Wondering how to get found on Google? Are you a real estate agent?
The real estate industry has undergone a paradigm shift over the past few years. Now 90% of buyers report looking on the Internet to find their homes.
That’s. Ninety. Percent.
That’s HUGE!
How to get found by real estate buyers
What are you doing to increase your chances of being found by real estate buyers searching on the Internet?
This brief YouTube tutorial gives an overview of ways that you can connect with buyers on the Internet, concentrating on using blogging as a platform to get found on Google and build a customer base.
There are many different building blocks you can use to increase your Internet presence. Here are just a few:
- Active Rain
- YouTube
- WordPress
- Trulia
What is it about these building blocks that helps to build up your Internet presence so that you can get found on Google?
I have no idea.
I also don’t know how my refrigerator works, but I know enough to know it keeps things cold. And really, isn’t that enough?
Knowing all of the whys and wherefores about how these building blocks help increase your Google dominance for your real estate market area are in large part irrelevant to the discussion.
All that you really need to know is that these are some of the main avenues to building your Internet presence.
And, by using them, you can greatly increase your chances of being found on Google by Internet homebuyers looking to move into your area.
What the heck is a blog and why should I care?
For the purposes of comparison, let’s think of a blog as the present-day version of that fossilized form of communication…the newspaper.
When newspapers were all the rage, people would get up in the morning, grab a cup of Joe, and sit down to the day’s paper to read the latest news.
The next morning, they would get up and do the same thing….grab a cup of Joe, and read the newspaper.
And these people wouldn’t read the newspaper that they read the day before. No. They would read the NEW newspaper, the one that reported the most recent events of the day.
Blogs are the same way.
Blogs are like journals, or reports, of the most current events of the day.
And whenever you post new journals or reports to the Internet via your blog, you increase the chances that Google will find them and bring them to the first page of the search.
Internet spiders
Google crawls the Internet with these dealios called “spiders” every night, which look for the most recent material published on different subjects. And when the latest information is found on a subject, the Google spiders get all excited and they bring this information to the front of the search for the subject.
So let’s say, for example, you are a real estate agent in Haile Plantation in Gainesville Florida and you decide to write up a market report about home sales during the month of June 2010. When you put the report together, and you post it to your blog, and your blog is uploaded to the Internet, Google’s spiders will find it and bring it to the front of the search pages for buyers looking for information about Haile Plantation homes sold.
And let’s say the next day you decide to write about the farmers market in Haile Village which happens every Saturday morning throughout the year in Haile Plantation FL, and you include pictures of the farmers market, and perhaps a short video with the help of an online video editor, and you post it to your blog, and you upload your blog to the Internet.
That night Google’s spiders will retrieve it and bring it to the front of search results for people doing a Google search for Haile Village Farmers Market.
Cool, right?
Yes. Yes it is.
And the more you blog about a specific area (Haile Plantation FL, or Town of Tioga, or Cambridge Forest, etc.), the more likely you are to appear in the front of search results for that subject.
Why? Because Google likes fresh content, just like newspaper editors do.
And the more content you write about a specific area, and the more media you include in your post (pictures and videos, for example), the more likely you are to turn up in the top of Google search results for that particular subject….making it more likely that someone searching for that particular search term will find you.
By writing relevant content about specific areas on a consistent basis, you establish yourself as an expert on the subject and increase the chances of a buyer or seller contacting YOU when they have real estate business to do in that particular area.
Does that sound like a lot of work?
Well, it IS! But doing your research and writing relevant articles about your real estate area of interest shows potential customers that you care, that you are knowledgeable, and that you will work hard for them.
And in this age of conducting business on the Internet’s information superhighway, what better advertisement for your services could you possibly need?
So get busy, get blogging, and get involved!
