I’m sure some of you are pretty familiar with the term SEO, but for others who are new to this here is a look at what it means and in particular, how it affects you as an agent or agency?

As the SEO expert Moz says:

“Search engines are the roadways that help people find what you offer. If search engines cannot find your site, or add your content to their databases, you miss out on incredible opportunities to drive traffic to your site.”

Neil Patel, Co-Founder of Crazy Egg explains why content is critical to SEO

“There is no such thing as SEO without content. You need words, articles, substance, keywords, verbiage.  I wince whenever I have to say it, because it’s so cliche but it’s true: Content is king. When you rank in search engines, you rank for specific keywords in your written content. More content equals more keywords, meaning you have more opportunities to rank in Google.”

If you look at it this way, when someone searches in Google for information on the best way to sell a home in Kiama, Google will crawl or hunt through the worlds websites looking for the best answer the query. It will look for:

• User experience – how easy is to search and navigate your site
• Relevant, original content – how well your content answers the query or topic of the search
• Quality of content – Grammar, reviews, how long people spend on your site, pages per visit, mobile experience
• Internal linking – how much further reading is there on your site on this topic
• Location – your proximity to the person searching
• Headings to break up the content section of the website so the search engines can understand what you are saying
• Image search – can the search engines learn anything from the images or videos on your site?

“Search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization’s success. Targeted traffic to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and exposure like no other channel of marketing.” Moz

And guess what without content you have no SEO strategy, your community can’t find you and your site will be buried so deep in the search results it is barely visible.

The impact on your business if you are not found when someone is searching for an agent in the area, is long lasting and extremely damaging.

But guess what? A good quality, SEO optimised content will help you be found by search engines, help boost your rankings (or how far up the search results page you are on) and as our industry becomes more and more competitive, it will give you a decided advantage over visitors and therefore customers.

Some simple ways to improve your SEO ranking

• Publish relevant local content – this is the number 1 driver of your search engine rankings.
• Effective and relevant use of keywords in your content…but don’t overdo it. Make sure the content is written for the user not just to promote keywords
• Use headings appropriately on the page as this helps search engines find your content
• Regularly update your content
• Add meta data description to each page
• Use descriptive links – Ensure any link names are descriptive such as selling real estate in Essendon Guide not just “Click Here.”
• Always describe your images and videos using alternative text descriptions (alt tags)
• Get local businesses to backlink to your valuable content