As a real estate professional, you qualify as a prime prospect for most companies offering real estate SEO (search engine optimization) services. You want more sales and more listings and they want you to believe that they can give that to you. If you haven't already gotten calls, emails or letters from a few real estate SEO companies telling you that they can get your real estate website into the top ten of this or that search engine... get ready, because they're coming... A lot of real estate professionals struggle with whether or not to make an investment in a company to manage their SEO campaign. Will it be worth your investment? Will you get burned? There is no right decision, but there are smart ones and dumb ones. Here are a few things to think about as you make your decision about real estate SEO: 1. SEO is just one piece of the internet marketing puzzle. Hiring a company to optimize your real estate website for the search engines is not necessarily a bad thing, just understand that it is only one part of your internet marketing plan. Focusing too much on SEO leaves a lot of money on the table. Having good rankings makes it seem like your website will be a successful generator or real estate leads. Not so. In the past, search engine optimization WAS pretty much synonymous with internet marketing. SEO WAS marketing on the internet - that was all you needed to do to get noticed and get leads. Times are different now. Understand that your marketing has to be right FIRST, before you even set foot onto the internet and spend time and money bringing prospects to your real estate website. That means you need to identify your market, create a message suited perfectly for them and deliver that message with the media that they are known to respond to. That must be done before you even think about SEO. ------------------ 2. There are no SEO guarantees. Many SEO companies that are out there cold-calling realtor lists often guarantee results or give the impression that there is some guarantee of results. There are no guarantees. Results-based guarantees from a Search Engine Optimization company are a good sign for you to run the other way. Don't even waste your time talking to them. ------------------ 3. Listen to exactly what the company you are speaking with is offering. Most SEO companies that call you will make bold promises about improving the rankings of your website. Many of them are very good at what they do. Sounds simple enough, right? But what exactly is your goal - Good rankings or more real estate business? Don't get caught up in the myth that better rankings = more sales or more leads or listings. Better rankings equals better rankings. That's it. In a nutshell, know that SEO is important and good search engine rankings are important... but SEO is not a silver-bullet for your real estate business. It will not fix your marketing and although a well optimized real estate website might bring a flood of prospects to your door, what good is it if they never knock and ask to come in? ------------------ 4. Marketing is marketing is marketing... Always has been, always will be. The internet hasn't changed anything about that. What the internet does do is give you a very efficient delivery system to use for your marketing message. Whether or not you seek outside help for your internet marketing campaign, the important thing to remember is that you don't abdicate responsibility for your own marketing by "outsourcing" it. Outsourcing your own marketing, even on the internet, is not a smart decision. After all, marketing is by far the most leveraged activity you can possible engage in. Marketing IS the business you are in. You are the mastermind. You come up with the plan... THEN you hire someone to do the implementation. |
