If you’ve dabbled in the marketing world, you’ve probably heard the acronym SEO thrown around more than a few times.
So, like, what does SEO even mean?
Search Engine Optimization: the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results, often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned results.”
In simpler terms, SEO means utilizing keyword strategies to make your website visible and to help your website rank higher in search engines like Google.
So, what are the benefits of using Search Engine Optimization you might ask? For those of our readers who are in the homebuilding industry, becoming savvy with SEO will help your community become more visible to potential homebuyers in the Google search, and ultimately drive more traffic to your website.
If you’re unsure where to even start, don’t panic! Below are some tips of how you can optimize your website and strategize when it comes to choosing your keywords.
Check Out The Competition
The first thing you should do before optimizing your website is to check out the competition and see what keywords they are using (blog coming soon on specific tools to use!). Once you’ve narrowed down a solid list, you can then utilize these keywords and incorporate them into your own website and target your specific audience.
It’s All About Placement!
When you’re putting your website together, the placement of keywords is what will help your site move up in the search engine ranks:
Page Title: “The blue links are the Page Titles that each of those websites has selected. Google reads the Page Title (along with the other elements below) to try to determine what this page is about. The more relevant your Page Title to your home buyer’s search, the better chance you’ll have of getting found.”
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com.
URL: The structure of your URL name might not seem like a big deal, but in fact, it’s one of the most important places to optimize your keywords. Here’s another example from https://blog.hubspot.com:
Many home builders structure their URLs like this:
www.homebuilder.com/communityname
OR
www.homebuilder.com/pageid=47
A better URL structure would be “www.homebuilder.com/available-new-homes-community-name-denver-co.” Now that’s a URL that Google can understand! (and now Google can help your prospects find you).
The Meta Description:
This should be a combination of keywords and key phrases that are relevant to your community. Mountain House is a family-friendly community that is currently selling new homes, but also offers incredible amenities that these kinds of homebuyers could be looking for, like parks and schools. Below you can see an example of the meta description:
Location, Location, Location
Location, Location, Location
One of the most important keywords you can optimize is the LOCATION of your community. You can include this in the meta description, headers, page titles, the URL name, etc. More than likely your prospective homebuyers are going to be including a specific location into their search, so make sure yours is known!
Insider note: SEO takes practice! The more you do it, the faster it will become second nature. Now that you have an introduction, you can start to get an idea of where to optimize your keywords.
As I briefly mentioned above, we’ll also be highlighting specific TOOLS this month to help you compile your rock-solid list of keywords. Stay tuned!