Increasing online visibility through strengthening your brand is something that many individuals and companies chase after but at which very few succeed. This task is difficult and involves keeping abreast of constantly changing rules and algorithms. What’s more is that in chasing after page rankings, many people lose sight of the purpose of having a strong online presence, which is to generate or capture leads. Fortunately, there are some relatively simple things that can be done in a short period of time that can improve results. Below are 4 simple steps to enhancing your online brand:
Step 1. Leverage Yourself through Other Websites
Trying to do everything yourself online is difficult if not impossible. Luckily, there are many websites out there such as Homes.com or Zillow that have already done a lot of the work for you. By simply making sure that you are as prominent as possible on those sites, you may actually find yourself receiving more leads than from your personal website.
The best way to take advantage of this is by making sure that your online profiles are completely filled out with a recent photo of you, proper contact information and links to any and all social networks that you use. Once your profile is complete, be sure to take an active part in any endorsement opportunities or public response Q&As. This will increase your visibility to the public and present yourself as an expert.
Step 2. Make Sure Your Photos Are Properly Labeled
We’ve all searched the internet for pictures and seen many of the search engines using an image-specific set of search results. In many cases these searches are very handy and often lead us to the websites where the pictures are being hosted.
One of the best ways to get your photos listed as part of these searches is to make sure that the file names are detailed and related to the picture. While it’s much quicker to simply leave the file name as whatever your camera saved it as, taking the time to properly label the pictures will go a long way towards assisting with online visibility.
Step 3. Make Sure Your Listings Are as Detailed as Possible
When entering your listings into the MLS, be sure to include as much detailed information as possible. While most listings entered do contain a fair amount of information, people don’t realize that this is a tremendous opportunity to add in details that will capture the attention of the search engines. Even if your MLS data is not publicly available, you must keep in mind that often times this information is directly syndicated over to websites that are. As a result, that information becomes relevant to search engines.
Step 4. Update Your Website
This last tip may seem daunting but regular updates to your website are very important to keep the attention of the search engines. Blogs are great for this as you are able to write a short piece of information that doesn’t require you to change or rework your homepage.
Other great ways to update your website include rotation of photos or an updated note at the top of the site. Keep a place for a welcome message that you can change or update with the latest news, market trends or whatever else you can think of that might be interesting or help with search results.
Most of your competition sticks to static pages. By adding variety to yours you will have an advantage.
Michael Darmanin is the Chief Operating Officer with Sellstate Realty Systems Network, Inc.
For more information, visit www.JoinSellstate.com.
