What the Heck is SEO, Anyway?

Welcome to my first post in a series on Search Engine Optimization for real estate professionals. I originally wrote a version of this in 2010 for another project that is now defunct, and I see so many posts in the Bigger Pockets forums about SEO and internet marketing that I thought the BP community might find it useful if I dusted it off and repurposed it for real estate!

There is a lot of confusion over Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and there are a lot of shady characters, spammers, and telemarketers in the SEO business. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many real estate professionals being skeptical and tuning out as soon as they hear the term “SEO”. This is a shame, and a crucial mistake from a business and marketing standpoint.

Think about it – Who are today’s consumers? Baby Boomers have completely embraced the internet and email, and are heavy users of search engines, and many younger consumers have never walked across the living room to turn the “knob” on a television set, have had a computer with internet access in their household for as long as they can remember, and have never touched the Yellow Pages. Thus, the first place today’s (and increasingly, tomorrow’s) consumers go when shopping around for a small business is an internet search engine.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of planning (for a new website) or revising (for an existing website), a website’s structure and content so that it adheres to the guidelines expected of the major search engines and ranks well in their search results for a particular set of search queries or “keyword phrases”. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now that we’ve clarified that, it bears mentioning just who the major search engines are. In a word, Google! Google currently enjoys over a 90% market share of online searches in the United States  as of June 2020 (up from around 67% when I first wrote this in 2010). 

Google’s only real competition (if you can call it that) is Microsoft, who acquired the Yahoo! search engine a few years ago and now markets its own search engine as Bing (formerly MSN Live Search). Bing and Yahoo combined command roughly a 5% market share (down from 19% when I first wrote this in 2010). 

You've probably never heard of the few other search engines that still exist (such as Baidu and Yandex), because they have a market share in the single digits or less.

                                          “You really only have to worry about Google and Bing!”

So the good news is you really only have to worry about Google and Bing! Furthermore, Google and Bing tend to serve fairly similar search results, so if your site is well optimized for Google, chances are it will also rank well in Bing, and vice versa.

Being ranked highly in the search results on Google and/or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s real estate professional. And here’s why: Almost every other form of advertising in the world is based on what I call “push marketing”. In other words, you “push” your message in front of a potential customer’s eyes. Whether it’s direct mail, an ad in a magazine or newspaper, a brochure or business card, or a billboard or sign, the effect is the same; The customer is usually not seeking your product or services at that particular moment, so they are much less receptive to your message and subconsciously resent having it “pushed” on them.

"Being ranked highly in the search results on Google or Bing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s small business owners."

Search engines turn this process around 180 degrees, and use what I call “pull marketing” – the customer is actively searching for your product or service and is trying to “pull” your message in front of their eyes. And once they find what they’re looking for, they usually stop searching and contact the business that seems like the best fit. 

At that point, all of the more traditional marketing and sales techniques apply. You have to answer the phone when it rings and be responsive and professional in person and via e-mail, and you have to have a high quality product or service in order to complete the sale. But the search engine did its job and delivered the customer to your door, telephone, or inbox!

But how do you make sure your message is the one that the customer pulls?

Most people are surprised when I explain to them that Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results. Why is that? Because Google and Bing must return relevant search results in order to keep users coming back to their search engines.

         "Google and Bing want your site to be on the first page of their search results!"

Let’s say your website is about Tampa Real Estate (and you are in fact a realtor in Tampa). If I go to Google or Bing and search for “Tampa Realtor” and your site is not there, then Google and Bing have failed (sort of)!

However, if I search for “Tampa Realtor” and your site is one of the top few results, and I click through to your site and find exactly what I was looking for, we all win! I’m happy because I found what I needed, you’re happy because a potential new customer found your website, and Google and Bing are happy because next time I need to search for something online, I’m more likely to return to their search engine. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

But how do you let Google and Bing know that your site is about Real Estate in Tampa or Rental Properties in Denver? That is exactly what this series of blog posts will teach you!

The remainder of this series will focus on teaching you what the search engines are looking for and how to optimize your website to rank on the first page of Google and Bing. 

Subscribe and stay tuned for my next post about title tags!

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Jeff Copeland is a real estate broker and property manager in St Petersburg, Florida, and broker/owner of Copeland Morgan LLC. You can find him on Bigger Pockets under @Jeff Copeland.