For me it's very simple. SEO gives the real estate agent or firm a truly unfair advantage over other agents or offices in their marketplace. Over the last six years as a real estate professional I have had a very profitable career in real estate and that is for one very simple reason: I know how to rank my real estate websites to the top of the search engines for the terms that consumers use for search. If you are in residential real estate the term that consumers use more often then not is "Your City" followed by the term "real estate" or to a lesser extent "homes for sale". These are the trump cards of real estate search for a given city period, end of report...

Sure Social Networking on ActiveRain, Localism and even your own personal real estate blog will generate you some traffic and may get you a few leads, but that will not even come close to the lead flow that you will get from dominating your search engine rankings for your city.

In an earlier post I talked about my real estate career to date and so far its been a very financially fulfilling ride. I have been profitable into the low to mid six figures my last five years in real estate. I've exited the day-to-day management of the real estate business and turned over the business to our team leaders, brokers and support staff. I do however keep my hand in the SEO side of the business which is essentially the marketing side of the business.

Getting back to the "Unfair advantage". I truly believe that many agents in the marketplace do see our positioning as an "Unfair advantage". What does that mean?

In a traditional real estate business, business is normally a function of advertising and getting your agents to spend their money to ultimately generate them (the agents) and you (the firm) income. The playing field is relatively level in that everyone can run the same ads, market in the same magazines, mail the same postcards and if anyone comes up with a better ad, a better magazine, or a better postcard anyone in the marketplace can essentially implement a similar plan. Any competitive advantage is soon lost due to agents copying or improving on an existing plan. Marketshare in the offline world is typically a function of spend and ego. Meaning the more you spend and the more outgoing your are the more marketshare that you have. Big firms have figured out that one of the best ways to grow is simply to recruit those agents who simply spend more and have bigger egos then agents at other firms which ultimately means more listings and more sides. Of course that was pre-internet.

Now that 84% of consumers use the web as their primary search vehicle agents who are offline are having to spend more and in many cases are losing marketshare to their online counterparts. Spend and ego are no longer the differentiators between agents. The true differentiator now is web positioning. Meaning where do you rank on the search engines. As much as Trulia, REALTOR.com, ActiveRain, Localism, HouseValues and HomeGain would like to get you to think that what is going to generate you business is using their platforms, the reality again is that the business generated from any one of these or all of them combined pales in comparison to search engine rankings.

So what again does an "Unfair Advantage" mean? It essentially means that you are able to generate significantly more leads, significantly better leads, and spend significantly less on generating those leads then your competition can. It means that because of the plethora of leads generated and your lead aquisition cost you can actually grow a business rather then be an independent contractor trying to figure out where the next deal is coming from. It means you have the ability to own a business rather then having a business own you.

How much of traditional real estate agents business is about networking and asking for repeat and referral business? I don't want to say that is a bad idea, but I'll be honest, In six years I have probably only asked that question five or six times and that was when I was still relatively new in the business and that is what I was told I needed to do.

SEO has driven my lead cost into the ground and given me such a competitive advantage that without taking out any loans or liquidating any assets and only using the cashflow from our real estate business we have been able to grow to three real estate offices, three affiliated teams and a couple of incubating teams. As mentioned in an earlier post if we hit our numbers this year we will grow from approximately $73 million in sales in 2007 to somewhere close to $100 million in sales in 2008 with very little overhead and very little risk.

Of course my real passion has been and continues to be web marketing so as a result starting our Real Estate SEO company allows me to really work in the industry that I really enjoy and that is online marketing for independent business people and to help those who want to own a real estate business rather then having the real estate business own them achieve their dreams through web positioning and online marketing.

Bottom line: If you do want to have a truly unfair advantage in your market then please give us a call. We'll either coach you on how to dominate your market through our coaching program or partner with you and do the work we know how to do internally and achieve the same result of getting you your unfair share of leads with which you can grow a business worth owning rather then being owned by your business.

Labels: Business Development, Google, SEO Strategies