Why real estate SEO is like real estate investing

Real estate SEO work can really pay off when a campaign is designed correctly. The problem most real estate agents is face is a lack of trustworthy SEO service providers who have the experience to do that.

Q: So how do you design a campaign "correctly?"
A: Think of it like a real estate investment.

I say that real estate SEO is kind of like real estate investing, because you make or lose your money right at the very beginning of the process, before any on-site or off-site SEO work is done. That's not to say that the SEO strategy executed isn't important, or that the quality of the work isn't important. Oh, those things are VERY important. But quality SEO work will lose every time when paired with...drumroll, please...poor keyword research.

In real estate investing, the newbies get all excited about the millions of dollars they are going to make after listening to some supposed guru's video series telling them how to flip properties, or rent them out for passive income, or whatever. Pick your get-rich-quick real estate investing scheme du jour, and someone newbie is going to be out there losing money on it. Why? Because he isn't experienced enough to do the research necessary to know whether the deal is a good one or not.

Every deal looks great when you don't know what you're doing, and visions of wealth has a funny way of tricking the brain into believing stupid things. And that's why real estate investing is a lot like investing in real estate SEO. There is big money to be made in real estate when your site ranks in a top position for keywords that are bringing in buyers. But if the keyword research isn't sound, and the strategy intended to get you to that point isn't designed right from the beginning, it will fail.

Here's why. I call it the patience and tenacity factor. No one wants to spend large amounts of money for an indefinite period of time to obtain a big payoff sometime in the distant future. Let's face it, we're in a society that wants to go out and buy something today and have it delivered yesterday. Knowing that about human nature, and applying it to an SEO campaign for real estate websites, I believe it's best to mix keywords into a campaign that will bring short-term, mid-term, as well as long-term cash flow.

That means having enough budget to afford all those priorities at once (generally $1000/mo. to $5000/mo.), but it also means you'll get a quicker Return on Investment (ROI) by generating leads from keywords that can still close sales within a 3 to 4 month time frame. In the meantime, you are also working on keywords that will bring you leads and sales in the 6 to 8 month time frame, while continuing to work on keywords that I call the Big Kahuna--ones that will bring a very lucrative payoff a year or so from now.

Too many real estate agents give up before even trying quality SEO work. They've tried the cheap SEO scams or offshore outsourcing companies that produce embarrassingly illiterate content. They've tried the $29.99 "directory submissions" schemes online and they didn't work, or worse, got them penalized by Google. And so they think that they can never compete with Trulia, Zillow, and Realtor.com, or that their local competitors have too much of a head start on them that they can never catch up.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

The bad news: Yes, it's going to take some time and budget. Call it patience and tenacity if you like, but believe me, it's worth it.

The good news: You can make money on the way from no rankings to great rankings that can help pay for the SEO work along the way. In some markets your return on investment will be higher and come faster than others. In others markets, it may take a few more months until you start seeing the payoff kick in in a big way. But don't be discouraged by your skepticism or the anti-SEO scare-mongerers. Expert quality real estate SEO is available and does work.

If you knew that spending $2000 a month would bring you $10,000 a month in real estate commissions, who wouldn't take that trade? This is totally achievable for most agents in most markets. Just remember that investing in keywords is like investing in houses. It takes experienced research to pick a winning keyword portfolio.