Luxury Real Estate Marketing in 2011
I’m pleased to have the first guest post by my good friend and real estate marketer, Ryan Clark. He’s currently crusading the web and during a number of real estate related guest blog spots. You can catch his first post over at the Geek Estate Blog, and this will be his second. He works for the marketing and branding firm known as Linkbuildr.
Ryan resides over a small team of professionals that specialize in building up brands to have trust within the social web and search engines. They specifically work with companies in very competitive markets, and stresses only the highest of quality marketing tactics.
He always tells me to think about the long term, and not get caught up in the “quick buck” marketing schemes. While the majority of people out there are still buying links, doing mass directory submissions and endless article marketing, he’s always telling me to do it different.
I’m always told to forget about targeting specific anchor text, what my competitors are doing and just focus on my own brand. If companies want to last a long time in the SERPs, they better follow the rules or risk being burned into oblivion. Something he’s seen all to much lately. Now on to Ryan!
Luxury Link Building:
First up, thanks for having me on the Luxury Real Estate Magazine. I really like the idea of a socially powered magazine, especially a luxury real estate one! I can see this hub becoming a mecca for other agents to get a link from, especially since this site relies on really interesting content.
People say content is king. And if that is true, then links are god! While I’ve not yet trademarked that term, there is no doubt that without links in a competitive market, you won’t rank well. In 2011, there are definitely some big changes coming to Google so it is very important to listen up.
Google has recently started making some major changes to their algorithm, specifically aimed at duplicate/scrapped content. Next on the list is dealing with over abused anchor text from almost everyone under the sun. It’s no secret, the more anchor text specific keywords you have, the better you rank. This has clearly lead to an out-of-control problem that Google has hinted at recently. I recently saw a comment from a Google employee that they’re going to be drastically changing the way they look at links very soon.
While there are no other hints dropped, I can confidently guestimate what that means. I’ve personally noticed that websites with a natural looking backlink profile are doing well and avoiding penalty. Too many companies hire other SEO’s and don’t really understand what they’re doing. The amount of clients coming our way that got filtered on their money search terms has been drastically increasing. While we appreciate the business, getting out of that problem can sometimes be hopeless and it troubles me greatly to see that happen.
There are plenty of options for link building that are natural and will provide that brand trust I speak about. Make sure you on-page SEO is targeted properly or else a lot of that link power will go to waste. Forget about building up tons of anchor text specific links, and focus on brand links ( and or site name links), as well don’t just link to your homepage..spread that link love around!
Great Link Building Tactics:
- Guest blogging on sites that are *very* related the real estate industry, and make the content awesome
- Run contests from your website to attract links, visitors and social media followers.
- Blog commenting on your favorite, industry related blogs. I’m talking 300+ word responses after you’ve read the topic of interest, don’t do it for the link. Link building is all about building relationships.
- Don’t hesitate to host guest bloggers and interviews on your site.
- You’re marketing luxury homes right? Most homes are link bait worthy content already so make use of that.
- Get links from your social media profiles after you’ve built them up with unique content including videos and pictures. In the same manor as blog commenting, don’t sign up for the link, participate and further your branding.
Social Media For Luxury Real Estate:
Social media participation is being counted in the ranking algorithms of Bing and Google, so ignoring Twitter and Facebook is not a good idea. If you have no presence of these sites now, start by getting your accounts setup and using something like Hoot Suite to manage your social accounts. Both sites will allow you to build a targeted following, as well are the key to building relationships online that will lead to linking opportunities. Those relationships will be harder for your competition to compete with, and will show the search engines you mean business.
There are plenty of other social networks out there to take advantage of, especially within the luxury and real estate arena. This is great news because you can interact with targeted users, and score some links and branding out of it. Being awesome is key, you want to represent yourself and brand here with the utmost professionalism. Make sure to stay active on your social accounts, and interact with your followers as much as possible…it will pay off down the road.
If you’re finding the followers are not coming in that quickly, try and write better blog content and run a contest. We’ve been running so many social media based contests lately and seeing some insane ROI. For example, a Facebook Page allows you to keep your brand in the face of all the followers. Making your users post about your contest will spread like wildfire across their stream as other people see the contest and enter. While the new followers will convert into any leads right away, there is more than a good chance they will down the road.
Using Your Blog:
I’ll be brief and wrap things up with a rant about blogging. If your company doesn’t have a blog by now then stop reading this interview and set one up now…seriously. A blog serves many uses, mainly sharing awesome content that will hopefully attract natural links in the long run. It’s a place to showcase your latest property with the ability to include HD video and pictures right in your post. Your blog is also a place you can have guest interviews on, like interior designers or home theater specialists to name a couple. Last but not least, it also allows you to link to internal pages that might not be getting any link love.
I highly recommend using the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool to find topics to post about, specifically to go after long tail keywords. What do I mean by that? For example, say you sell luxury real estate in Hawaii. While you may have a specific page for “Hawaii luxury condos”, you may not have one for “Hawaii luxury penthouse condos” or “Hawaii beach front condos”. You see what I’m saying? Your blog is a perfect way to tackle those search terms and funnel the traffic into the appropriate parts of your main site.
I also recommend using your blog embed all your Youtube videos which will help them get indexed and improve within the Youtube search rankings. There’s no need to host your own videos as it costs way too much, so take advantage of this feature. I also recommend paying for Vimeo as they provide a much sexier user interface.
Get In Touch With Ryan:
Via the Web: http://www.linkbuildr.com
Via Twitter: http://twitter.com/linkbuildr
Via LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/ryanrclark
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