#184 Mail-Right Show: Going Super Local With Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Part 2

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Real Estate Agents You Need to Know About Going Super Local With Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Part 2

In this episode of the Mail-Right show, we finish off our look at how individual agents or small teams can effectively compete with the big boys like Zillow and also large national franchise brokerages by going super local in your SEO (search engine optimization) & general marketing. We talk about using video and why it so powerful connected to get you on page one of Google. In the second half of the show, we look at a recent article that the Curaytor team published on their website titled “The 19 fastest ways to get listings in 20191.”

Jonathon: Welcome back folks to the Mail Right show. This is episode 184. We are going to be continuing our discussion from last week. And that`s around how to become a super local marketing machine utilizing the power of SEO. I’ve got my great cohosts with me, Robert Newman. Robert, would you like to introduce yourself to the ne

Robert: Sure, I’d love to. Yeah, this is Robert. I’m the founder of Inbound REM. We are what are referred to as an inbound marketing company. Think of it as an SEO plus, plus, plus company that we focus on pre helping our clients create great content. Or we create it for them whatever. Anyway, go ahead.

Jonathon: Alright, alright. I just want to welcome the new listeners. This month looks like it’s going to be our biggest month ever for listeners. And if you are new to the show, we really appreciate you spending a bit of time with us. And hopefully you’re going to find some real valuing in our upcoming discussions. So Robert, we had a bit of a dive last week. We got a bit SEO Technical, didn’t we? But it’s a subject where it tends to go that way. Doesn’t it Robert?

Robert: It does. Especially when you let me talk for 15 minutes straight. That’s why he’s laughing everybody. He is trying really nicely.

Jonathon: He is in a bad mood already.

Robert: We’re not going to talk about it. We will merely say that the world is not been kind to me today, but we’ll move on and hopefully we will, I will be kind to everybody else. I will hopefully give them some great tips that there’ll be able to use or you will or we will however that works out.

Jonathon: Yeah. So we are going to delve back in to the subject and we’ve agreed to start off with video. So Robert tells us about SEO local search and video. And why it’s all linked and why it’s really important.

Robert: Sure. So we covered so much ground yesterday. I’m just going to do a brief recap because we talked about citations and we talked about, I’m sorry it wasn’t yesterday. It was last week. We talked about citations and we talked about location. We did a very specific look at Reno, which by the way is where John lives everybody. And I posted his address on my website enjoy. I’m just kidding. Anyway, he’s in Reno and we took a look at that. But here’s the thing that we didn’t get a chance to discuss. So a video, which we’ve talked about many different times, also plays a part in local, which is probably why we keep talking about video and over and over again. I certainly talk about video with my clients pretty much every single day. So how does video actually affect type of local?

Well, first of all, when we are, we’re saying video, let’s be specific. We’re talking about YouTube, which is a Google owned company. And it’s not very well known, but I think it’s becoming known is that over the years Google has increased the metadata. So let’s just say that you have an android phone, like my phone right here on my Samsung, my Samsung nine. When you take video with these phones and they’re using their operating system, strangely enough, they’re instructing the phone to add a certain amount of information, which is commonly referred to as metadata. When you take a picture or when you take a video.

One of the pieces of metadata that your phone is recording, which you can disable if you know how but it is automatically recorded if you don’t know how. Is a location and time and all sorts of other good information. So let’s just say that you take a picture or video with your phone and you happen to be in Reno where John’s at. And you do a little 15 minute video talking about how awesome it is to ski in Reno. And you shoot some people skiing and then you decide to upload that video to YouTube. Well, they can see your geo-location tag. It’s what they call it. So geo-location tag, and it is a latitude and longitude of your precise location when you filmed the video to star.,

Jonathon: It’s got your blood type, when you were born. What films you love.

Robert: Sexual preferences and then they compile that with the book of data they have with young Google, no it actually, but hopefully we’re kidding. Maybe we’re not, we don’t even know like but, but needless to say that information does get recorded. So here’s the funny thing. Very few people, very few of your competitors, I’m sure you as well. Guess what? Not a lot of people are doing business listing somewhere combined with video that is uploaded by the owner of a business. Which is why when you combine these strategies together, they become supremely powerful because if you’re getting citations, if you’re getting reviews, if you’ve uploaded a few videos that have a geo-location tag, but let Google know beyond a shadow of a doubt where you are now. Believe it or not, they can actually get a pretty damn good idea of how local you truly are.

Jonathon: Yeah. This is one thing I want to confirm with you and it’s linked to video. But probably our listeners, you properly set up your free Zillow, you have gone to realtor.com. The free profile part we should be, but what a lot of our listeners probably or a subsection of them, Robert. Is they need to grab that Google business page and they need to fill it all in and they need to add in some video.

Robert: Yes, yes. All too all those things. Yes.

Jonathon: I don’t want to push you off track. I would never do that. Would I Robert?

Robert: No you would never send me down a rabbit hole.

Jonathon: No I would not do that. But I think it’s really important that the listeners know that they’ve got this Google business page. Do you want to leave that after you finished your presence or do you want to talk a little bit about that now? What do you want to do?

Robert: Google, you’re talking about that page that sets up hyper local to start with?

Jonathon: Yeah, the Google business page.

Robert: Okay. Google my business. Start out for Google for free. All right, so guys, I’m going to share my screen as I did last night, so we’re talking about it right now. Talk about it briefly because this is where everything starts.

Jonathon: He is mixing last Tuesday with last night. I don`t know what`s going on folks.

Robert: Holy Cow. Guess what? My Google phone starting to record the conversation. It’s literally recording because I said my Google and so it turned on my phone. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. All right, sorry. All right, so participant or hold on let me see. Why can’t I share it? Did you, you finally disabled my permissions, didn’t you? That’s a smart move.

Jonathon: No.

Robert: You see my screen?

Jonathon: Yeah I do.

Robert: Okay, so guys, the way that I got here is I Google Google my business page. All right. And then it gets because that is a brand name. So it is Google my business. Then the first listing that we have is right here. So its google.com forward slash business is the actual URL. Or you do what I do. And you put in Google my business and then what you do is you click on it and then you walk through, you sign it, you sign, you walked through your page. Okay, so here’s my page. Inbound real estate marketing. I’ve had 658 views connected to 585 searches. You can put in a latest post. I’m sure there is someplace to do videos here. Certainly there’s a lot of things to do. Photos. Now here’s the trick about photos.

Robert: So the same thing applies to photos is it as it applies to video. So you should, if you can take your phone and take a few videos and upload them to this page. It is literally the first way Google confirms your local location is by the metadata in your photos. So if you’re at your office, which would be the best place to be, you should take a few photos and you should upload them onto the site. You can also see reviews here and you can see my, I mean I have lots of reviews so you can see them all here. You can see this is a master page. My favorite page, this page I look at the most is my insights page. So now you can see all the searches that I’ve been getting found for real estate marketing tops the list. Real estate marketing companies. So you can see here when you’ve got a really established page you get to.

Jonathon: There is just one thing with this and I just wanted to see what you think about this. Is you are at a brokerage and you got to confirm your business that you own. Google wants you to confirm ownership of this page and they do it by sending a card. They require you to have a physical address. And they really clamped down on this because there was a law of shady stuff going on. There are people claiming multiple physical addresses in a major city, and various things. Now would you send, would you have them send the card to the brokerage because I think that’s kind of confusing Google. Or do you think you need to find some way of having, if you don’t want to use your home, you’re gonna have to find, some way to get a physical business address and have that card sent to it. What are your feelings around this?

Robert: That`s a really insanely good point. So this is where a local can get complicated and John has tapped into it. This is location. So if you’re in a brokerage with many other people and you John took away my go to, which is use your home address. So you can technically use a post office box if they have a physical address that makes it obvious. A little non obvious that it is a post office box so you can actually use another location. You can also, and it really just depends upon your, if you’re a starting agent in your first couple of years, you should not do any of this because once again, local, just like everything else and building one of these pages and getting it ranked well and doing all the things, it takes a while. It takes a long time. It’s a long term investment. Build the page.

Jonathon: I totally disagree with you there. I think you should be doing this. It’s free. It’s not gonna cost you money and a lot your compensation isn’t going to do it. So if I was to start in office agent this would be an area that I will be totally hot on.

Robert: Sure enough. I just think it’s just a lot of work and like everything else, it gets a little complicated. Because you’re asking me one of the most complicated questions, which is location because here’s the thing guys.

Jonathon: Keep it simple folks, use your home address.

Robert: That`s the simple answer and business like your business license because you can’t say Sheila Harris Corp and that, but you can, I clearly identify that you’re an agent for Ari Max in Reno. And that’s all great.

Jonathon: And if you don`t want to send it to your home address It`s going to get a little bit more complicated folks. But if you want an easy life listen to Uncle Robert. Send it to your home address. All right, let’s for once on this podcast try to keep it simple.

Robert: Too late, gone, that`s done. No, forget it. So guys, the second half of the show, because I think we’ve covered everything there is to cover. I’m going to stop sharing my screen and we’re going to go back to.

Jonathon: No I have got some other stuff. Let me see if you will agree with it. And we’ve got about three or four minutes before. Is that folks I think I’ll be interested to see if Robert agrees with this. The more Google properties you use, the more Google will love you, the more Google knows about you. So set up your Google business page, use YouTube to market your videos. And also use Google photos service. You are able to upload photos and I think also they can upload video. And then with one click you can push them to your YouTube account. Google and its unlimited storage. I think they have a pro version of the photo app. But you should be taking a load of photos and videos into 2019. My blessed agents and unless you aim is soon going to clog up, you’ll find memory. So you should be uploading them to surface anyway and I would suggest they got an APP for android and iPhone and it works pretty well. Upload them to Google photo. What do you reckon Robert?

Robert: Agreeing with everything you’re saying. I also agree with connect your, make sure that when you’re building your YouTube profiles, make sure that whatever you decide to use on your Google my business page, as long as you’re putting in your personal information with your personal email address, make sure that email address that matches across all of your Google.

Jonathon: This is another annoying little thing. And I just want to confirm with Robert is still doing this. You need a Gmail account.

Robert: You do and yes, they’re still doing it. Yes, there are. Absolutely.

Jonathon: Now if you, I’m going to get a little bit techie here I apologize, but it’s a funny little thing. If you got a domain and you set it up through Google apps, what Google app would change the name? Google Business Services about what the hell they call it. Now you basically, you can have Jonathan at Robert Newman or Peter at Robert Newman. You can have various people. So it’s a more professional email address. Then robertNewman@gmail.com. Which doesn’t, isn’t quite as professional and you can only have one person with the previous example. You could have a team at Robert Newman. Jonathan@robertnewman.com. Now, if you set up a Google can you use one of those email addresses or does it have to be a Gmail address? Do you know?

Robert: I don’t know. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to the question.

Jonathon: Because I didn’t know that. Because keeping it consistent by having the same Gmail address that set up the YouTube set up your business, your Google business and anything else to do with Google is important. Cause it’s a bit like what we mentioned last week around the directories they looking for consistency. Aren`t they Robert?

Robert: Yes, they are. That’s true. Yes, I can confirm that.

Jonathon: So this is kind of nitty gritty is where it gets a little bit confusing. In the show notes. I will confirm if you can use a Google business at address or you could use a Gmail. I will confirm that for you listeners when the show notes are up. We’re gonna go for a break. We’ve agreed we are going to be looking at an article that Curator published a few weeks ago. And it’s about the 19 fastest ways to get listings in 2019. And I’m just going to plow through. Some of them are probably not going to be able to go through all of them but only some of them. And we’ll probably finish it off next week and I’ll just going to see Robert’s reaction to some of these tips is. We’ll be back in a few moments’ folks.

Robert: I am being set up here.

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Jonathon: We’re coming back. Robert is full of enthusiasm for looking at this Curator, but I think some good stuff. I am just interested to see Robert`s reaction. So this was an article a few weeks ago. They’ve pushed it quite considerably on Facebook, and other multimedia platforms advertise in it and various streams. And it’s the 19 fastest ways to get listings in 2019. It just gives things that they think that you should be doing into 19 that will help you get more listings. So number one, call your past clients and swear to share some good. What do you reckon about this one, Robert?

Robert: That`s just like saying call your clients with a phone script of some kind. Sure. Good news is one way to do it. I would say that for me it’s going to be more about, it’s going to be, if I have something specific that really impacts my client in a reasonably good and strong way, sure. I will call.

Jonathon: Well, I think a little bit of planning about this folks will get more benefit in a way. I think if you’re in any local community and you’re going to be this super local agent and Paul and last week was a bit about this. Now supporting a local nonprofit or charity and talking about I really support this nonprofit and we’ve got this event. Or last year we manage our best year when it comes to raising funds. I think that’s a good way to open a conversation. Or if you’re doing some free event, and you are inviting some of the people that you has done business with or know. They’re good entry points into a conversation. What do you reckon Robert?

Robert: I don’t disagree. And Curator says that a good introduction is that your home value rose, congratulations here across all markets. I 6.2%. And of course you can give them their percentage. I personally think that this is a little transparent and the people aren’t idiots and that you should value their time. Like you would value your own. So I would strongly recommend that you come in with something a little bit stronger than this. That’s a little bit more tailored to the individual, but you also suggested some good things. And what those tailored things might be. Honestly, I don’t have an answer for a nationwide listing base. I’m very excited by the way that we’re going to break a record this,

Jonathon: We can see it that way. Number two, send this email and basically, um, it’s describing the email that kind of tells people how’s Zillow really so wrong about the value of their home. When she is consistently and has been for a number of years. What do you reckon about this one, Robert?

Robert: I reckon that people, I don’t do this that often. I do it more frequently now, but you know what guys we have an expert and amazing, amazing, amazing guy that is, has been on the show a number of times, who has talked consistently about some incredible ways to send out emails to your clients. What was his name? Yeah, yeah, we’ve done, we’ve done three shows with him. Or two, two or three.

Jonathon: 3

Robert: Anyway, he’s amazing. So I suggest that you listened to those shows and those shows will give you a much better idea than this in terms of kicking off an email discussion with your clients.

Jonathon: Yeah. I think it really depends on the kind of client. If you’re talking about, uh, really close list. Or people that you’ve sold homes to or done, you’re connected to them pretty close, you probably wouldn’t send this to them. I think it’s really your about what me and Robert are talking about is, and we’ve consistently did this last year, is utilizing your database and having people in different lists and sending them different stuff depending on if they are in that list. Now number three posting Instagram story pole. Now I’ve got to be truthful. I haven’t done much with Instagram.

Robert: I have.

Jonathon: You have. So what are your feelings around Instagram then?

Robert: I have a stronger thought about this one. So Instagram is an excellent platform for real estate, probably the best social media platform for real estate. It’s visual, it’s incredible. But here’s the thing is you’re building this audience on Instagram. These are mostly people that don’t know you, so you post an Instagram story pole for let’s say the three or 4,000 people that have been looking at your real estate pictures. And I’m not saying that it’s not a good way to kick off conversation. I think it will kick off some conversation. I think that you better damn well set aside a few days to have these conversations and most of them are going to be with very lowly qualified people, but what does that mean? I like how does that affect our audience? Here’s what I would really say. I think that if you’re brand new realtor and you’re trying to look or in your first few years and you’re trying to look for an interesting way to start developing leads, I actually don’t dislike this.

I don’t think you’re going to get a ton of really qualified leads, but trying to learn how to get a dialogue out of Instagram is could play a very important part into an Instagram strategy that would work. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. If it’s Instagram and you want my five second massively powerful tip, go look up Joyce Ray, which I think is at Joyce Ray on Instagram and see how she leverages Instagram for the super-rich. She makes off Instagram and learned from her how to do it.

Jonathon: There are going to be low level prospects. You don’t want you go be prepared. You’re going to get flooded. If you expect a result from this week, you might be lucky if you put these, these people you manage to get their email addresses and you can consistently market to them, but not in a way that makes you unsubscribed. The first bit of stuff they get from you.

Jonathon: The next two years he’s going to be mark. Being able to send the right email, text message to the right person at the right time and those that have the technology insights to get a system set up on public. And they are probably going to win this online war. Really, it’d be interesting to see.

Robert: I don’t disagree with anything, but I do want to add this thing. All these technology companies are going cleaning with Keller Williams. Most recent launch is that everybody’s having this dialogue around prospects. And it’s not that we shouldn’t be having the dialogue about prospects because getting in touch with people, it’s getting tougher. So timing and messaging and everything else is becoming more critical. And I don’t disagree with anything John Saying. I will say this, the formula for getting all that right is extremely complicated, which is why I keep banging on the drum of being an inbound marketer. In other words, let people come to you, have amazing answers to difficult questions that your prospects face every day on your website.

Why do I say all that? Because once you’ve established your expertise and they really want to talk to you because they love the information that you have, I don’t have any problem getting a hold of my real estate clients. They, they’re dying to talk to me, which doesn’t happen much in real estate. All, all the guys that I know that are in my business, that cold call you the real estate agents, right? It never got ahold of you because you don’t answer your phone unless you know who, who it is and neither does anybody. So just a thought. There are two roads. The road that’s really complicated is generating a large quantity of low quality names and numbers and then figuring out all the math and the science to get a hold of all those people in the right way.

Robert: If I had to make my recommendation, I’m going to say try to, to develop a smaller, more carefully curated list of people that really want to talk to you, former clients. Let’s move on real quick because the next one is a doozy. So number four on the Curator list is go live on Facebook from a neighborhood entrance. So guys, I actually love the go live stuff. So both YouTube and Facebook right now, but when you go live, send out a notification, to anybody that happens to be using the platform that you’re going live. Now Facebook has been, as they always do, limiting the value. They developed a new tool and then they usually give you really powerful access to that tool. And then they scale down the scope of how useful that tool is over time to try in the spirit of trying to get you to pay to advertise to whoever the people are that are under your friend base. So Facebook for me, not that I, again, I, they’re just, I don’t like them. I mean I don’t like them as a marketing platform because they move like everything so frequently. They’re way worse than Google in terms of changing the rules.

Jonathon: I disagree with you there. I’ve got a friend that specializes in YouTube marketing. There’d be changing that platform, the interface and everything but they’re almost as bad as Facebook.

Robert: Well, and last year I would agree with you for YouTube, but Google and YouTube are two different things. I mean, they’re two different companies quite literally. So number five, start each day prospecting for sellers. That’s my take on that. I can’t, I just did. Number six. Search Zillow’s make me move listings. Okay. There’s three,

Jonathon: Number five.

Robert: No, I just, I said number five covers prospectors for sellers. I covered it. I said Duh.

Jonathon: Oh, right. Yeah.

Robert: I mean you could say something for the, I take the, and they give you some examples, but it’s, it’s, it’s nothing less or more than your broker’s telling you every single day in the brokerage. And I’m sure of it, like they’re telling you the, they’re regurgitating. It’s like the vomiting what you already here every morning for number five. So that’s why I say Duh. Number six is good. It’s clever. Search still is making me move listings. I think that a lot of people are doing that, but hey, maybe you’re in a rural area with people that aren’t that tech savvy and if you are, try it. Do you have a comment on that? I’m just spitting through these because we don’t have a lot of time. Right.

Jonathon: We are going to wrap it up at number six. And we will talk about number six next week where we finish this off. They will be in the show notes anyway listeners and viewers. And to this article and we will be finishing off. And I will be getting Robert`s views there. Robert, how do people find out about you and what you’re up to Robert?

Robert: inbound rem.com. You can find me there and actually honestly I would love it if you did check me out. I talk a lot about technology platforms. I have a lot of answers to a lot of questions that that will save you a lot of time.

Jonathon: We have doubled the listeners over the last six months. folks. If you want to learn more about Mail Right and how we can help you get some quality leads off Facebook. And we got a marketing platform that helps you keep in touch with those leads and turn them into real clients. If that’s something you’re interested in, go to the Mail Right website. You can book an appointment with me and I will do a walkthrough with the system and you can try it out for free in a trial period as well. We’ll be back next week where we’ll be finishing off this list of 19 ways to help you get listings in 19. And we’ll be having some guests in March. Hopefully we will be back next week.