As part of Strategic Internet Marketing, there are four ‘Golden Rules’ that I have to follow to get clients the best results possible. Each search engine, each social network and each website has its own algorithms (or ways of indexing content) which change all the time, however we need to concentrate in what does NOT change. These four ‘Golden Rules’ never change, so as long as we stick to them… we win every time. When I begin a client's project, I choose the top 15 keywords that we will be targeting. Over the course of their project these keywords will not change.
It’s important to me that my clients understand ‘why’ I chose the keywords chosen for their project. I spend a great deal of time analyzing different keywords. Sometimes they are the keywords you ‘think’ will work and sometimes they are not. Let’s go through each of the criteria to better explain this:
Golden Rule #1 – Talk About what’s Relevant to Draw an Interested Crowd
There is a reason this is number one. Simply put; if it’s not relevant to your real estate business we are not using the keyword/phrase. Maybe this is because you and I decided that you don’t want to target a specific community or maybe it’s because the keyword draws 90% of its traffic from another part of the country. It really could be any number of reasons. Whatever the reason may be, we have decided that the 15 keywords chosen will bring you a relevant crowd.
Golden Rule #2 – People are Creatures of Habit – Statistics & Traffic
I hated statistics in college… hated it. But the one thing that statistics show us is that over any given length of time a given group of people act the same in varying degrees. Remember the bell curve? Well that’s what we are focusing on here. What we want to do is look at HOW people are searching for real estate in your area. HOW are they entering search terms and HOW do they get to what they are looking for on the internet. When I choose your search terms for your search engine optimization because those specific words are entered into a search engine in that specific order to get to what they are looking for on the internet. If we target that specific phrase in that specific order we get a larger portion of the traffic. We get the fat part of the bell curve.
Golden Rule #3 – Competition is Brutal – Pick the Battles You Can Win
Chances are there are better search phrases than the ones I have chosen. The keywords/phrases that I haven’t chosen have much more traffic, much more relevance and are searched for in higher numbers. So, why haven’t I chosen them? Because I don’t like fighting the fighters. Sure, I can target those ‘better search terms’ but will we ever get close to page one on Google. Nope. Never. Not a chance. Because big companies with fat wallets started focusing on those search terms several years back and already have secured their standing for… pretty much… ever. So when I select your keywords I look for key phrases we can win. Starting right now today, if we focus on these keywords we can get really good traffic from many search engines. I don’t know about you, but I think I would rather stick with the fights we can win and get some good traffic flowing to your site. I pick the battles we can win.
Golden Rule #4 – Commerciality – Pick What ‘Sells’
Most SEO consultants will stop at the first three rules. As a Strategic Internet Marketing Consultant, I have one more little nugget that I look at when I’m choosing your keywords. Golden Nugget #4: How much are people paying to show up for that keyword? Often you will find that marketers (working on behalf of big pocket real estate advertising) will pay for a search term in AdWords if they don’t target it organically. Google actually provides data to tell us how much people are paying PER CLICK to get that traffic. If ‘Big Pockets Broker ABC’ is paying more for a search term then it is usually because ‘Big Invoice Marketing Company’ has determined that the key word/phrase brings more targeted traffic. I use this information to choose between several potential keywords and target based on the money other people are spending. So basically if rule 1,2, & 3 give me two variations (i.e. my county real estate vs. real estate my county) of the same keyword/phrase then I pick the one that people are spending more money on… end of the day we are getting the conversions organically and they are still paying ‘per click’. They pay for the research, we get the results.
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