Monday 21 September 2009
Earlier this week I was a presenter at a training session in Sydney run
by one of the major real estate franchise groups, and my topic for the
session was
“How to Market More Effectively Using On Line Technology” , or in other wards, how to write better copy to be found on the search engines such as Google and Bing.
The
first part of the day focused on writing for print, and the
presentation really was quite good, it focused on writing clean copy
with no clutter and writing catchy headlines and avoiding cliche’s.
A
lot of time and effort went in to focusing on the print side, how to
submit your editorial, when was the best time to do so, what style of
writing does the editor like etc, and then, when looking at the end
result, which had been written up on a white board, I thought about how
those headlines or keywords would research on the web. A lot of agents
simply copy and paste their print copy onto the web, with no
consideration of keywords, search phrases etc.
You really have
no idea whether your copy or headline will have any impact on the
property searcher unless you have a clear understanding of how they
search on the web, what phrases do they use, what are the trigger words
or keywords they search for, these are all the questions you need to
answer before you submit your copy to the web.
It’s even more
important today, with Google’s real estate section now publishing
listings, because anything that is published on the web, will be
indexed by search engines, so make sure you start to optimise your copy
with keywords or phrases that target your market, if you don’t, you’ll
end up not showing on the search results, or being missed by your
buyers, and whilst those headlines look OK in print, they may not work
on the web.
With 9 out of 10 property searchers starting their
property search on the web, how much time are you going to spend on
your research to get it right. So lets give you a few ideas on where to
start: A really good place to start your research is in your own office.
The
post I’ve highlighted will give you some really good ideas on keyword
research, so next time you sit down and start brainstorming ideas for
your headlines and listing copy, give some thought on how your buyer
searches on the web and what phrases or words they use, if you do that
you’ll have a head start on getting your property found on the web.
Article by Quantive
Quantive provide SEO and SEM services for a range of leading Australian companies including
linkbathroom fittings bathroom fittings company Swish Solutions.
Wednesday 9 September 2009
Having a good website can be a vital part of
your business regardless of your business type or industry. For traditional businesses then a website may be a tool to
show people what you offer, drive enquiries and leads and build
community and brand value. For pure online businesses then all revenue
relies on getting traffic to a website and converting people on site
into sales or leads.
A website that looks good, is easy to
navigate and contains useful information is a good start to making the
most from your website but you may have found you have put a great
website online and then failed to get the traffic you want to the
website. If your trying to boost online traffic the your efforts need
to be focused on the mighty Google.
If you are a big brand then
you may be lucky enough to have large volumes of people searching
specifically for your brand and company website. If on the other hand
you are not such a major brand then your going to get the best results
in gaining new business by ranking well on Google for generic search
terms relating to your business. For example, if you ran a personal
training business in Brisbane then ranking for personal trainer brisbane would be important.
The
search engines such as Google take into account many factors when
deciding who ranks where. Google and others try to pick the most
relevant and high quality websites for the search term. For the main
search results you can’t pay Google to place you in a certain position
but you can make your website more attractive to Google through a
process known as search engine optimisation or SEO for short.
Many
web designers fail to understand search engine optimisation when they
build a site so you may need to learn some skills yourself or employ
the services of a search engine optimisation company.
The process of SEO
involves researching what your potential customers are actually
searching for online and making changes to your site structure, page
titles, headings, content and more to ensure each page is relevant to
the keyword terms you want to rank for. It’s also important to build up
quality inbound links to your website to support your status as a
useful resource.
Boosting your search engine ranks is a slow
process and it can take a few months for the rewards to show but in the
long term it is a strategy that could pay big dividends for the success
of your business.
Article by Richard at Quantive, a leading Brisbane internet marketing firm offering SEO, SEM and email marketing firm Quantive.
quantive is 100% Australian owned. Our two core strengths are very simple, we know Australian businesses and we know Digital Media.
