There are many ways for real estate companies to enhance their presence on popular search engines like Google and Bing. However, there are also lesser known tactics that you might not be taking advantage of. The goal of this post is to outline a few of these alternative strategies, which could have a big impact on your bottom line if you follow through and give them enough time to bear fruit.
Strategy 1: Use The Search Engine Disguised As A Social Media Platform
Most people lump Pinterest into the social media bandwagon. Don’t make this mistake.
The truth is that Pinterest shares more in common with Google image search than it does with Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. People turn to Pinterest when they are looking for visual inspiration for a particular idea or problem. In other words, they aren’t logging in for a friendaversary suggestion or a constant barrage of baby photos. People login to Pinterest when they are ready to perform a visual search.
Perhaps more importantly, Pinterest makes it very easy for people to post outbound links, and it is very common for users to actually click on those outbound links. Ultimately, it’s a platform which rewards high quality visual content with highly relevant website traffic that can compete with Google users in terms of time on site and conversion rate.
This is not to say that channels like Facebook and Instagram shouldn’t form part of your digital marketing strategy. The intention is simply to point out that Pinterest should be treated like a visual search engine rather than a social media platform. If you adopt this mindset, post consistently and optimize your pins for search, you could unleash one of the most powerful sources of organic traffic on the internet.
Strategy 2: Use the 2nd Biggest Search Engine In the World
It may come as a surprise to learn that Bing is not the second biggest search engine in the world. This honor actually belongs to Youtube (probably Google’s best ever purchase). In addition to all the searches that occur directly on Youtube, Youtube videos are also prioritized in Google’s standard results.
As you can see from the screenshots above, Youtube videos give you the opportunity to double dip for the same search term, on two different search engines.
Another major benefit of producing search friendly Youtube videos is that Youtube tends to be less competitive than the standard Google results page, for most search queries. Instead of being pitted against thousands of other articles with very similar titles and content, there is still plenty of low hanging fruit to target on Youtube. Broadly speaking this is because people and companies alike tend to produce less video content than written content. This can open up opportunities for companies willing to invest the resources needed to produce video content consistently.
If you decide to make Youtube a part of your search engine marketing strategy, keep these tips in mind.
Define the search term that you are targeting, before you produce the video
There are so many Youtube creators who approach video based search engine optimization in reverse. They create the video, and then they try to attach a search friendly title, thumbnail and tags. This is the wrong way round.
Instead, video producers should perform the keyword research before they even start producing the video. By doing so, the likelihood of creating content which satisfies the user’s search query is significantly higher. This can translate to better engagement, which will push your video up Youtube’s SERPs over time.
Optimize Your Thumbnail With Intriguing Text
If you look at any successful Youtuber, you will notice that they almost always include a catchy title in the thumbnail. The best thumbnail titles will summarize the video and create some form of intrigue. Think of it as an opportunity to leverage the power of human curiosity to encourage people to click on the video.
Once you have captivated someone with an engaging thumbnail, you have to actually deliver on the goods. Youtube rewards content producers that can keep people engaged for extended periods of time. The reason for this is simple. The more time a user spends on Youtube, the more money Youtube makes through advertising. If you can keep people interested in your content, Youtube will bump you up the Youtube SERPs over time.
Strategy 3: Don’t Underestimate The Power of Google Autocomplete
You may or may not be familiar with Jim Harmer. He’s one of the co-founders of Income School, an SEO focused academy that teaches people how to earn full time income online through blogging
Crucially, the key to Jim Harmer’s strategy is to use Google’s autocomplete function. If you aren’t sure what that means, the screenshot below should help clarify.
Harmer calls this the Alphabet soup method, partially because you can move through each letter of the alphabet when implementing this technique.
The main idea here is that if Google returns an ‘autocomplete’ result for a particular search query, there is almost certainly more search volume associated with that phrase than most keyword tools will suggest.
In other words, Google is feeding you low hanging fruit that most SEO’s completely ignore because the keyword tool of their choice is under reporting the true search volume. If you already have an SEO strategy up and running, there is no harm in experimenting with this technique. You might be surprised by the results.
Strategy 4: Use Google Image Search To Attract Links Organically
Link building is arguably the most difficult component of any SEO strategy.
It usually involves sending hundreds and even thousands of emails to unknown webmasters in order to beg for a link to your latest piece of content. However, email outreach is not the only way to build links to your real estate website.
Jon Dykstra is a content publisher that regularly earns over $40,000 per month through his portfolio of content based websites. More importantly, he literally does no email outreach when building backlinks.
Instead, he concentrates on adding highly engaging and highly relevant graphics to his content, with the express purpose of creating link magnets that other webmasters will be inclined to use on their own website.
This strategy is simpler than you might think. The goal is to create engaging image content, with the express intention of ranking for Google image searches. This is a valid way to increase traffic to your site, and it will also lead to additional backlinks when other webmasters use your images on their website, using the link back as a form of attribution.
Final Thoughts
In this post we have outlined 4 alternative ways to broaden your SEO strategy. Now it’s up to you to pick a strategy that will complement your existing efforts, and just get started.
For more search engine marketing ideas, be sure to check out this dedicated digital marketing resource for real estate companies.
