By Chad Bowe
One of the most important factors of success for any website is its use of keywords. Real estate websites are no exception and understanding how to create and effectively use keywords will send you straight to the head of the class.
Not sure what constitutes a keyword? For the purpose of this article, a keyword is any word or group of words used in a website’s content or in a search query used to find a website via one of the major search engines including Google and Bing. It is important to understand that the term keyword refers not only to single words but also phrases. For instance, “realty” is a keyword and “buy a home in Vancouver” is also referred to as a keyword. The slightly more tech-savvy refer to multiple word keywords as long-tail keywords, and short phrases or single word keywords as short-tails.
At this point you should be asking, “Which type of keyword, short- or long-tail, is going to make me the most money?” You should focus on long-tail keywords.
When you use specific keywords on your website, you make it easier for the search engines to connect searchers with your content. For instance, if you are selling homes in south eastern Mississauga and your website has a lot of content that contains the keywords “homes in south eastern Mississauga,” when someone types in a search query like, “buy homes in south eastern Mississauga,” assuming everything else is in order, your website stands a very good chance of ranking highly in the search results and thus being visited by that searcher. The value here is in the fact that the searcher is interested in real estate from the exact area that you specialize in (think pre-qualified lead!).
What if your website only featured less specific keywords in its content like “Mississauga” or “South Mississauga”? Well, everything else being equal, your website would prove to be no competition for websites that are optimized for the afore-mentioned longer, more specific keyword.
While specific is good, don’t go overboard with keyword length. A three- or five-word keyword is what should be aimed for. Any more words and things will get messy quickly. Don’t believe me? Perform a few test searches yourself with six or seven word queries and observe how the quality of returned results goes downhill.
There are many different approaches to crafting effective keywords; the following simple, two-step technique assumes that you don’t know how to perform keyword research or how to analyze keyword trends. In other words, it is a natural and business-specific way of identifying keywords without the help or qualification of external information.
Step 1. “Where am I?”
It shouldn’t be too difficult to determine what geographic area you operate in. What neighbourhood(s) do you sell the most homes in? What area(s) do you know best? Answers to these questions will produce a short list of generic, geographic keywords like “Riverside,” “Glenora” or “Point Grey”. Once the preferred geographic areas have been identified, you will have successfully produced the substantive portion of all of your keywords. While Riverside, Glenora and Point Grey are all legitimate keywords on their own, they are far too generic to be of much use to a real estate website. Step two makes them useful.
Step 2. “Add it on!”
Step two involves choosing add-on words that turn basic geographic keywords into long-tail keywords. Here are a few examples of add-ons to attach to the generic geographic keyword “Glenora”: buy homes in Glenora, Glenora real estate, Glenora’s best real estate company and property for sale in Glenora. Words like real estate, homes, buy and Realtor are good general add-on choices for any real estate company trying to formulate long-tail keywords.
Create a list of 10 to 15 long-tail keyword options for each geographic area. Since this isn’t a highly technical approach, use your instincts, common sense and the advice of friends outside the industry to narrow the list down to keywords that you feel a searcher in your area would actually type into Google or Bing. Your goal is three or four long tails for each geographic area (don’t feature more than two geographic areas on any one of your website’s pages).
Easy enough, right? Now include the new keywords in your website’s copy, headers, blog posts and wherever you can to boost your rankings.
Chad Bowe is the owner of The GTA Consultant, a digital marketing consulting company in the greater Toronto area. His passion is helping Canadian real estate companies succeed in the digital space. Looking forward, Chad says he believes that technology and its proper application will be the deciding factor and point of differentiation that separates leading real estate companies from the pack. www.gtaconsultant.com Email [email protected]; Phone 416-830-4715.
