It's a bit of an adrenalin rush to think about dominating a major search term like "Seattle Real Estate" vs a smaller market like "Bellingham WA Real Estate". Having dominated both terms for about five years I can tell you that as a REALTOR being dominant for Bellingham Washington is a much more fulfilling experience then dominating Seattle. The simple reason is that as an agent and now company owner it's hard to get motivated to drive an hour or more to preview and/or show property in a big city while being in a smaller community like Bellingham it usually takes less then 20 minutes to get most anywhere. It's really a function of efficiency and ultimately profitability.

Obviously the bragging rights of being dominant in Seattle is more significant since everyone who has been in North America (and for that matter the world at large) will likely know Seattle and assume (rightly) that Seattle is a competitive market and that the search term "Seattle Real Estate" is quite a feather in the cap. When letting many of those same people know that we are number 1 for "Bellingham WA Real Estate" their response might be "Where? Never heard of Bellingham."

Ironically even though we have had the ranking in both Bellingham and Seattle for a similar length of time our Bellingham team is out producing Seattle in terms of closed transaction and GCI by a margin of 30 - 40%.

Of course I wouldn't give up my rankings in Seattle since it is still profitable however knowing what I know now I recommend smaller markets rather then the major metros for optimization since ultimately agents will make more money dominating a smaller manageable market then trying to dominate a large major metro.

There is also the subject of the Long Tail of Search. Given that more sales are generated from longer tails (or more targeted search phrases) the leads generated for Bellingham WA Real Estate will frankly just convert at a higher rate. That means less wasted time following up with leads from a large metro (which in many cases means they don't know the market very well) to following up with leads which are more targeted (which means they do know what they are looking for) and as a result closing ratios will go up significantly.

The one trade off is that in a major metro sometimes the price point can be higher then in the smaller markets, but then there are small boutique markets where the median price range is actually higher then the major metro.

So the perspective is this. If you are in a smaller market it is possible if not likely that you can make more money dominating that market then trying to dominate a larger metro based market with the right online SEO strategies. There is usually less competition (easier to get to #1) and it's easier to manage the business that you generate.

If you are in a major metro instead of trying to dominate the major metro figure out a sub market or sub city that you can easily manage and grow your business from there. Eventually you can grow your team into the larger metro, however for efficiency and profitability start with the smaller city and grow up... Crawl, Walk and then Run

Labels: Business Development, SEO Strategies