An SEO Pearl of Wisdom; Opposites do Attract

Getting Found For What You Don’t Do Can be a Good Thing

Buckle your seat-belts folks, this week’s SEO tip is a bit upside-down.

You’ve spent countless hours building a beautiful Real Estate site, filled page after page of compelling, keyword rich content.  You have proper page titles, used the headline tags, even made sure to use alt tags and photo captions.  All your hard work is being rewarded, as you slowly work your way up the page rankings for your chosen keyword phrases.  But are you reaching all of your potential customers?  I can guarantee that many of you are not.  Trust me, I checked.

Why Do I Need a Realtor?

As you all know, I am not a Realtor, so this is a bit of a guess.  But I think I know something that really irritates you, because it used to irritate me too.  When I owned a tech company, one of my biggest on-going battles was people wanting to “do it themselves.”  Keep in mind this was before the days of WordPress or other CMS tools.  If you wanted a really good web site, you needed a really good company to build it.  If you needed networking done, you hired someone to do it.  We heard so many times that a prospect didn’t need us because “the neighbor’s kid would do it for free in his high school computer club.”  How often have you had somebody say to you “Why should I pay an agent?  I can buy an ad in the paper, I can put it online myself.”?

Negative Search Phrases

No, I am not suggesting that you talk bad about people who want to sell their own home, negative in this case means opposite.  When properly done, being found by people searching for the opposite of you can be a very powerful sales tool.  You need to take the irritation these people cause you and use it to create some pearls.  Use “negative search phrases” to create pages showing your potential clients the risks of not hiring you.  Explain how saving a little money on your fee could actually cost them a lot of money in reduced selling prices.  Show them the hazards and pitfalls of doing it themselves.  I’m sure that at some point you have had a home seller sheepishly come to you and say they tried it on their own, now they need professional help.  Tell that story, get testimonilas, if you can…get it on video.  Video is very powerful (but that’s a tip for another day).  In short, you should educate them.  With all the new content directed at this specific group of readers, when someone in your area searches for info on “fsbo”, they will hopefully land on your site instead of somebody offering to sell them a blank sign.

You do need to be cautious with this tactic, if you are too strong, too negative you may come across as having a bad case of “sour grapes,”  making potential clients even more sure that they don’t need you.