This is part three in our five-part series, “Online Real Estate Lead Generation Strategies that Actually Work.”
Last year, Pensacola real estate agent Robin Sherman generated more than 40 transactions from Internet clients—one of which was a $1.5 million dollar sale. This despite the fact that Robin is in a small market where the average transaction is roughly $150,000. In fact, that $1.5 million sale was the second most expensive home sold in the entire two-county area in 2011.
Robin uses several online strategies, including a website that’s well optimized for her keywords, Facebook, and Posterous (a photo blogging tool). But one of her favorite tools for real estate marketing is BizBrag.
What is BizBrag?
BizBrag is a free tool that allows you to create a search engine friendly “social webpage” (called a “Braggit) that can include text, videos, and images. Once your page is created, one click notifies your social media channels — including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, your “BragForce,” (the BizBrag Community) LinkedIn, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, and your email contacts.
Robin’s Top Tips for Using BizBrag To Generate Real Estate Leads
1. Optimize your BizBrag content for neighborhood keywords. Keywords are the cornerstone for search engine visibility. If your online content isn’t optimized for your keywords, the chances are slim that your target audience will ever find you in the search engines.
Some keywords may seem obvious — such as “[your city] real estate,” but competition can be so high for these terms that your pages could be buried in the search results. Instead of optimizing for city terms, Robin says she has achieved better search results when optimizing for neighborhood terms.
“We struggled for quite a while trying to get placement with major key words like Pensacola Real Estate. When we began to focus on neighborhoods with the BizBrag “Braggits” we really began to get some traction with Internet searches.”
Good optimization techniques for BizBrag include using the keyword phrase in the title of the Braggit and a few times within the text. Be sure to also include a variety of related terms such as the city and state name to increase the relevancy of your neighborhood keyword terms.
Here’s an example of one of Robin’s Braggits optimized for the term “Crystal Creek Home for Sale in Pace FL.” When this term is searched in Google, her BizBrag page is on page No. 1.
2. Link to your Braggits to related pages on your website. One of the most heavily weighted factors that determines where a site will rank in the search engine results is the number of related inbound links to the site. When you create content on a site like BizBrag and then link it to your page, this can help boost the ranking of your pages on the search engines.
“We try to create two neighborhood Braggits a week. We also create a page about each neighborhood on our website, and then link the Braggits to our site. This helps drive a lot of targeted traffic into our site because either our Braggits or our own pages are usually at the top of Google searches for specific neighborhoods.”
3. Connect with Local Businesses through BizBrag. Because of how BizBrag’s social networking functions, when you share content with your social connections, that content reaches their social connections as well. To gain more visibility in local areas, make it a point to connect with local businesses, for example — home inspectors, accountants, title companies or other partners that you routinely work with — who will also have local friends.
“If you can find local businesses to connect with through BizBrag, your Braggits can reach their social connections. BizBrag is a fairly new platform, so you may have to introduce it to your partners.”
While BizBrag has been a strong influencer in Robin’s online visibility, it’s important to note that she uses a mix of online tools. Her weekly goal is to post two blog posts, two Braggits, and one post to Posterous each week, in addition to using social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Having a broad mix increases the odds that her content will be where her clients are looking. “We regularly have clients tell us they ‘saw us everywhere’ on the Internet,” she says.
About our Guest Contributor
Christine O’Kelly is the founder of the SEO copywriting company, SEO Content Solutions and the co-founder of the online press release distribution site Online PR Media. An established SEO copywriter and recognized expert on SEO press release marketing, Christine teaches marketers, advertisers, and business owners how to gain more online visibility and publicity for their businesses.
Tracey C. Velt is a writer, blogger and editorial strategist who specializes
in the business of real estate. For the past six years, she's been writing
and editing for REAL Trends, is the editor of the REAL Trends blog and the editor of LORE magazine. Prior to that, she served as an editor for
Florida Realtor magazine and continues to contribute to multiple real estate
publications, both in print and online.One Response to “BizBrag: A Little Known Tool That Is Driving Real Estate Sales”
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Thank you Tracy and RealTrends for the writeup, and thanks to Robin for all the kind words!
We’re very excited that Realtors have been seeing success with our platform, and are always available to help out and answer any questions our users have about social marketing and search engine optimization.
Best of luck to everyone!