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Boosting your real estate business' website search engine optimisation (SEO) above your competitors has never been easier with these handy tips from Google analytics experts.
Speaking to Residential Property Manager, Leading Property Managers of Australia executive director Bob Walters said in years gone by consumers looking for a product or service would go to the Yellow Pages.
“Now, most people simply ‘Google’ what they are looking for on their computers, tablets or smartphones,” Mr Walters said.
“Property management businesses looking to grow their rent rolls today need to ensure their businesses appear on page one of a Google search for 'property managers' or 'property management' in their service areas.
“So how do you get yourself on page one of the Google search for little or no money?”
Google+ account and Google reviews
Mr Walters said businesses need to create a free Google+ Account and “keyword optimise it” to all the most frequently searched words used by prospective landlord clients.
“[Also], try to obtain as many positive Google reviews about your business as you can. Once you get to five reviews, Google will then give you a 'star' rating,” he said.
Fresh, relevant content
Mr Walters said Google tends to rank websites more highly if the website’s content is relevant and the content is regularly updated and added to.
“Sadly, so many real estate agency websites have little or no property management content, and in so many cases they pitch their websites to the wrong people – buyers and tenants, when they should be pitching their content to landlords,” he said.
Also speaking to Residential Property Manager, Virtually Incredible founder and property management consultant Todd Breen said there are three points to post “fresh, relevant multi-media content”.
1. A truly good webmaster – “In my experience, unfortunately most webmasters only know how to make 'pretty' websites but have little skills in SEO. Shopping for a webmaster should begin with 'show me your SEO accomplishments' before asking to see the pretty websites they built,” Mr Breen said.
2. The right website platform – Mr Breen said a good web platform such as WordPress will allow you to easily add fresh, relevant multi-media content: “We only use Wordpress, the world's largest blogging platform, and our sites easily rank first for the keywords we pursue.”
3. A mobile-friendly experience – “With the surge in mobile device web traffic, Google rewards websites that are 'mobile friendly' with a higher ranking. Make sure your site has a theme that responds to whatever device is used to view it,” Mr Breen added.
Video
Mr Walters said, lastly it is important to set up your own YouTube channel for your business.
“As Google owns YouTube, the more videos you upload to YouTube – particularly if you make the effort to keyword optimise them in the video descriptions and the narrations – the more love you will get from Google in your search engine ranking,” he said.
Mr Breen said videos are key, in his opinion, for successful SEO.
“We worked with one client who wanted to be first for 'Sydney property management' search – a challenging goal at best,” he said.
“By adding properly optimised videos to several pages of his site, they went to first position within nine months. Simply put: properly optimised videos are the most powerful SEO tool out there!”
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