Itch Your Online Niche
Even as a
wet behind the ears real estate agent, I am well aware of the importance of targeting a niche in order to be successful in this business. My
principle broker believes your
niche comes to you when you're first starting out - that is after a year or two, analyze where your success was, and never look back! As a
wet behind the earsweb site developer I have quickly had to learn the ropes of the
ever-changing and
omnipresent importance of
Search
Engine
Optimization and
Search
Engine
Marketing.
SEO and SEM Your NICHE: Why You Need It!
So you have your website, are networking like pro, and have a target niche where you do most of your marketing. Why would you not optimize your website for your niche? Not only do you
set yourself apart from every other real estate agent with a
generic website advertising as
[your state's] best real estate agent, but you
OPTIMIZE your search engine ranking (that being how high your website comes up on keywords relevant to your business) for a niche that is yet to be filled!
Walk the walk, talk the talk
Keep in mind I am 2 months in to real estate and 1 month in to having an active
real estate website and learn more and more each day from blogs on
AR, my co-workers, and all the great resources available online and at the bookstore. I
unknowingly optimized my site for the
savvy niche of real estate consumers who
know what the mls is. Type in
Guam MLS on google and my site ranks fourth - and I've only been up a month!
Immediate Success
I unknowingly put Guam MLS on almost every page on my site, which I am assuming why google felt my site would serve those best that search Guam MLS. While I would ideally like to be in the top ten for
Guam Homes for sale or,
Guam Real estate etc. this feat alone is driving traffic (slowly albeit) to my site (which I know thanks to
the AWESOME statistics provided by google analytics. So if you are a designer,
make sure your keywords = your target niche! And if you pay someone to do it and you still are not in the top ten for your target niche tell them to include your keyword niche in to every possible
niche (no pun intended) possible on your webpage. From the
Title tag to
Body content - repeat your niche in a relevant manner and you
will be rewarded!
A real Article about this
I was inspired to write this after reading
this article from
brokeragentnews.com which touches in a much more professional, editorial type manner than I am capable of!
;)
;)
Great point. IMO, after working for nearly 10 years in the SEO and SEM industry I have come across too many sites what want to go after the most competitive keywords right off the bat instead of targeting their niche and working their way towards the more general terms. By gaining a good position on the niche terms you will get some decent traffic from long tail keywords (and in many cases these keywords are more directed and convert better). While each term may not drive a tone of traffic when you combine all of the long tail terms they will end up being a majority of your traffic. Once you establish yourself in your niche you will actually start building natural links and trust so you can start to go after the more popular and competitive keywords.
You are going about it the right way and if you continue to work at it you will start to see the traffic from more general and popular terms roll in.