When’s the last time you updated your website? We get it… as a real estate agent you’re busy meeting new prospects, trying to figure out how to handle 7 showings this weekend, and tirelessly pushing your most recent deal through escrow.
It’s hard to find time to eat lunch, let alone update your website.
Since, at Amitree, we are always looking for ways to help real estate agents do what they do best better, we wanted to share a strategy with you that can help you improve your website and get more leads, without having to spend countless hours.
With some help from Google Trends, updating your real estate website’s copy can be fast and have a significant impact on leads generated over the course of a year.
Why Should I Update My Website When I Don’t Get Leads from It?
Your website is not only the anchor of your digital presence, but it is also a great opportunity to drive leads. Most real estate agents don’t see a large portion of their leads coming from their website. However, this is a missed opportunity to cost-effectively secure a few more clients this year.
What if 1 hour of work on your website could land you even one more client and deal this year?
Seems like a pretty good ROI. But, with the technique below, you’ll be driving a lot more than 1 incremental client per year.
How Does the Copy on My Website Affect Lead-Gen?
Google is the starting point for over 70% of consumers searching for a professional service. Further, organic/search-based leads are second only to leads generated from referrals in terms of likelihood of converting into a client – which makes sense as this person was actively searching for you!
So, even though your website may not be the biggest source of leads for you, the leads that you generate from your website can be very high quality.
Google Search Results
Google has become one of the largest companies in the world by building a foundation on the best search algorithm.
While we’ll spare you the unbelievably complex details of how Google’s algorithm works (and to be honest, nobody outside of the company knows for sure), it is important to know that Google is using cues from your website in order to figure out what your website is about and when to show it in search results.
You can use this to your advantage and get Google to show your website more often in search results if you match the queries your prospects are searching for.
But, how do you figure out what your prospects are searching for? The answer is Google Trends.
Using Google Trends to Drive More Leads
Making sure you are “speaking the same language” as your prospects is key to winning the Google search game. If a prospect searches for “homes for sale in my area” vs “houses for sale in my area” he or she will get different results for each.
Knowing which phrase is searched more often is key to being able to optimize your website to appear in search results more often.
To figure out whether “homes” or “houses” is used more often in the search query phrase above, use Google Trends.
By default, the parameters are set to be looking at US only search volume over the past 12 months in all categories on the web. You can easily play with these parameters to hone in on searches people are conducting in your region, state, city, etc.
We recommend starting from the default parameters and then narrowing down as needed to get more specific.
To continue the example above, if you want to know whether “homes for sale” or “houses for sale” gets more search volume, simply enter each phrase as a “search term”.
Now, to see how that phrase compares to your other phrase, click on “+ Compare” and enter your other phrase.
Once you enter both phrases, Google makes it easy to see which one has higher search volume in the geographic area and timeframe you selected.
Note: Google displays the search volume on a percentile based scale. So, the peak volume of the highest searched phrase you entered will always be 100 and everything else on the chart will be a percentage of that highest search volume.
Taking Action from the Data
In the example above, it’s clear that “homes for sale” gets significantly more (almost double) the search volume of “houses for sale”. So, if you are using the term “houses for sale” on your website, you would want to update that to “homes for sale” in most instances.
But, make sure to check more localized data before making any major updates to see regional trends.
For instance, if doing the same trend search for specific states, you can see that in West Virginia, the two terms are used in almost equal frequency (12-month average of 76 vs. 64) —meaning you would probably want to vary the terminology on your website and use both.
Whereas if you’re based in Colorado, the difference is very large (12-month average of 83 vs. 38) which would tell you to focus heavily on “homes for sale”.
By using the latest technology and tools available, you can make small, but accurate, changes to your website that will result in more traffic, more exposure, and ultimately more leads.
How are you using Google Trends to drive your lead-gen strategy?
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