About SEO For Realtors
SEO For Realtors® is authored by a Realtor®, for other Realtors®. If you want to learn how to get the attention of the search engines, resulting in more leads for your business , then read on.
Side note: though this blog was written for Realtors, the techniques here will work for any business.
This blog will show you the quickest, most effective way to get ranked higher than the thousands of other Realtors in your area. This will result in more traffic to your real estate website . And, it will show you how to turn visitors into leads .
I started this site after doing a couple posts on ActiveRain about SEO. People seemed interested, and asked how I accomplished some pretty amazing results for my real estate website, in a short period of time. So I decided to write a blog specifically to help other Realtors® acquire more leads from their websites.
Disclosure: I’m not an SEO Expert . Most of my income today is from representing buyers and sellers in Cincinnati, OH. However, I am a passionate student of best SEO practices, and have applied the knowledge I’ve gained very effectively on my real estate website. And, I’ve developed a SEO business to help others who don’t have the time or inclination to perform the techniques I’m giving away here. More about that later.
I want this blog to help you quit pissing away thousands of dollars on buying lousy leads from lead aggregators (grrrrr….. ), and wasting money with so-called SEO firms (grrrrrr…. ).
If you hear a little anger there, you’re right. I’ve spent thousands of bucks on that crap, and gotten next to nothing to show for it.
My results
My Cincinnati real estate website has been up since October 2004. From October 2004 till February 2009, my website developed 29 leads , leading to two sales . After I’d spent over $1,800 for SEO work.
I began studying SEO strategies in February 2009, in relation to another venture. I started applying SEO techniques to my real estate in March. In June 2009 my website yielded 18 buyer leads… two of whom bought homes. My website had gone from a PR (Page Rank) 0 to a PR2.
It’s now September 2009. I’m ranked on Google’s first page for seven keywords. I’m optimizing on a half dozen others, and will likely make it to the first page within the next month. I average 30 visitors a day; and about 4% of them leave me their contact information. I’ll save you the math - that’s nearly 40 free leads a month . Some of them leave me bogus contact information. Some of them don’t qualify for a loan; or are "just looking".
But a good number of them are real buyers, looking to buy in the next 30-60 days. Suffice it to say that I have a good and growing funnel of buyer leads , that’s now leading me to some other ventures.
You can do it, too.
There’s no magic to SEO. It’s not easy. But in a couple hours of reading here, you can learn the basics that will enable you to achieve the same results.
Like I said - I’m not an expert. I hope you’ll comment here. If you know of other techniques, or if you’ve had some success with these.
If you’re not inclined to do this…
Leave me a message with your email address. I’ll see if I can help you.
To your wealth!
Bob Wuest
RE/Max Unlimited
Cincinnati, Ohio
And, being all full of myself because people had responded to my posts, I bragged that I’d get this site in the top 5 or the SERPS for the term "SEO For Realtors".
Oh great. Like I don’t have enough to do with my other businesses. Real estate sales & investing, SEO for my own sites, for-hire SEO with a couple friends’ sites, and a budding Internet Marketing business.
But I’m all about helping people. It’s why I like Real Estate sales. So, let’s give ‘er a go. I hope this becomes a useful forum for Realtors® throughout the US. Or beyond. And I hope we can develop this into a community, where people help one another to boost their search engine rankings, improve our lead rates from our websites, and quit pissing away thousands of dollars on buying lousy leads from lead aggregators, and so-called SEO firms.
If you hear a little anger there, you’re right. I’ve spent a ton of money on that crap, and gotten next to nothing to show for it. If you’ve read this far, you can probably relate.
A little about me. I promise, I’ll try to be brief.
I started selling real estate in 2003, after 30 years in the IT industry, and a couple years investing in real estate. Did pretty well. In 2008, I got enamored with the idea of creating a real estate investment community, and basically let my agency business go to hell in the process.
In early 2009 I was ready to go back to agency work. You know the state of the market then, right? Suffice it to say that I thought I’d try to create another source of income, from Internet Marketing.
Learned (still learning) a lot about website development, SEO, website conversion, and listbuilding. "Hmmmm", I thought, I wonder if I can apply some of this stuff to kick up the volume of leads from my website?
It’s now June ‘09. My website went from a Google PR0 to a PR2… and I’m getting more leads in a month than I used to get in a year from my <a href="http://www.bobwuest.com" target="_blank">Cincinnati Real Estate</a> website. I like that. I’d like to think that by the end of this year I’ll have enough Internet lead volume to basically withdraw from any prospecting other than referrals. (Nice thought, huh?) So I can spend more time with Internet Marketing, and build my residual income from the ‘net.
And then this "opportunity" presented itself. Well, I hope whatever materializes here helps you like it’s helped me. I hope to present some solid ideas to help get your Internet lead volume up.
And, I can’t do it alone. I hope you’ll subscribe to the RSS feed for the site, and bring any experience and knowledge you have to making it more robust and useful.
To your wealth!
Bob Wuest
RE/Max Unlimited
Cincinnati, Ohio
