A Letting agency s shop window is no longer a place on the high street, it is now online 1
Let s start by breaking down the two ways in which search engines will send you more traffic: 1. Search Engine Optimization SEO is the process of ranking in Google & Bing for all the search queries that relate to all of your services, the aim here is to reach your targeted audience with little or no marketing budget. 2. Local SEO for most agencies, having a strong local presence in the organic (unpaid) search results and maps is the most cost-effective lead generation tool they ll ever know. 2
Index Submit your Sitemap with Google & Bing 4 Register with Google Places & Bing Places for Business 6 Google Places 7 Bing Places 8 Social Signals 10 Google + 10 Backlinks 11 Blogging 12 Video Marketing 16 Tracking and Changing 17 Letting Agency Solution 17 About the Author 18 3
1. Submit your Sitemap with Google & Bing One of the very first steps in helping your website to have an improved chance of coming up on the first page of search results is to ensure your website has been submitted with Google and Bing. After you submit your website, the next thing to do is to ensure that your site map has been submitted. A site map is a map of all the pages on your website. Submitting these to Google & Bing makes them aware of the pages and content on the pages quicker than it would if they were trying to find this content themselves. Step 1 Visit GoogleSubmitContent Once you submit your website URL, you will want to create a Webmaster Account. You can activate an account here through WebmasterTools. Step 2 Select add site. You will need to verify that you have permission to access a website. An easy way to do this is by selecting the alternative options tab and verifying that you have access via Google analytics. If you do not have analytics set up yet, I would highly recommend this. Google Analytics allows you view your website traffic and pretty much everything about your traffic. 4
Step 3 Visit XMLsitemaps and enter your domain name. Now choose how frequently your content is updated. If you update it daily with fresh properties directly onto the site, select daily, however if it s a static site just containing set information, then it is best to state that its only updated monthly, annually etc. Step 4 Now download the sitemap where instructed to on the page and upload it to the domain root folder on your website. This is something you may need your web development company to do. Step 5 Once you have uploaded the sitemap, you simply go into your webmaster tools and from the left hand toolbar select crawl and then sitemaps and confirm sitemap. Now that your site and your sitemap have been submitted, you can rest assured that the Google & Bing spiders will visit your content and rank it. 5
2. Register with Google Places and Bing Business Google places and Bing Places are location-based search results on both Google and Bing. They are accompanied by a map of the area in question. Appearing on these results is particularly valuable for local businesses. Many agencies in your region may not already be benefiting from this FREE source of advertising and as soon as you do, the only regret you will have is that you didn t do this before. In order to set your business up on Google Places in 5 minutes, follow these steps. N.B. You need to have a Google account which can be a Gmail account etc. 6
Google Places Step 1 You will need to enter your business details Google places for business Remember to click that you are a service and enter the radius from your office location where you operate. This way if someone within this radius searches for your service you will return in the search results. Step 2 Submit your details. You will be asked to confirm your details now by postcard or continue and verify later. Choose verify later as otherwise you will have to wait until you receive the postcard, which can take approximately 3 weeks, to complete your business. Step 3 Add your business details. Make sure to include a good, concise description. Also include your opening hours, a copy of your company logo or picture of your shop and lastly, make sure to include your business description; Real Estate Agent Step 4 To verify, confirm your address and contact details and click verify. You will receive a postcard in the post in 2-3 weeks, just login with your profile and verify. 7
Bing Places Bing Places is next and in order to register with Bing places, you must first verify or register with Business 118. Bing have outsourced this service with Business118. This can be done by visiting 118information with Bing. Step 1 Enter your postcode and security request. Step 2 A list of businesses at this post code will appear if your business does not appear simply click the click here and submit your details. Step 3 Once you have submitted your details with a new listing or though a listing you will receive a phone call within 24 hours to verify your details. Now that you registered with Business 118, you now need to register with Nokia Maps who have partnered with Bing on the mapping side of things. 8
Step 1. Visit Primeplace, enter your business name and Address. Step 2. Confirm your map location, business details and most importantly; your services. Letting agents should choose Business Service followed by Apartment Rental. Step 3 Submitting your business. This is where you will need to register with Nokia in order to continue. This should only take a couple of seconds. Step 4 Just as before with Google, you will now need to verify your business and await your postcard in the post. Step 5 Business information: very similar to previously with Google you will now enter your business details etc. One area which is different is that you can now enter up to 10 keyword search terms e.g. letting agent in Brighton 9
3. Social signals A recent study noted that the highest influence of SEO on a URL is passed through social signals. Social signals are when your URL gets mentioned on the web by a social user in the form of a like, a share, a +1, a comment, a tweet etc. Below is a graph thanks to Searchmetrics which outlines the highest influences by score that affect your website positioning in search terms. As you can see Google+ is the leader, with Facebook and backlinks a close second. Source SearchMetrics Google + Google + is now the second largest social network taking over from Twitter earlier in 2013. When a user is logged in to Google+ they can +1 a website they visit, an article they read, a video they watched etc. This basically is verifying with Google that this user is giving this site, article etc. a vote. The more votes or +1 s it receives, the higher it will return the website. In order to place a +1 button on to your website, Google + requires you to enter a simple piece of code. Rather than replicate everything that Google will guide you through step-by-step, here is a simple link on installing Google+1 10
4. Backlinks An important part of a search engine s results is how many times your website is spoken about on the web. The more times your website is mentioned on the web, the more credibility search engines give your website; Google call this PageRank. The higher a PageRank held by the source of your website s referral, the more credibility it gives to your website. So for example, if your website received a mention from the HuffingtonPost (PageRank of 7) it could be worth equally as many as 100s of mentions from a free online business directory with a PageRank of N/A or 1. You can check your PageRank easily by entering your domain here. I would recommend installing a rage ranking tool bar called Mozbar through Google chrome for free. Once installed, it will give you the PageRank of any website and with a couple of extra clicks, give you many more details which may interest you about the site. This is really useful if you are studying your competitors websites. One great way to analyse your competitor s website and its backlinks is to use a website analyzer such as opensite explorer. I would highly recommend this. As you can see where your competitors are listed, you will most likely find a number of really good links where you can also claim a backlink. 11
5. Blogging Blogs are a really great way to create fresh content on your website and generate traffic based on this content. A typical lettings website will not have much fresh content on a monthly basis, bar its listed properties. If you are using an RSS feed to push properties onto your site from a portal, you won t really have any fresh content in the eyes of the search engine spiders. Some people may stay away from blogging as they might think they are not great at writing, but to be honest there is nothing to worry about. You only really need to be writing content about what you know best, which is the property industry in your region. One thing I would suggest is to write content with the locations you cover in mind. For example, if I was a letting agency based in Brighton I would discuss Renting in Brighton rather than the London Property Bubble. 12
If you are looking to generate traffic to your website, I would strongly recommend selecting a title which might be searched for word for word. For example if a first-time tenant is looking to find a property they might search Rent in Brighton. This way you are creating content to fit exactly what your target market is searching for in your region. One great way in creating SEO focused blog content for traffic to your site is by doing the following: Step 1 Think of a title which you feel might appeal to your customers. I am going to use the term renting Brighton as my example. Step 2 Now get the most searched for title with those keywords in order to generate the largest traffic, ubersuggest allows you to enter a search term and gives you different suggestions of how this term could be searched for. 13
Step 3 Copy the suggestions and use Google Keyword Tool to give you an estimate for the monthly searches for these terms. Make sure to specify the location of the search to that of your Location i.e. United Kingdom 14
Step 4 Select the most relevant keyword search terms with best traffic. One point to bear in mind is that the lower the competition, the easier it is to rank for this keyword on the first page. Step 5 In this instance I have chosen renting in Brighton as it receives approx 1600 searches a month and the competition rate is a.64 which is achievable to compete with. If you follow these steps you are now creating traffic for over 1600 searches every month just through one blog An example of an agency blogging for traffic of this can be seen here 15
6. Video Marketing If YouTube were a country it would be the third largest behind China and India (according to YouTube). Video marketing is where it is at right now for most brands, with the power of video and its accessibility from consumer s devices makes it a great way to push your message. Rather than go through the steps of setting up your letting agency channel, I thought it best to show you the steps through Video 16
7. Tracking & changing Now that you have made or are in the process of making all of the changes to drive more traffic to your website, it really is essential to monitor that traffic. The easiest way of monitoring your website s traffic has to be through Google Analytics. Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications. The key to analytics is tracking what has worked well for your website, to learn from that and to continue doing the same. 8. Letting agency Solution With the new traffic generated through your SEO work, the next step is to turn that traffic into revenue. With Rentview, you can offer additional features to both landlords and tenants that your competition may not already offer. Now you can manage your complete portfolio with ease with an all-in-one letting agency software. 17
Andreas has spent over 10 years within the industry, he built his agency to be one of the largest independent property management companies in Ireland within this period. Having let and managed thousands of units within this time he also managed a team of letting agents and understands the business, its customers and how best to manage them. Feel free to connect with Andreas, if you have any questions email Andreas@rentview.com 18