A large percentage of home shoppers that use Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, etc., google the street addresses of the homes they find looking for additional data like maps, images, history and VIDEOS.
So let’s address an issue most realtors have. 95% of the time YOUR actual listing landing page is not on page 1 of Google for a specific street address. YOU are not being found as the listing agent on Google. You are competing with the Zillow’s of the world, franchise sites, brokerages and agents that use indexable IDX’s. I will address a specific strategy for this in a future post.
There is a simple way to show up on page 1 of Google for your listing street address using Youtube.
YouTube is owned by Google. Google is the largest search engine on the world. Google wants to deliver YouTube videos in their search results.
Some of you are already doing this through slideshow music videos that are offered by franchises, MLS’s and third-party vendors. This is OK, however YouTube recognizes the spoken word and most of the time these videos are not optimized correctly.
Some of you like The Daftarian Group in Newport Coast, hire professional real estate videography companies like Shak Real Estate Cinema to create amazing property videos. Timeliness is an issue with search engine positioning so it is a good thing if you can get this video posted at the moment you activate in the MLS.
Many of you don’t have a YouTube channel and you are intimidated by creating property videos.
4 Strategies You can use to insure that your YouTube video on that property shows up on page 1 of Google and potentially in the top 5 for your property address:
1) If you don’t have a YouTube Channel, get one ASAP. If you use Vimeo, that is fine but YouTube videos will score higher in the search engines. You can use both but today's post is all about YouTube.
2) If you are using automated musical slideshow videos, host them on YOUR Youtube Channel and get them posted and optimized as close to the active date as you can, if not prior.
3) If you hire a videographer, try to get the video completed and posted on your YouTube channel as soon as possible or prior to listing in the MLS. If that videographer uses that video on their channel as part of their portfolio make sure they do not name the video your listing Street Address. This has the potential of confusing the search engines.
4) Use what I call a “Feature Tease Video”. From reading above you notice I keep mentioning the timeliness factor. This is because you want the search engines to recognize activity at this street address prior to the entire online real estate world indexing for this property on the day it goes active. All Realtor's need to use this strategy even if you are already active on YouTube.
A Feature Tease video is less than a minute in length. On the day you get the listing contract signed, you are going to determine the three best features of that property. Maybe it is the Kitchen, the great room, the master bath, the view. You are going to shoot a short 30 to 45 second video about each feature. You are behind the camera simply narrating what is in view of the camera. State who you are. Where you are. Describe the feature. The date of the open house. And lastly invite the viewer to make contact with you.
This is so simple. You can usually get it in one take. The video requires no editing. You can even be having a bad hair day because you are not even on camera.
Uploading and Optimizing
It is important that you publish the feature tease videos prior to the property going into the MLS. Under the usual 72 hour rule, you would publish the first video on the day the contract is signed. The second video would be published the next day, and the third possibly hours before it hits the MLS. Using the images below I am going to show you optimization techniques, a few of may be new to YouTube veterans.
Basic Optimization - Refer to image below
Step 1 – The title of the video needs to be the street address of the property. Next add your name and phone number
Step 2 – The very first thing you place in the description is the URL of the listing page on your website. You are doing this because Youtube usually only shows the first two sentences of your description without expanding it out. If you do not have a page for that listing yet, then use your primary URL as you can always edit this link. Important - You HAVE to use the full http:// in the url or the link will not be clickable from the video description. Then you want to work the address in to the description again. Use the image for reference realizing this textual content is going to be indexed by the search engines. Feel free to expand on the description.
Step 3 – Keywords and tags – Break up the address is you have to. You can go with around 20 relevant tags but they can’t be too long.
Advanced Optimization - See image below
There is an Advanced tab that you need to click on before you publish. The most important feature is the video location. By geotagging your property video and understanding that YouTube is owned by Google, this property will be indexed within many online video search technologies including Google Earth. In that box put in the full address and hit search. You will see a small Google map come up and you are done. Just click anywhere on the screen to have the map go away. While you are on the advanced page, choose todays date for the recording date and English as the language.
Lastly, once published, go to Pingler.com and notify the search engine world this video page now exists. I have literally seen these videos get indexed in the search results within minutes. Please comment below if you have any questions.
1/23/2016 Additional
I was reminded about sold properties by Tammy Lankford.
When your listing sells, add the word SOLD after the address in the title. In the description remove any copy that states the property is for sale and anything you wrote about contacting you to see the property. Also, add the word sold to the tags. Do not remove the video unless your local board has a rule about keeping this videos up.
The reason you leave it up is for the next time the property goes on the market. You may not even know it is on the market but you will get calls because this video is entrenched in the search engines.
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