Savannah GA Real Estate
Monday, July 14, 2008 at 11:10AM Where would you find more pertinent knowledge about Savannah GA real estate? A magazine in Savannah that prints magazines for a living? Yahoo? A website for city data? A REAL ESTATE AGENT WHO WORKS IN REAL ESTATE EVERYDAY IN SAVANNAH?
Uh, let's see, I think I'll go with the real estate agent. Yet, only 4 results of the top 20 results on Google for "Savannah Ga real estate" are real estate companies. I will give Homegain a break because they are leading consumers to agents, but the rest don't know squat about real estate in Savannah.
Hopefully Google is changing the way results are calculated and its algorithm will detect relevance much better. I am one of the 4, so I'm not complaining for selfish reasons -- I'm complaining because consumers should get better search results -- or perhaps agents should do a better job getting found on Google -- I don't know which it is, but I know that an agent who works day in and day out is superior when it comes to giving viable information and explaining all the nuances of an area. These other results will lead to pictures of homes and and iffy information and that's about it.
I know some people have denigrated Google search as an effective lead generator, and I don't know what their experience is, but I can unequivocably say that for me Google is my main lead generator by far -- not just lead generator, but revenue generator.
It's also true that the thinner tailed results are probably more effective and that agents come up more on the focused searches, but still it amazes me that "real estate" doesn't bring up more...uh....uh.... well, real estate results.
Reader Comments (7)
Mike
This is the problem I have with google. The search results in ANY category really have nothing to do with the "authority" of the people behind the website.
A realtor's website that shows up on the front page shouldn't give the consumer any confidence that the realtor is any good, but rather that the realtor is good at getting their web site on the front page of google.
Social media has the opportunity to break the google "chokepoint". The trusted referrals of friends in your network will lead to better "search" results than google ever will.
THis is why I find it odd that the 2.0 crowd is advocating blogging and "writing for google" as a way of getting visitors.
Consumers may soon figure out that the agent that has the blog best optimized for SEO may not be the best real estate agent.
In savannah ga luckily the two are synonomous but in most cases they probably are not.
That's the other side of it. But at least if the agent sites are showing up people can read the blogs and get a feel for the agents and tell whether they know what they're talking about.
When some city-data or magazine site shows up, they don't get much of anything personal or service oriented.
Social media marketing will overtake Google if Google doesn't find a way to offer more and more relevant results. If social media creates user to user information gathering in creative and useful ways Google may start losing some of its traffic and therefore ad dollars and PPC revenue.
That's right-Google right now is the best way to search for information And services.
It may always be the best place to find information but as for subjective things like services, advice etc, google may be come less relevant.
Mike:
What I have learned from trying to become the best real estate broker and on the first page of google is to be sure you target the right keywords.
I noticed you are on the first page for 'savannah ga real estate', but according to google, only 6,600 searches are done on that keyword per month, whereas, 'savannah georgia real estate' has 14,800 and 'savannah real estate' has 74,000.
My tip to you is to use Google's own keyword tool to find the best terms to showcase your 'best services' in Savannah: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Brad, yes, i was using that as an example. There are other more effective search terms, too, that i do well on. I was mainly talking not so much about my results but results in general for real estate related terms -- how the results should be oriented toward agents who know about real estate.
I'm with you Mike. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Brad