When It Comes to Your Digital Marketing Strategy, Taking the First Step Can Make or Break You

The last few weeks have been busier than normal. What else is new, right? But really, it has been super busy. I've been working on creating a huge new project that has been keeping me up at night. Being busy is actually a good thing. I would rather be actively engaged in good causes than be bored or lazy. 

This project has been on my mind for a couple of years now but I did not know how exactly to put it all together.  I am so excited about this new project. 

The reason I'm so excited is this focuses on answering the question that has been keeping me up at night: 

“How can I help busy real estate agents to get their SEO best practices up and running faster and more efficiently? In other words, what exactly would this look like? What does it take to get on the #FastTrack to SEO your site to the top of the search engines and still be able to work with buyers and sellers and not go broke?” 

 

 

I realized it has been over 10 years now since I started learning about SEO and applying all that I learned to our real estate company website and our brand. Zig Ziglar once said, “if you want to be an expert in a subject study one hour a day for five years and you will know more than most people who are in that field.” I did the math and started studying about SEO for 6 to 8 hours a night when the rest of the family was sleeping. In one year, I was able to apply what I learned. 

Blogging about SEO and creating tutorials for agents to follow, sharing our successes and helping ActiveRain members was how it all got started with paying it forward. Back in the day, there was no ActiveRain University. 

This is what inspired me to create the popular course: SEO to the Top. For years agents have been taking SEO to the Top modules and trainings. 

It seems as though time keeps going by faster and faster. This got me to thinking about how Universities and High Schools now offer fast tracks to get through school faster and more efficiently. 

Over the years I've had the opportunity to personally coach individual agents just like you. This has helped me create more efficient programs and modules for you to use in your marketing and businesses. 

I've also had the awesome blessing of helping many of these agents rise to the top of the search engines. Agents who have applied what I teach enjoy page one placement for their keyword phrases which results in listings and buyers as well as very good branding. 

Through this journey I kept not only a watchful eye, performed testing on keywords and other SEO strategies but also kept data and notes on which techniques are getting real estate agents up to the top of google faster than before. Over 10 years of data, of defining, of testing and of learning from the great masters of SEO on the internet has transformed into #FastTrackSEO to the Top. 

The point is during that time I've amassed an incredible amount of knowledge, skills, information and applications about what it takes to get to page one on Google and the other search engines which in turn you can then apply to hopefully get the same benefits as I have and all the agents whom I have helped have. 

So why would any of this keep me up at night? 

Simple. It's one thing to know this stuff. It is something quite different to take everything about the SEO best practices and put it into some kind of immediately usable format that can help you to get to where you want to go more rapidly. 

Well, I have it figured out. It's take a long time and it's a lot of work putting it together, but I have now built a full out end to end system which will teach anyone how to do this including you and other busy agents. 

I'd like to share more specifics about the actual #FastTrack SEO to the Top path however there are still some more pieces to get nailed down. For one thing, I'm trying to decide how many people I can accommodate and I don't want to raise expectations and then not be able to meet those obligations. And the last thing I want is a bunch of disappointed agents on my hands! 

Do you have 1 minute to help me help you to #FastTrack your SEO strategies? 

There is one other thing… 

You see, I like think I've covered all of the elements of my new #FastTrackSEO to the Top system. In fact, I'm thrilled to say after two years of hard work I'm about to finalize everything for this system. 

But before I do, I want to make sure I've covered all the bases. This is where you come in…. 

I want know your thoughts about fast tracking your SEO strategies and best practices. 

I've made it incredibly easy for you to send your thoughts and ideas to me. Just click here right now:  

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FastTrackSEO

Now, I can't promise an individual answer to each of your questions and comments- with over 2500 subscribers on ActiveRain and over 4500 followers on Facebook there is no way that I can do that. But I can promise you that I will be personally reading each and every one of your questions- and I might be answering some of those on my blog. 

Thanks in advance for sharing your questions with me, I promise I will take good notes! 

Remember to click the link below to send me your SEO questions. I really appreciate your help! 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FastTrackSEO

Google Signals- Is The End Coming Soon for Google +?

Google Signals- Is the End Coming Soon for Google +? 

There have been some interesting updates by Google lately as related to their huge push to really get Google + to be a social network and compete in the networking space. 

I actually really like Google +. I love the communities that you can build and for many ideas and forums, it is perfect. However, for the majority of people Google + just did not offer anything big enough to have them either add Google + to their social networking tasks or to engage on the platform. 

Facebook just does not offer the same kinds of communities that Google + does. For instance, I love San Francisco. I used to live in San Francisco. So when I go to San Francisco I naturally take a lot of photos of my favorite places there, etc. To keep my heart in San Francisco one of the things I did was to start a community on Google + called San Francisco. I post my photos there but also people from San Francisco join the community and add their photos and conversation. I love that. 

On the other hand, for buyers and sellers here in South Florida- Google + is just not being used by those consumers. Most of our networking is peer to peer inside of the real estate communities. Referrals are great too! 

 

In 2012 Google made a really big push for you to have a Google + account when you signed up for YouTube, Adwords, etc. It looked like it was forced, but actually it was very difficult to find a way to skip that step. 

This no longer is the case. There was no big announcement about it. It just happened. Now you don't need to have a Google + account. Without being so “in your face” with the signups, new users won't be joining as frequently and that is one of the silent signals that Google + is going down. 

In April the person at Google who handled Google + ( Vic Gundotra) announced he was leaving Google. Did he see the writing on the wall? 

Of course we all remember how this past June, Google killed authorship and snippets including author photos and circle counts. I have my own opinion about why this happened but that would be another post. Most people believe that this is also a silent signal that the end of Google + is going to be coming down the pipeline. 

A very important component to Google + is  “Hangouts”. This was the one part of the platform that differentiated itself from other social networks. Now Google Hangouts is available as an app even if you do not have a Google + account. That is another silent signal. 

There is talk in the tech world that Google is planning to open up a photo service called Google + Photos where Google is not going to require you to have a Google + account in order to use this product. 

So they have moved their hangouts out of the Google + only arena and looks as if the photos will also go that way. Without those 2 main pieces there is nothing much left for regular users that would make them stay or open up a Google + account. Without new members opening up new accounts- the social piece of Google + will not be able to survive. 

Google has been getting rid of local biz six packs which is a good thing because for real estate related sites, the local agents traffic went up when that happened, not down. But is that another silent signal? It seems like a lot of work going to waste especially after Google just recently integrated your google local pages into Google+. 

It seems by looking at this information that Google is quietly taking apart Google + piece by piece. 

Of course you should never have all of your eggs in one basket but if they are all in the Google + basket, I suggest strongly that you start taking your content out and getting a plan B for your eggs going. 

There are some quite awesome SEO benefits to being on Google +. You can even build out nice content pages using #hashtags and long tail keywords and then link to those pages. Every post you write on Google + has its own URL that you can market. That helps to get your content to show up oin the SERPS. Our Google + pages still show up in the SERPS. What will happen to those SERPS only time will tell. 

It is recommended that you begin to shift your focus to other networks and to build your own networks on your own websites. Most of us do not get the kind of traffic one would need to make it this an efficient strategy. 

My advice is to continue to use Google + while it is still around however, don't keep all your efforts only there. Make sure you have a social media strategy for all of the social networks as well as your own websites. 

When rumors and speculation happens like this a lot of marketers start jumping ship. Let them. If more of your competitors leave Google + the more you can capitalize on any traffic you can create by understanding how to use this to your SEO advantage.

Get your Free SEO Guide here: http://SEOFieldGuide.net