post had built up some authority in Google’s eyes it started to rank.

Imagine if you had 10 or 20 of these articles all bringing you in hundreds of views to your website per month. Can you see how this strategy can quickly snowball and get your brand in front of lots of new people.

The way we teach our clients to increase their search engine rankings is through blogging. The more you effectively blog the better your search results will be.

Note that I said effectively, if you are just aimlessly posting content to your blog, without a strategy and without optimising the posts correctly you will not rank in Google.

How To Optimise your Blog Post For A Keyword

In the example above Haydn’s blog post was ranking for the keyword “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs”

To optimise a page for a keyword there are some key places that you want to include the keyword.

These include:

• Page Title
• URL
• As a Heading 2 and Heading 3 in the content.
• First 100 words
• A couple of times throughout your content.
• Image Alt Text
• Meta Description

Let’s go through this blog post and look at what is done well and what could be improved.

Title

The keyword has been included in the title which is important. The title is the most important on page SEO factor. It is what’s called a H1 tag, which carries the most weight when Google is trying to determine what your page is about. You only want to have one H1 tag per page.

URL

You can see that the url doesn’t include the keyword. Usually WordPress will automatically include the title as the url but something has happened in this case and the keyword isn’t there.

If the URL looked like this when the article was published it would be much better optimised for the keyword.

Headings Throughout the Content

The title is the most important heading on your page, but subheadings also help to optimise your page for a keyword. You can add H2 and H3 tags to headings throughout your post to optimise it better.

WordPress allows you to easily add H2 and H3 tags to headings throughout your content.

The keyword wasn’t included in any headings on this page.

We have added the keyword “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs” to this heading and given it a H2 tag.

First 100 Words

The closer your keyword is to the top of the page the better. We have added the keyword into the first sentence to better optimise this page. You will then want to include it a couple of times throughout your content. Don’t go overboard with this or it will look spammy,  but you need to make sure that Google knows what this page is about.

Image Alt Text

Google is a robot and as a result it can’t see images like we can. So when you include pictures in your post Google doesn’t know what the picture is about. Ideally you would want your pictures to be about the topic that your blog post is on. To tell Google that your pictures are about that topic, in this case “brisbane’s most expensive suburbs” we want to make the image’s alt text include that keyword.

To do this you just need to click on the image in your post and edit it.

Then you have the option to add Alternative Text or Alt text to the image. Add your keyword there, then click save. Do this for every image on your page.

Meta Description

Adding the keyword in your meta description is less important than it used to be but is still beneficial to include. We use the

You can add the SEO description to your page

We use the Yoast SEO plugin on our websites to allow us to easily edit the meta descriptions like in the picture above.

The Yoast Plugin also provides you with an SEO Analysis of your page. You simply need to type in the keyword your want to rank for and it will give you some ideas on how well optimised your post is. You want to have as many green lights as possible.

After you have performed these steps your article is ready to be published. You can promote the article through your social media channels and to your database.

Blogging is a long term game. You won’t see results overnight but if done consistently you will see results come in.

The best way to get found in Google is through fresh content. And the best way to create this is through blog posts.

If you would like to talk more about how you can increase your search engine rankings get in touch.

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Creating fresh, unique, and relevant content can be a difficult and time consuming process.

As a real estate agent you have a lot of other things on your plate demanding your attention.

One of the most effective ways to create great content in a short amount of time is to use curated content.

What Is Content Curation?

The general idea behind content curation is to take some (or all) of a piece of content created by someone else and feature it along other related content. (Always providing credit to the original source)

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amount of content on the Web and presenting it in a meaningful and organised way around a theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information.

—Beth Kanter

The best way to think of it is that you’re finding content that you know your audience will be interested in and then connecting them to it.

One of the best ways to curate content for your personal real estate website is to find an article of interest for your readers and provide your opinion on it.

How To Get Started

To get started you need to find content to curate.

Come up with a list of 3-5 topics that want to focus on for your blog content.

There are a few tools that you can use when curating content to make it easier to find and keep track of relevant content that you can use.

Feedly

Feedly is a tool that allows you to follow multiple blogs and keep up to date with the latest content that they are producing.

When you first log into Feedly it has the option to search content by topic. This is where you can start adding blogs to your feed.

Search for the topics that you decided to focus on earlier and find some good sites to follow. Make sure to go into the sites and read some of their content initially to ensure that it fits the type of content that your audience wants to read.

Alternatively you can type in the URL’s of websites that you know that you already want to follow.

Click the plus next to each website to add it to your feed.

Try and find 3-5 different websites for each of the topics that you wanted to include on your blog. This will ensure that you always have a good choice of content to curate for your blog.

Google Alerts

Google alerts allows you to set up an alert whenever content is posted about a certain topic. This can be helpful to stay on top of any breaking news about a topic or your local area.

You simply just have to type in a keyword and your email address and you will receive alerts whenever new content is posted online.

Be careful not to be too vague in your searches here or your inbox will get flooded with new alerts for that keyword.

After you have your Feedly and Google Alerts accounts set up you should have a good source of new content that you can curate when needed.

How To Curate Content Properly

Lets say you’ve found an article like this one on realestate.com.au that you think your audience will find interesting or helpful.

The first step would be to decide how much of that article you are going to use in your post (you could use part of it or all of it.)

Once you have decided this you can copy the article onto a new post on your website.

Now you need to provide your take on the article. This is the part where you can add your own personality and opinions, which will make the content original and unique.

A paragraph or two here introducing and talking about the topic is enough to let your readers connect with your personality  and give some context before providing them with the content of the other article.

Obviously the more original content you can write the better.

So this is the general outline that your article should take. (Make sure to link to the source of the original article)

Content Curation Tips

A few tips on blog content curation from CoSchedule

Provide your take on things by giving every curated piece some context.

Whether it’s through commentary, quoting, or abstracting, you should always surround the content with your views, knowledge, and insight.

Keep a healthy mix of curated and original content.

To distinguish your brand from just another content aggregator, you should inject custom content that’s personal and customized to your audience.

Be very, very selective.

You’re trying to showcase your unique taste through these curated pieces. Pick only high-quality content that speaks toward how you’d like to be perceived.

Always attribute your sources.

Always attribute who produced the content, and let them know! More often than not, they’ll be happy to share the post, expanding your reach and views.

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Click edit on the video section

Copy and paste in a link to a new video that you want to add then click save.

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Click on pages and then edit the page that has your testimonials on it. In most cases this will either be a home page or testimonials page.

Scroll to the testimonials section and click edit.

This will then show you a list of your current testimonials which you can edit by clicking on or add a new testimonial by clicking the plus button.

You can then add the testimonial content, name, address and a picture of the personal giving the testimonial or there property. (make sure the image is square)

After you have added this information, save the testimonial and click publish on the page.

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