Website & SEO Creation | Case Study Update
When you are building your website you want to make sure your site gets indexed as soon as possible.
This gives you time to write your content and set up your posts and pages, optimized with SEO best practices.
If you set up your new website with the correct pages, menu, SEO all your images, get the right keywords down… you should see yourself on page 4 or page 5 of the SERPS within a few days if not sooner. This is a good signal that you are following good SEO best practices.
From there you start to refine your keyword content and narrow in on your target market.
We have been using Rhonda's website that I built as a case study for SEO best practices.
I started Rhonda's website the last week of December in 2015. By January 16th I thought to check her SERPS. It was not my intention to have the site ranking or indexed. It was right around this time there was a subtle Google algorithm shift which really helped agents, small business owners, and marketers to rise in the search engines against some big box competitors. If you were in my webinar: “SEO is Back with a Vengeance”, you will know what I am talking about.
To my surprise and delight her website was on pages 3 and 4 for her keyword phrases. We like to go after about 4 long tail keyword phrases at a time on a website because this will keep the site from becoming diluted to the point that google bots have a difficult time figuring out what your website is about.
We decided at that time to start using the website as a case study.
I finished the design on her website and added all the thin content in February and March.
She keeps climbing up the SERPS.
In April I personally wrote all her in depth content for her long tail keyword phrases. At that time we decided to add another page which are very specific to sellers with a specific keyword phrase we figured we could beat the big real estate boy sites with.
I just checked last night and her seller focused keyword phrases are in spots #1 and #2 on page one on Google now!
This is very exciting news. Does this mean that her phone will ring off the hook? No, not likely. Unless you are in a market where the real estate agents are not doing anything online, it will take time to get leads that are sellers looking to list. There are not as many sellers looking to list as there are buyers looking to buy. But the sellers you do get, are very well worth the effort of making sure you are positioned in the #1 spot on Google page one.
But she is beating out all those sites we all know and don't like:).
Her other keyword phrases have moved up to page 2 and page 3. This is also good news because as we add more content to the site and focus on ranking, her site will keep rising up the SERPS.
Having a great and awesome looking website is important but not the end all, be all. Marketing is an ongoing process. It is not a one time thing. You have to continue to add content to your website. You have to publish to your blog on your website often. The stats show that business owners who post articles 15 times per month receive much more business than those who don't.
Rhonda just had her IDX broker account approved by the MLS. We are going to be adding some IDX pages to her site and optimize them for SEO. We will then allow the site to stew a while before we check the SERPS again.
Once those are in place, we will add some more light boxes to the site that we can send traffic from ads to. This will also help with SEO because it will increase the traffic to the site. This in turn, will get her some buyer leads even though her site is focused on getting listings. This all takes time to gel.
Patience is the key.
We will then start to monitor the traffic. This includes checking analytics to see which keyword phrases are bringing traffic to the website and focus on building content around those terms as long as those terms are congruent with ‘money' terms, ( meaning- those most likely to buy or sell are the ones searching those phrases).
This is an exciting project and I am grateful that Rhonda has allowed me to use her site as a case study.
Rhonda is a Listing Experts Academy member who follows what she learns to apply the best practices for SEO and branding on the internet.
I have more websites I have completed and all the websites are climbing the SERPS. It is so exciting to watch each of my clients' websites climb and also receive compliments from sellers about how great their websites look and feel. Contact me for a list of references if you are considering getting a website built. My clients are happy campers! I do all the design work myself on your websites. I also make sure that you get weekly updates on your website progress.
Of course if you are a DIYer – I have a ton of free website building video tutorials over on my YouTube channel for you!