EP 408: Real Estate Investor SEO 101 + Predictions for 2023 w/ Bryan Sekine

00:00:00:01 – 00:00:24:14

Bryan Sekine

With the increase of different types of devices that can be used to access the Internet. I think that has really changed the landscape of SEO. So before it was just desktops. Now it’s desktops and phones. Soon it’s going to be desktops, phones, smartwatches, heads up, display glasses, you name it, you can ask. You can even use voice commands now. So you can search for things on Alexa or Siri or the Google assistant.

And so I think that that has really shaped how Google does SEO in terms of understanding the context of the question and finding the best possible answer.

00:00:42:14 – 00:01:03:11

Brady Winder

Hey, friends, welcome back to the Carrotcast Podcast. I’m your host, Brady Winder, and this is a podcast where we help investors and agents like yourself dial in their online marketing so that you can build businesses of freedom and impact. I’ve got the pleasure of introducing to you today, Bryan, from the Carrot team. Our new search engine optimization specialist is at the title.

00:01:03:22 – 00:01:04:14

Bryan Sekine

Yes, it is.

00:01:04:21 – 00:01:06:14

Brady Winder

Welcome to the podcast, man. How you doin?

00:01:06:22 – 00:01:12:07

Bryan Sekine

I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here and I’m super stoked to get everyone more on the SEO bandwagon.

00:01:12:21 – 00:01:37:01

Brady Winder

Absolutely, man. This is going to be a good podcast. I’m really excited about this one because it is SEO month at Carrot. So this is our first podcast of the month. And if you’ve been following us for any amount of time, you know, the SEO is Carrot’s bread and butter. This is what helps us become Carrot. For years we’ve been helping investors and agents all over the country, you know, rank higher in Google so they can get more motivated leads and build trust, build credibility, build authority with people.

And so we’ve done a lot of content on Real Estate Investor SEO. So how is this one going to be different? So the thing I want to cover in this is we’re going to try to give you a 10,000 foot view of SEO and simplify what is a very daunting thing, and we’re just going to simplify it and give you actionable steps on where to get started.

If you’re just starting out with your SEO, especially being, you know, New Year first January, it’s a great time to start building your SEO as these things are very much worth it, but they take time. And so we’re going to give you some actual steps to get started, but really help you understand why and how SEO works so well.

00:02:13:01 – 00:02:35:07

Brady Winder

If you’re looking for the more tactical like courses keyword research and you want to get nerdy and dive into these topics with us, go to Carrot.com/SEO and you can get those more tactical resources linked up on that page. But yeah, we’ll kick it off and we’re going have a good conversation and yeah.

00:02:35:07 – 00:02:42:15

Brady Winder

Bryan So break down SEO for us. And in simple terms, for people who might not understand.

00:02:43:22 – 00:03:14:02

Bryan Sekine

Sure. So the core principle behind SEO or search engine optimization is that we want to optimize the content that you’re publishing to the website to satisfy the question that someone is asking. So that can be done in a number of different ways. You can do it through written texts like a blog post or an article. You could do it through video, could do it through a podcast, and the response to what ranks well, it changes for every different question that’s asked.

00:03:14:09 – 00:03:36:00

Bryan Sekine

So sometimes things are asked and the best response would be an image. Or this shows a whole bunch of images. Other times it may be a full 3000 word blog post that just covers. It’s a comprehensive guide for whatever the issue is. But at the end of the day, the most important thing that Google is looking for is the best possible answer for the questions being asked.

00:03:36:14 – 00:03:50:13

Brady Winder

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it it’s interesting because we’ve seen some shifts in Google, even more so in recent months, right. Reflecting this like what it used to just be all posts and pages, Right. How has that changed over the years.

00:03:50:19 – 00:04:14:12

Bryan Sekine

With the increase of different types of devices that can be used to access the Internet? I think that has really changed the landscape of SEO. So before it was just desktops, now it’s desktops and phones. Soon as we meet desktops, phones, smartwatches, heads up, display glasses, you know, you name it, you can even use voice commands now, so you can search for things on Alexa or Siri or the Google assistant.

00:04:14:20 – 00:04:25:12

Bryan Sekine

And so I think that that has really shaped how Google does SEO in terms of understanding the content of the question and finding the best possible answer.

00:04:26:21 – 00:04:48:21

Brady Winder

Okay, that makes sense. So we know that one of the things we’ve seen recently is kind of hard to quantify, maybe can explain this better is that Google has been it’s gotten harder to gamify it. They’ve been putting out updates over the last couple of years that have made it a little bit more natural, a little more human, most notably the helpful content update.

00:04:49:05 – 00:05:04:23

Brady Winder

I bring this up because I think there’s this misconception that people think, Well, I have to be really good at SEO or I have to be really tech savvy in order to get my website to rank. You tell us kind of how that’s shifting and kind of address that, that thought, that misconception.

00:05:06:01 – 00:05:28:12

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. So about ten years ago it was a lot easier to game the system or to just trick Google’s algorithms into thinking that your content was the best, either through putting a bunch of texts on your website that no one can see but that this Google search engine crawlers could find or doing things like buying hundreds of backlinks that point to one page.

00:05:29:06 – 00:05:51:16

Bryan Sekine

Neither of those tactics work anymore, and Google has been putting a lot of money into making sure that people cannot game their system, so to speak. So while that has made some things more difficult, the much easier approach to it is to just simply give the best response to the question and I’m going to say that a lot in this episode.

00:05:51:16 – 00:06:14:15

Bryan Sekine

I apologize if it sounds all redundant, but it’s honest. So if you have a if you have a keyword or question that you want to ask, what you should do is just open up an incognito browser and type in that search result or type in the question and study the search results. So whatever is on the top page I’m sorry, the top ten rankings for the search results, that’s exactly what Google wants to see.

00:06:15:00 – 00:06:38:18

Bryan Sekine

So let’s say you’re an investor and you want to, you know, rank number one for the keyword. So my house fashion fast, Miami, Florida. So I do type that in. Look at what ranks number one through ten and then just fine, add that positions or find the areas where you could do better, right? What areas where you have a better response, where you’re more knowledgeable, where you can be more local with it.

00:06:39:01 – 00:06:59:00

Bryan Sekine

And that’s really all there is to it there. You can get a lot more technical than that and you can try different tactics in different strategies, but at the end of the day, that’s what all of the, you know, career CEOs are doing is we’re looking at what the ranking on the first page. We’re assessing what our competitors are doing, and then we are outdoing them in certain areas.

00:06:59:00 – 00:07:30:17

Bryan Sekine

And so sometimes that can be image, sometimes the boss, sometimes the blog post, sometimes it’s an FAA cue. So it really depends on, you know, the particular phrase, the question. But really, like Google has been shifting more and more towards just making sure that the results that they display are answering the question. The best possible way. And so when you keep that kind of the forefront of your mind, I think it becomes a lot easier to explain SEO and to build your own SEO strategy around the keywords that you want to rank for.

00:07:31:08 – 00:07:49:08

Brady Winder

Hmm. I love that. I feel like we could just end the podcast right there and it would be enough value because it’s, it’s, you know, and I love the way that Google is, I love the direction that Google is heading with with this too, because it it should be encouraging for investors and agents because investors and agents are experts.

00:07:49:08 – 00:08:06:09

Brady Winder

If they’re doing their job well, they’re experts in their field. And so they should be able to help someone selling a house regardless of what scenario they’re in financially. And so your content should reflect that. I say that because people can it’s really easy to overcomplicate SEO and like, Oh, what do I what do I write about? I’ve been told I need to do videos.

00:08:06:09 – 00:08:15:01

Brady Winder

What do I do videos on as well? All the scenarios you’re talking about with people on a daily basis, the problems that you’re solving, that’s your that’s your content.

00:08:15:08 – 00:08:17:06

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, exactly.

00:08:17:06 – 00:08:43:06

Brady Winder

And so we know that, you know, we’re not we have a lot of care members ranking in Google for phrases like, you know, sell my house fast. Miami, Florida, how to sell my house fast for cash, things like that, to get those motivated seller leads and the top of Google. And that’s what we’re known for. But before we hit record on the podcast, you were talking about there’s some other use cases for or some other benefits to SEO that people might not be thinking of.

00:08:43:10 – 00:08:44:04

Brady Winder

Tell me about that.

00:08:45:09 – 00:09:11:19

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, definitely. So about a week ago there was an interview with the VP of Search at Google, and he’s a very notoriously mysterious person that doesn’t do a lot of PR, and he let something slip that I think is going to rattle the CEO industry moving forward. And it was that they use the acronym IATI for every single question and every single search result that they display.

00:09:12:09 – 00:09:35:05

Bryan Sekine

And this is huge since IATI stands for expertise, authority and trust. And so what they’re doing is basically making sure that the people that are on page one are that, you know, show you all the results that you see every time you Google something that those people are qualified to talk on the subject and that the answer that they’re delivering is complete.

00:09:35:05 – 00:09:59:21

Bryan Sekine

And so the reason why this is big is because this can change how you create your content. This can change who climbs up the ranks and stays at the top. So it’s not like, you know, these search terms can only be nominated by huge companies. You don’t see Keller William agents just like killin every single, you know, real estate search term, right?

00:10:00:04 – 00:10:23:18

Bryan Sekine

And so it gives people who are the underdogs the opportunity to get to those high places. But also it changes the I think, the ideology behind the content that you create. So most people think when they think of like an SEO lead, they think of someone who is highly qualified, who’s a hotly they’re ready to buy or sell today, and so they land on your website.

00:10:23:18 – 00:10:45:14

Bryan Sekine

They click the button, they call you, they sign up for an email form or something like that. But what most people don’t think about and the sort of side benefit is that when you create content that is optimized for search engines, you are establishing a way of building that rapport with each visitor and you’re able to sort of put them through a nurture sequence or to guide them along the process.

00:10:45:22 – 00:11:09:09

Bryan Sekine

And, you know, a lot of marketers will say like it takes, you know, seven touchpoints with a customer before they buy something. Well, when you talk about something that’s such a high dollar amount, like buying or selling a property, I think that number goes way, way up. And so when you do something like PPC, you may be more laser focused to the people that are ready to buy or sell today or this week or this month.

00:11:09:18 – 00:11:27:20

Bryan Sekine

But what it doesn’t do is allow you to sort of nurture that lead until they are ready to buy. So let’s say you have someone who just found out they had a house and they have no idea what to do with it. They don’t know, you know, what paperwork they need to do or if they need permits or how to sell, you know, how to find a realtor or whatever.

00:11:28:13 – 00:11:52:13

Bryan Sekine

And so you have the opportunity to create content that is search engine advice that will say, hey, here’s the first stuff to do. Here’s your checklist on how to sell this property. And so when you’re the one that’s providing this information, then users will bookmark your page, will share it with a friend. They’ll come back to your website later on to learn more information about the process, because it’s probably going to be too technical and to lengthy to get it all into one post or one page.

00:11:53:03 – 00:12:09:03

Bryan Sekine

And so what my recommendation is for people that are sort of like on the fence as to why they should do SEO in the first place, especially since it’s such a long term play and the answer is that you’re you’re building up your authority and your trustworthiness and your expertise with people that come to your website every day.

00:12:09:10 – 00:12:31:16

Bryan Sekine

And that happens whether you’re awake, whether you’re asleep and it’s exponential. So if you write a blog post that is helpful for someone today, but you posted it ten years ago, if it’s evergreen, it’s still relevant and it’s still helpful and it’s still benefiting your website. And so, you know, you may not even need to be spending as much money on PPC, but you’ll still be reaping the benefits of SEO like years and years to come.

00:12:31:16 – 00:13:00:02

Brady Winder

Yeah, Yeah. Thanks for the explanation. You know, it reminds me of what we were talking about. I think we’re earlier this week. We’re talking about the eat acronym you shared, you know, from the Google exec and that trust for that trustworthiness. And I’ve seen this firsthand with content that we’ve put out on YouTube and that other channels have put out on YouTube is where you can almost reap the benefits of SEO without doing any SEO.

00:13:00:02 – 00:13:24:06

Brady Winder

And what I mean is that, you know, you know, we’re talking about the instance of a YouTube channel with a contractor and he releases a video on, you know, how to use a skill saw or something. And YouTube sees that and it’s like only the title was not SEO optimized was not only keywords, didn’t put a lot of thought into it, but he’s seen in YouTube’s eyes as trustworthy on that topic.

00:13:24:06 – 00:13:37:09

Brady Winder

People come to him to a topic, they stay engaged and it’s the same. What basically you’re saying it’s the same thing with your website. If people are coming to your website for that to learn about these topics, how to sell their house fast, or if you’re the local expert, the local guide, and they’re coming to your website, they’re reading your content.

00:13:37:19 – 00:13:44:08

Brady Winder

Google will recognize that reward you for and say, Hey, this person is the expert in Miami, Florida. We’re going to put you in front of more people.

00:13:44:22 – 00:13:46:10

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, and it’s hundred percent huge.

00:13:46:23 – 00:14:13:08

Brady Winder

Yeah. Awesome. So one thing I want to touch on real quick is intent. Can you share with me like why having the right intent without getting again, anybody listening watching If you wanna learn about keyword research, CARICOM, search, SCA we have other resources for that. But why does intent matter and how does this change your view when you’re doing your keyword research and you’re thinking about what to write about?

00:14:13:23 – 00:14:38:17

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, absolutely. So when we say intent, what we mean is when you’re doing research, different keywords categorize in different ways. So you could have an information gathering intent, you could have a transactional intent, or you can have like a purchasing intent. And so a transactional intent is basically just like you are looking to achieve something to in order to take the next step versus a like purchase.

00:14:38:17 – 00:15:17:12

Bryan Sekine

Intent is like going to Amazon, for example. So every keyword has its own intent and it’s really important to kind of test that intent before deciding to target that keyword because sometimes it’s not clear what that intent could be. Prime example is carrot. So if you type in carrier into Google, what you’re going to see is a bunch of images of carrots in different shapes and colors, and then you’re going to see a couple of like people also ask her an ethical box that talks about things like the nutritional value of carrots, the caloric value of carrots, like whether or not the beta carotene turns your nose orange.

00:15:17:22 – 00:15:55:08

Bryan Sekine

But what they’re not looking for is for our company. So it’s important for us to know that we should not be spending tons and tons of time and money and energy trying to rank for the keyword carrot because everyone searching for that term is looking for the vegetable. They’re not looking for the real estate company. So I think it’s important before you sort of like starting your SEO journey to know to just check the keywords again through Incognito browser or a private browser and just just check to see if what you are targeting matches with the kind of content that you’re going to publish for it.

00:15:55:19 – 00:16:20:17

Bryan Sekine

So a lot of times, especially nowadays with the sudden rise in online purchasing and e-commerce, a lot of things are by requests or their transactional quests versus, you know, sometimes it may be clear that it’s like an information gathering, like they’re just looking for reviews or comparisons. So for me, intent is probably the most important first step for keyword research specifically.

00:16:21:01 – 00:16:30:19

Bryan Sekine

So just make sure that you Google the keyword you’re targeting and make sure that what pops up on the first page matches with what you want published to rank for that keyword.

00:16:31:19 – 00:16:54:15

Brady Winder

Okay, I like that. So a recap, just be don’t, don’t make assumptions. Don’t make blind assumptions. Right? Look at it and make sure it’s the content that you want to put out. Awesome. So let’s dive into a little bit, just a a little bit of like next steps, what people can focus on if they’re just getting started with SEO and will keep it at a high level for people and then we’ll wrap it up.

00:16:54:15 – 00:17:11:10

Brady Winder

We’re talking about, you know, what are some other things may be coming down the pipeline for SEO, but so I just signed up for Carrot and I’ve been told I need to do SEO. It’s daunting. I have all these tips, I have all this information in my disposal. What do I work on first?

00:17:12:09 – 00:17:31:14

Bryan Sekine

Well, first, there’s a 1000 step checklist. No kidding. Now, so first, I would always say focus on the home page. The home page is going to be your most important page. That’s the one that most of your backlinks, the only pointing to that’s the one is going to rank for the most keywords, typically speaking. And that’s the one that people are going to hit first.

00:17:31:23 – 00:17:50:09

Bryan Sekine

So I would say make sure that your home page is squared away. Make sure you’ve got enough text on there, plenty of images. Make sure it’s linking to the other pages on your website and then make sure that your home page is a location page either for the city or state that you that is in your market and then make sure that it has the right keyword.

00:17:50:21 – 00:18:13:10

Bryan Sekine

So I would say start there and then work towards building out location pages. So for local SEO, location pages is really, really important because this is how to tell Google, Hey, these are different areas that I’m doing business in. So maybe some investors are working in just a few cities. Maybe an investor is working on multiple counties or even multiple states.

00:18:13:10 – 00:18:36:19

Bryan Sekine

So if you’re working in multiple states, you can say something like, This is my Florida page, this is my Georgia page, this is my Virginia page. And then on those pages you will link out to your more city specific location pages. So that way you’re telling Google and you show in the URL like this domain dot com forward slash state forward slash city forward, slash, whatever.

00:18:38:05 – 00:19:00:09

Bryan Sekine

So that way you are painting a clear picture of not just your brand and your business on the home page, but also the areas that your business operates in. And if you have Google, my business profiles or just Google business profiles now, I would make one for each of the city location pages that you have and then linking to that.

00:19:00:22 – 00:19:17:21

Bryan Sekine

So that’s kind of and that can that sounds more technical than it is. So what I recommend is if you’re if you just got your carrot’s site and you’re just getting started, focus on one location page. So it can be the state page can be the city page, but just, just start there and then make sure that’s set up.

00:19:18:18 – 00:19:39:07

Bryan Sekine

Then after that, I would focus on doing the automated blog posts. So the automated content library that we have at Carrot is immensely beneficial for SEO because it takes care of 80% of the work. So a lot of people say like there’s this 8020 rule, right? So do the 20% thing that that yields 80% results. And for carrot, this is it.

00:19:39:12 – 00:20:13:08

Bryan Sekine

So the automated content library, it’s not a like one touch solution for your SEO. You don’t just like hit publish and then let alone it’s more like a template that is ready to be personalized so you can change some content about it. In fact, you should. So that way you don’t get dinged with negative duplicate content, which is something that happens if you are just copying and pasting content from someone else’s website and putting on your own, you won’t get any benefit from that because Google’s already aware that this other website already has that info.

00:20:13:15 – 00:20:26:18

Bryan Sekine

So make sure you customize your automated content library posts and then take those blog posts and link them to the location pages or landing pages that you you’re using to either capture the lead or to close the deal.

00:20:27:15 – 00:20:46:18

Brady Winder

So when you say I want to pause real quick, when you say links to what you’re mean is when you’re when you’re writing, when you’re modifying this post that we’ve given you. So it gives you 1224 whatever blog post pick which ones are most applicable to you. Go and modify it, make it unique, make it personal, and then put in the URL to the other related blog posts.

00:20:47:14 – 00:21:10:19

Bryan Sekine

Yes. Okay. So there’s a few different ways you can link to another post, but my preferred method for SEO purposes is to highlight a word or a phrase and then create the link out of that. So this is called anchor text and typically speaking, you want your anchor text to be closely related to, if not a direct match to the destination that you’re linking to.

00:21:11:09 – 00:21:34:20

Bryan Sekine

So let’s say, for example, you have one about selling your house fast in Miami, Florida in the winter. And so you would link some miles fast to Miami, Florida, to your location page as that’s that’s your link. That’s your anchor text points to that. And the whole reason why you want to do this is to create something called topic clusters.

00:21:35:10 – 00:21:57:19

Bryan Sekine

So the idea here is that if you want a page like a location page or landing page to rank high, you need to have at least five supporting pieces of content that help lift that page up on the rankings. So you’re telling Google very clearly, like this is my topic and here are the five subcategories or sub topics that support that.

00:21:57:19 – 00:22:21:16

Bryan Sekine

This is super important and most people on the Internet that make their own websites probably don’t do this very well. So if you want like the secret sauce, this is probably it. It’s not as clearly visible to most people who don’t have the expensive SEO tools. But if you’re just getting started and you can keep track of your pages and where you’re linking things to something that can set you above the crowd.

00:22:21:23 – 00:22:50:06

Bryan Sekine

So make sure you’re linking your blog posts to the supporting page. Make sure that you get at least five for every topic that you want to cover. So if you’re doing things like Sell my house fast mix, you got five blog posts. If you’re doing something for, you know, foreclosure houses, five supporting blog posts. And then once that’s done, you’re creating these topic clusters and you’re telling Google, like, here’s my website, and these are the categories that I am the expert in, So you should show these results to anyone that asks about this high level category.

00:22:51:09 – 00:23:13:23

Brady Winder

MM Yeah, that, that really simplifies, you know, how people are picking their content too because we have these automated Yes. Blog posts. I think automate is a misnomer. Maybe we change that, maybe we don’t. But you know, people will look at it and say, how am I going to pick, you know, all these different blog posts? But what you’re saying is have those those clusters, as Google calls them, have those topics, those buckets, and pick ones from those.

00:23:13:23 – 00:23:17:02

Brady Winder

So you could be seen as the expert in those multiple areas, is that right?

00:23:17:14 – 00:23:45:00

Bryan Sekine

Yes, absolutely. And normally, writing five blog posts to support one landing page is a huge undertaking, right? Most people are not great at writing. Most people not like. Yeah, I I’d love to write a 1000 word essay, so to speak, on why someone should do this. And that’s the real benefit that care provides. Like these blog posts are already written, they’re already optimized, they’re written by real people and not A.I., and they are topically relevant.

00:23:45:07 – 00:24:08:23

Bryan Sekine

So these are categories that you will actually get value out of and that your readers will get you out of as well. And so we take care of 95% of the legwork on these blog posts, and you just go in and you change some information, you make it personal, you add like, I don’t know, neighborhoods or districts in the area that you operate in, and then you publish those and that’s all it takes.

00:24:09:06 – 00:24:23:11

Bryan Sekine

And so we’re doing the overwhelming majority of that. And once you get two or three these of clusters going, now you have enough content on your website for Google to really start picking you up and take you more seriously as an authority in that niche.

00:24:23:21 – 00:24:39:16

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. I love the way you explain that. You know, the only context I would add is that, you know, when we’re talking about automated content, it’s like part of this is going to depend on what market you’re in, how competitive is, how many other people are trying to rank on page one of Google.

00:24:41:03 – 00:25:03:19

Brady Winder

So the ideal for content is 100% unique, long thought out, well developed responses on the things that you’re an expert in, like we’re talking about earlier in the podcast. So what that would look like is maybe I’m recording a video on how to sell your home fast and all the things you might be considering. Then I’m taking that video using our video post tool, transcribing it.

00:25:03:20 – 00:25:30:02

Brady Winder

Turn into a post and then, you know, wordsmithing it, edit it so it reads well. So it’s grammatically correct. And then, you know, it’s 100% unique and nobody else has that. That’s the ideal. But we have the automated blank voice because we recognize that not everybody has time for that. But I say that for context. If you’re in a really competitive market, it’s going to take a little bit more customization, might take a little bit more work to outrank other people.

00:25:30:02 – 00:25:30:15

Brady Winder

Is that true?

00:25:31:12 – 00:25:33:07

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:33:07 – 00:25:33:15

Brady Winder

Yeah.

00:25:34:10 – 00:25:52:17

Bryan Sekine

I think it’s also worth noting that the results that you receive will take anywhere from three months up to 12 months. I would say the fastest is probably going to be three months. So it’s not something where you’re going to publish a bunch of blog posts and then in the next week you’re going to, you know, be ranked number two, right?

00:25:52:17 – 00:25:54:03

Bryan Sekine

So it’s it’s going to take some time.

00:25:55:00 – 00:26:25:11

Brady Winder

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Trevor calls it the DCO ranking Sprout and we’ll link up in the show notes. And on Care.com and Kirkham slash SEO, another podcast we did with Andy Carlos. Three things you need to know about Real Estate Investor SEO, where we talk about like timeline and expectations. But yeah, 3 to 12 months, like Bryan said, you can pop somewhere around the three month markets, typically around six and then you might even once you do hit page one, it’s going to be a slower climb to get to four, three, two, one.

00:26:26:16 – 00:26:45:06

Brady Winder

And then in that podcast as well, we also talk about what you can typically expect for leads depending on your market size. But yeah, like Bryan said, it’s a long term game and so it’s this is it’s worth it. You know, these are you talk to anyone that’s generating leads through KERA they’re the they’re the hottest leads are the best leads.

00:26:45:13 – 00:27:03:22

Brady Winder

But that’s the difference in evergreen marketing that you build over time versus the hamster wheel market that you have to keep on doing. So if you’re new to care, all we recommend is start building your evergreen while supplementing with some of the paid marketing like you can supplement with pay per click marketing that’s getting those hotter leads like Bryan mentioned.

00:27:03:22 – 00:27:08:21

Brady Winder

But start of the year, just start building that. Start building out. Yes. You hear Evergreen marketing?

00:27:09:08 – 00:27:10:14

Bryan Sekine

Absolutely.

00:27:10:14 – 00:27:33:20

Brady Winder

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you, Bryan, is, you know, I built a website, I’ve built custom websites, I’ve built a website on Carrot and I’m creative. I love going in there and spending hours and days. And I’m sure 90% of people listening to this can relate to me. I love going in there and tweaking all of the things that probably don’t matter all that much.

You know, I could spend 3 hours on colors and is this right image? And I just I labor over it, you know. And so my my question is, at what point do you move on? So, like, how much should you be optimizing? Like we don’t get your domain linked up, get your logo up there, you know, pick a couple of colors in that.

00:27:57:20 – 00:28:13:22

Brady Winder

But like at what point do you stop optimizing and dialing in your homepage and move on to your location pages? And I mean, it could be the same question for every part of it, like Google my business, like how far do I go on everyone to reap the most benefits? Like where’s that? Where’s that balance?

00:28:14:22 – 00:28:45:05

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. My, my gut instinct is to say launch with your minimum viable product, like whatever is going to be the absolute minimum they can do. Go ahead and do that and then work on the next step. Because as you go on in your journey with your website, with your SEO and even with their business, like there’s there’s so many opportunities to go back and to update, to optimize change things and things are constantly changing anyway.

So you may spend 6 hours laboring over just your homepage and in a month Google’s come out the new ranking algorithm update and it’s just going to totally rock everything and you got to go back and make changes anyway. So what I would say is like, don’t spend so much time just nit picking every fine detail unless you have a team that is already trained up and knows what to do.

Like there are exceptions for big companies and stuff, right? But I would say for the average investor, the average agent just focus on getting the minimum viable product out there and then come back and update and maybe set something on a calendar. It’s like, hey, every three months, come back, tweak some things, see, see what changes, and then move on to the next part.

Because Real Estate Investor SEO and building a website and building a business is so complicated and so intricate that you really could waste a ton of time in the weeds and just completely miss huge opportunities in other areas of your business or especially other areas of your website. So like example for local SEO, you know, doing on page optimization, tweaking the colors, the headlines, the keyword focuses, the word count, the backlinks, like all of that is maybe only a third of the importance of local SEO.

00:29:58:06 – 00:30:28:01

Bryan Sekine

So then you have the whole like back linking and local citations and go my business and those things are just as important. So they, they deserve just as much time to focus on and to critique. And so I would just say minimum viable product and move on to the next thing and then create a rotation. So that way you’re constantly checking back and updating things and keeping your content fresh, keeping your website updated, keeping your Google, my business updated and that sort of system in my experience as works the best.

00:30:28:17 – 00:30:48:03

Brady Winder

Hmm. Yeah. So anybody listening, you just got full permission to stop trying to make it perfect because it doesn’t matter. Get it, go and get your MVP and then come back to it. It correct me if you already mention this, but do we talk about Google my business that that review threshold would be important to know?

00:30:48:14 – 00:31:14:10

Bryan Sekine

Not yet. Not yet. But this is hot off the press. We have also discovered that Google has set a minimum threshold for the number of reviews that they want to see on your Google business profile before you start getting a significant boost in local searches. So the good news is that the the number is only ten. So you need to get ten reviews on your Google business profile.

00:31:14:15 – 00:31:40:03

Bryan Sekine

And from there, you should see a noticeable uptick in local keyword rankings, local search traffic coming in through your Google business profile, higher search results in the map packs. If you’re using Google Maps or if it’s just a local search in general. So map packs show up in Google. Search results all the time. But the bad news is that there is a very quick diminishing return on the investment past ten.

00:31:40:11 – 00:32:02:00

Bryan Sekine

So you don’t need to build up 100 reviews or 40 reviews, but you do need to get at least ten of them. And so this is a case study that we did accurate, and the results that we saw were phenomenal and they were fast. But the speed in which we got the results was probably influenced by the amount of SEO that we do across our whole website, both on page and off page.

00:32:02:06 – 00:32:22:01

Bryan Sekine

And so I don’t want to promise results to members, listeners at the same speed that we receive them, because there are probably a lot of other contributing factors. But ten reviews on a Google business profile is significant and it’s worth doing. So if you’ve got ten previous clients, just hit them up for review. Tell them it needs to be as honest as possible.

00:32:22:06 – 00:32:45:14

Bryan Sekine

It doesn’t matter if it’s a three star, one star, five star. I mean, obviously it’d be better to get more five stars than one or three stars. But Google’s not looking for a perfect score. In fact, they’re looking for average of 4.8 stars on all reviews. So just get ten reviews. And then once that’s done, you can pretty much let your best profile costs and you can collect reviews passively, you know, after that point.

00:32:45:21 – 00:32:51:22

Bryan Sekine

But just hustle hard to get that first ten and then watch as your keywords just start climbing the ranks.

00:32:52:09 – 00:33:19:18

Brady Winder

MM Yeah. So a quick note on reviews, It’s, it’s funny because like this is, this is really good news for anyone in a really small, even mid-sized market because Google, my business is still really low hanging fruit and a lot of people just don’t try, you know? Right. I’m in Roseburg, Oregon, a town of 30,000 people. I look up plumbers in Roseburg, Oregon, and I’m probably going to find, you know, a guy with zero reviews and not even a phone number.

00:33:19:18 – 00:33:41:07

Brady Winder

The next guy’s got three in the next Folmer has, you know, maybe five, 20 reviews, whatever. But it’s usually not really hard to cross that ten threshold and then to get on top he had mentioned is diminishing returns past the ten. That’s true. There’s also benefit to, you know, when someone’s looking it’s just you shop the same way on Amazon.

00:33:41:07 – 00:33:55:15

Brady Winder

We’re not Amazon. It’s like okay, which one has the massive amount of reviews? Like, is there one that stands out? It’s like, okay, these people at 520, this one’s got 57 five star reviews, okay? So they don’t even need to read any information. I’m calling them, you know, hit the call button.

00:33:55:15 – 00:33:56:19

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, exactly.

00:33:57:12 – 00:34:19:10

Brady Winder

Yeah, that’s wild. Yeah. And anybody that struggles with getting reviews. This is a question we get all the time. Like, how do I get more reviews? I think it’s really easily over. Complicated. A couple quick things you could do is I like to, you know, have coffee cards, like coffee gift cards with you. So, like, if you’ve just done a deal, give people a gift.

00:34:19:10 – 00:34:40:19

Brady Winder

Don’t say I like to reverse it. Most people say, hey, leave us a review and we’re going to send you a free gift. I think, to give people that gift, say, hey, here’s this. Thanks for doing business with me. I would really appreciate it if you left or if you left us a review. It really helps us out and helps other people that are in your shoes, that are going through what you’ve gone through because you’re telling them the value that they’re going to provide.

So there’s meaning behind that. It’s not it’s not help us with a review is saying, Hey, would you mind sharing your experience so that other people can hear about this and then just give them that gift and leave it at their you know, the the most you have to lose is a $5 coffee card.

So that’s one you could also automate it. A lot of people listening probably have follow up sequences built in the email. You can automate it and just send out a Google link. Go my business review link after you do the deal. But I like to just, you know, get that link from your Google my business profile and just text it to them so it’s easy.

Just make it as easy as possible for them. And also one last note on Google my business. This is the if you’re listening, this one, it’s coming out. This is the beginning of January. Later this month, we’re actually putting out a video on Google My Business, where we get a little bit more tactical on what to do and things you can optimize so you can get your good members profile to rank.

So check that out on carrot.com/SEO or on our YouTube channel. Anyways, I know we’ve been going for a while. We’re about out of time. Is there anything, Bryan, you want to mention as far as like SEO, where it’s headed, what might be changing, what people need to look out for?

00:36:01:04 – 00:36:07:10

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, so this is a topic I could probably talk about for a another hour. So I’ve try to avoid getting too into the weeds.

00:36:07:10 – 00:36:07:19

Brady Winder

Three hours. So let’s go!

00:36:10:18 – 00:36:39:22

Bryan Sekine

Right. So I think this first started when Google announced that they’re changing their Google Analytics and they’re doing away with what’s called cookies. And these are just like in invisible little Internet browser pieces of code that follow you around from one website to another. For those who are watching or listening that aren’t aware. And that was for probably almost 20 years the tried and true method of gaining data on people that visit your website.

00:36:40:17 – 00:36:59:21

Bryan Sekine

So Google sort of that completely out the window. And that shocked a lot of people, especially people in the UK, like it became a data security issue. And Google said, okay, fine, we’ll just throw it away. And everyone was just like, Wait, what? But one of the important things that I think most people didn’t consider at the time is that cookies are device specific.

So if you’re Googling something on your phone and then you want to send it to your computer, Google is putting more money into figuring out how to make that work. And so like follow the customer journey from two or more different devices. So let’s say use Alexa to ask a question about, you know, maybe or like adding some to a shopping list and then, you know, Google picks it up and that data carries with you over to your phone and then it picks up location data when you’re in the store and says, hey, don’t forget to buy this thing.

And stuff like that starts becoming more and more, especially with the Internet of Things, so to speak. So you have refrigerators and TVs and gaming consoles and smartwatches and everything that connects to the cloud. Everything shares data back and forth. So Google is investing tons and tons of time and money and resources into figuring out how to make that happen the most seamless way possible.

Now, good news is, is that that’s super convenient for us. It’s more secure and in terms of like your online identity, but it’s vastly different than how it’s built now. So my educated opinion and guess on this is that Google is going to lean way more towards an entity based search engine optimization versus a keyword based so up until now, I guess for the past 30 years or so, everything has been basically a keyword.

And so when you have certain keywords, it only pulls results for that country and for that language. But Google is national company and they are looking at the bigger picture. So if we’re doing 10,000 views on a CEO today, they’re talking about 1 million views. And so they’re like, okay, well, the keyword is going to be different contextually depending on the language.

And it’s also going to be different depending on the dialect, different depending on which country that you’re in. So you may use the same word in six different languages, in five different countries, but they all mean something different. So what they’re looking at is the semantic meaning behind the search. So people on the Internet start to call this semantic SEO.

And a lot of times they are sort of diluting that down to something called entity SEO. So you can already see evidence of entities that are being used in Google already, if you look at Google images. So let’s say you type in a keyword there on the image tag and you’ll see at the very top there’s these little like ovals and they’ll say something like real estate company or RE/MAX or Keller Williams or whatever, and it’s a bunch of what kind of looks like search suggestions.

But what these are are entities, and it’s essentially a collection of information about a person, place thing or a concept that Google tracking and adding to as people search for different questions. So one of the like common stats though not there is like 60% of all Google queries are brand new because people are typing in, you know, ten word search phrases or they’re typing in a bunch of weird variations that Google’s never seen before.

And so they are kind of tired of having to, like, sift through all of this to figure out what people mean and entities. Another solution to that problem. So they’re saying, okay, if you have a question, that’s something like like US President. Right. So the the intent, the search intent behind that could be a whole slew of different things, like who was the current U.S. president?

Who has been the president in the past. You know what political party is president belong to things like that. And so you can glean a lot of different information or a lot of different context from that one keyword. And so Google’s trying to find a way to provide, again, the most helpful answer depending on the context of that keyword.

00:40:55:16 – 00:41:20:21

Bryan Sekine

And that was probably not a great example that I use because it’s it can be a little bit vague, but it works in a way that the current SEO landscape cannot satisfy. So if you’re typing something and like let’s say it’s it’s a French word, you know, like let’s say you’re typing in baguette, so baguette may mean something totally different or how it may have a different search intent in the U.S. than it does in France.

It may have a different intent in, you know, like New Orleans or something. And so the idea here is that Google is slowly shifting away from keywords and backlink based SEO for ranking factors and then moving more towards like helpful, contextual, what we call entity based SEO. And so I think it’s really important that people start considering like if you have a business, how do you focus more on your brand and how do you let Google know exactly what your brand does and how it can help people?

And I think the answer to that is rooted all the way back into the type of content you’re publishing. So the more content you publish on the various topics that you want to dominate, the more content that Google has to the type of entity that you are. And then it gives them more information to provide your website and your products and services to people who are asking, even if they don’t fully understand the terms that they’re using.

So if they type in some ten word long string question, they may not know that what they’re looking for is house foreclosure sales process. But Google knows that, okay, this particular long string, long tail keyword, as we call it, is related to this subject and your website, the authority of this subject. So we will go ahead and serve your website is number one, and we’ll see if they click.

And if they click, then Google registers. Okay, this ten word longtail keyword is now best satisfied through your website. And so they’re sort of adding it to your entity. And as that entity grows and it’s information, your website ranks are more and more quote unquote keywords because at this point we’re kind of leaning away from that. But your entity satisfies more questions that people have and that can go with you from your laptop to your smartphone to your voice command device, whether that’s like Syria or Alexa or whatever.

And that information just carries across devices, carries across language barriers, carries across countries. And that’s the real infrastructure that Google is trying to build. That sounds like customers globally.

00:43:24:01 – 00:43:39:22

Brady Winder

Hmm. So would it be correct in saying that this is it’s another Google is taking another big step in having a holistic approach to SEO and showcasing the people with the best answers?

00:43:40:15 – 00:43:41:02

Bryan Sekine

Oh yeah.

00:43:41:07 – 00:43:49:07

Brady Winder

And making it so it’s making it much harder to gamify. It’s less focus on specific keywords. But Google saying, are they an expert or are they not?

00:43:50:04 – 00:44:14:20

Bryan Sekine

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of the more recent product updates have been kind of supporting that hypothesis that this is direction Google’s going. So if you look up Google Lens, it’s an app that you can pull up on your Android phone and you can look around using your camera and it’s kind of like augmented reality. So you can look at a storefront and it’ll say, Hey, this is their Google business profile.

These are the products they sell, these are services they offer. They can move your phone around and they’ll do the same thing. And the results change in real time. They can also do things now where they’re using image recognition. So if you take a picture of a cherry pie and it can say you can type in like, where can I buy a cherry pie?

And it will show you results based the image you took and not necessarily just the keyword. So it’s kind of like combining those two data points and saying, Hey, here are other entities that can satisfy those same two data points. And so this is just kind of the beginning of what we believe is going to be more entity or semantic based SEO.

So if you really want to stay kind of savvy on what Google is doing, don’t just look at Google search, but also look at Google Maps. Google my business, look at the new products it was coming out with and the things that they are wanting to support across all of their devices.

00:45:05:23 – 00:45:16:05

Brady Winder

Mm hmm. Yeah, That’s good insight. That’s good insight, man. Thanks for sharing that. And it’s encouraging again to see where Google is heading. It’s is getting easier. It’s more holistic, it’s more human. Really?

00:45:16:05 – 00:45:17:11

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:17:21 – 00:45:26:21

Brady Winder

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing, man. That’s a that’s a really valuable explanation. I really love the way you broke it down, and it’s been fun having you on the podcast. It’s been awesome.

00:45:27:11 – 00:45:28:14

Bryan Sekine

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

00:45:29:02 – 00:45:47:21

Brady Winder

Yeah. All right, everybody watching and listening. Thank you so much for tuning in. If he got value out of this, share with a friend. I know you probably won’t because you don’t want your competition to turn out like, you know, whatever. But go to Carrot.com/SEO and to get our SEO keyword Bible and all of our other resources podcast episodes, you can dive deep on this.

And then one last note, I’d like to invite you, if you’re watching this beginning of January to our annual Epic planning call, our CEO, Trevor Mauch, Every single year it is epic. It’s about a 2 to 3 hour long call, which he breaks down his biggest lessons learned from the year’s biggest mindset shifts is best frameworks he’s learned as a leader and CEO of this very fast growing company.

And it’s just a great motivating tactical way to get the New Year to get started in the New Year the right way. So go to Carrot.com/epic and plan out your New Year along with us. We will love to see you there. So that’s it, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you next week.