Admit it, you’ve Googled yourself or your company to see where you rank and haven’t been too happy with the results. Maybe you found yourself hovering near the bottom of the first page, or worse yet, had to click the “next” button because you weren’t even worthy of a page one result!
Don’t worry. Google doesn’t hate you—but they may not like some things you’re doing. If you want to win Google love, you’ll have to make some changes.
Why Look for Google Love?
According to the National Association of REALTORS®, approximately 92 percent of homebuyers use the Internet in their home search.
Statista.com reported that, as of 2015, there were about 1.17 billion people using Google, searching over 50,000 queries every second, which translates to over 5 billion searches per day.
Google Basics
The algorithms Google uses for its results’ rankings are ever-changing, but there are some best practices to potentially improve your visibility.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly. Close to 35 percent of house hunters use mobile devices in their search, so be sure your site is mobile friendly. Google recently added the “Mobile Friendly” distinction to their search results, which shows users whether your site is formatted for mobile devices. While not achieving a “mobile-friendly” tag will probably result in less clicks, worse is that Google began demoting these “mobile-unfriendly” sites in mobile results.
- Leverage multiple media types to potentially gain more spots on the first page of Google. Having a robust social media presence can not only grab more first page results, but it can also reinforce your local expertise, offer real time results (through Google’s integration with Twitter), and possibly a video result showing your branding message to enhance your authority and trust. Social media also offers a method of discovery for your content, which can help search engines find that perfect article, image or video to promote in their results.
- Use terms that are important to buyers. Think about the main words homebuyers use when searching for a house. Remember to include things related to mortgages, local schools, etc. to show you’re the local expert. Take this list of terms and then form questions and phrases one might actually search for when looking for a home, agent or other local or financial information. Remember that users rarely search with one keyword, preferring to use actual questions (or queries) for better answers. An example search query for someone looking to narrow down a city search might be, “which neighborhood has the best restaurants.”
If you’re looking for an easy way to collect these types of queries, go to Google and type in some search words related to your business or local neighborhoods and check out the related search terms it automatically provides.
- Think user first with quality, unique (and valuable) content and search engine second.
All Real Estate Agents Want Some Google Love (Don’t You?)
Even if you’re getting some Google traffic today, don’t expect that to remain static, especially with Google algorithms and search results changing frequently.
There are never guarantees, but why not give your visitors the best information and the best experience possible? If you manage to do just that, you might find love from homebuyers– and you might get some Google love too.
For more information, visit http://connect.homes.com/.
