Maybe you focused on the wrong search engines

Are you spending a tone of time, effort and money trying to increase your search engine ranking with little success?

Maybe you're concentrating too much effort on the wrong search engines - Google, Yahoo!, etc..

Those are the wrong search engines? Right. The reasons for that are the topic of a later post.

There are other heavily-visited search engines that can produce quick results with little effort, and where you can be the only agent that's found. Not just the # 1 agent - the only agent.

By now you've heard of YouTube, a video-sharing site, and Flickr, a photo-sharing site. They're also search engines for video and photos, and the 5^th and 39^th most visited sites on the Web.

I'd describe these sites as black holes for real estate agents, except for the fact that almost no real estate agents have been sucked into using them. And even fewer agents are using them effectively - as a way to showcase their market niche to the people who are seeking information about it.

Those people are often the very-valuable relocation clients agents are eager to reach.

In a later post I'll tell you why YouTube and Flickr are so valuable, and why posting to them increases your search engine rank on Google and the mainstream search engines. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, go to Flickr or YouTube and search for photos or video about your neighborhood, or whatever you've defined as the focus of your blog. I'm betting you won't find any real estate agents. You might also want to reflect on the title of my inaugural post: Almost everything you've been doing is wrong.

Posted by Joe Zekas on 02/01/2007 01:52 PM

Comments (10)

youtube, flickr, photos, video, search engines, web marketing

10 Comments on Maybe you focused on the wrong search engines

Thanks for the insight and great ideas. I'll give it a try ang blog later about the results.

02/01/2007 02:08 PM

by David R. Fuller (Realty Executives)

You have made some very good points here. I visited the sites you mentioned. I found that in my area with over 12,000+ listings, only 1 agent had their client feature their home on Flikr. It was a home in an area which has lovely mansion style homes, but with the recent difficulties in the market has seen it's share of excess inventory resulting in longer marketing times. This home sold relatively quickly...I wonder if the agent was aware that her client was cross marketing the listing this way?

Also, another thing that comes to mind is that as real estate agents who should presumably be the "experts" in marketing, what happens when we show up for presentations and our clients start to suggest marketing ideas to us or ask us about sites like these of which we are totally clueless???

I am intrigued by the concept of being able to "tell a story" to engage potential buyers.

Lola Audu, CRS GRI

www.auduhomes.com

02/01/2007 02:25 PM

by Lola Audu~Audu Real Estate~Grand Rapids, MI Real Estate

Well I DID find a cool dish for my Super Bowl party.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B3A3XKVPh_Y

02/01/2007 02:31 PM

by Rob Robinson- Lehigh Valley PA (Bertrum Settlements (Title & Abstract))

Rob,

You must be a Colts fan.

I lived up the road from you in Mount Carmel, PA until I was 12 - don't remember those kind of dishes, although my dad was strangely fond of rabbit.

02/01/2007 02:39 PM

by Joe Zekas (YoChicago / New Homes Magazine)

lol - originally from Philly - Yo. Hey, it was was raining rats and dogs once.

Mount Carmel...geeze, what a quaint town...I like to take a mental break and drive up to Wellsboro every other year. How'd ya get out - follow Rt 61?

Sorry to take your blog off topic. I think you have an excellent point about other means of getting a message out. I look forward to future blogs.

02/01/2007 02:47 PM

by Rob Robinson- Lehigh Valley PA (Bertrum Settlements (Title & Abstract))

Staying off topic, I love Allentown. Have a newspaper client there (the Morning Call).

Back in the days when I was a lawyer I used to attend client meetings at Mack - if you've ever spent much time around there, you'll never get bulldogs completely out of your mind. Bulldogs everywhere.

02/01/2007 03:05 PM

by Joe Zekas (YoChicago / New Homes Magazine)

My first thought is that people don't go to YouTube and Flickr to find a real estate agent. Your concept is still intriguing; I'll look for the follow-up post.

02/01/2007 03:10 PM

by John Novak - Las Vegas and Henderson NV Real Estate (Keller Williams Realty The Marketplace)

John,

I'm not suggesting they go there to find a real estate agent. Most people, as you know, don't actively seek out a real estate agent. They encounter the one they wind up working with more or less by chance - and often work with the first one they find that seems marginally acceptable.

People who are thinking about moving to a community do go to Flickr and YouTube to get a feel for what it's like, and some idea about the kind of people who live there.

Photo / video descriptions can contain links to an agent's Web site steering people to more info about the community. They also link to a profile that can give more information about the person who posted the photo / video and a link to their Web site.

People don't go to YouTube or Flickr looking for Chicago Web sites - but I can assure you that these sites drive a lot of traffic to our YoChicago site.

02/01/2007 03:25 PM

by Joe Zekas (YoChicago / New Homes Magazine)

Joe,

Thanks for the post. The information on the sites and four insight on the prospective use.

02/02/2007 07:05 AM

by William Collins, Broker Associate (ERA Queen City Realty)

I started using youtube for free hosting. They host the video and I put it on my web sites and blog. I have put my logo in the videos in case they have found me thru youtube and not my site. I use the windows movie maker that comes with xp for free.

02/12/2007 11:10 PM

by Jeff Link "The Asheville Luxury Real Estate Guy" (Keller Williams Professionals Asheville)

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