For years, we’ve worked our bottoms off to provide you (our members, the people on our email list, and even those of you who’ve never worked with us) free, valuable, life-changing content.
Every week for the past several years (with maybe a couple exceptions), we’ve published a new blog post and/or CarrotCast episode meant to help you build a bigger business, live a happier life, achieve financial freedom, and escape the horribly monotonous 9-5 grind.
That is our passion: to help you regain time in your life for things that matter most — family, friends, hobbies, etc.
But there’s a problem — while we’ve consistently created content to help you build a business you can be proud of, our website hasn’t done the best job of organizing that content for you.
You can click on the “Blog” tab at the top of our website and you’ll see our latest blog posts and CarrotCast episodes, but it’d take some real work to digest our content in any sort of chronological order… until now. :)
Announcing Carrot University!
We’re launching Carrot University with our SEO 101 Courses!
Carrot University is our (the content creator’s: Brendan, Trevor, and myself) effort to organize our content so that you can easily digest the most important lessons for your business. Want to learn about SEO? Here are 10 lessons to get you started off on the right foot! Want to learn about PPC?
Here are 10 lessons to teach you everything you need to know to get started. Wondering which contracts you need for your real estate investing business? Here are some templates!
Rather than choosing random pieces of content via Google and our blog, you can now go to a single place (Carrot University) and learn about those topics in chronological order — from beginner to advanced to ultra successful.
We wanted to get Carrot University out to you as soon as possible, so we’re launching it with just one module of content: SEO 101 — basically, our beginner’s guide to understanding SEO and how it applies to your real estate website.
BUT…
There’s a lot more to come. ;)
We have plans for content modules about PPC advertising, advanced SEO lessons, personal development, and even nitty-gritty business building best practices. Ultimately, we want Carrot University to serve YOU. We want it to be a place that you go to learn, grow, and challenge yourself.
In 2018, PPC was the second highest lead generation medium for our members.
Trying to rank on page one of Google can be a daunting task for some. It takes time and resources to invest in a full, all-out SEO strategy. Even then it could take months to notice.
What can you do in the meantime?
Well, many of our members make use of both PPC and SEO — using the former to generate short-term traffic and the latter to generate longterm traffic.
In this intro to PPC for Real Estate, we run down what you need to understand if you’re considering this route. Including:
What is PPC for Real Estate?
How does PPC work?
What are the benefits of using PPC advertising for Real Estate?
PPC is a broad term used for various cost-per-click platforms real estate professionals use to get in front of their target audience. These include Google Ads (AdWords), Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and numerous retargeting options.
Overall, PPC is a digital marketing strategy in which you advertise within a search engine’s sponsored results by bidding for the keywords, ad sets, and/or retargeting list connected to your real estate niche.
Pay-per-click is exactly that… you pay each time your ad is clicked. Although, there are times you can be charged for impressions (number of times your ads are shown).
Google Ads (Adwords) still reigns as PPC king for generating motivated seller leads. Facebook ads can also be an effective way to generate motivated sellers as well as buyer leads.
Facebook cost-per-click is also considered a lesser amount compared to AdWords. It’s important that you understand where your leads are coming from and the value of your cost per lead to fully understand which platform works best for you.
How Does PPC Work?
Starting with the basics. When a motivated seller types a search query into Google, the search engines provide two sets of results: pay-per-click ads (sponsored) and organic results.
As seen in the picture below, the first three results on top are sponsored ads (indicated by the green square around the word “Ad”).
The other results below the ads are organic results. More than likely, the organic website results have climbed the rankings by executing a solid SEO strategy.
With PPC, when the searcher clicks on one of the ads, you (the advertiser) is charged for that click.
The price of that click will vary per the competition for that specific keyword as well as your target location(s).
You can use specific tools to find keyword traffic estimates as well as the competition and cost-per-click estimates. Tools such as:
Advertising with PPC ads can have many benefits. Here are some of the top reasons you should consider using PPC as part of your online marketing strategy.
1. You Have the Opportunity to Control Your Position on Page One of the Search Results
PPC advertising allows you to gain the most valuable ad space on whichever PPC platform you choose to use. If that’s Google, then you have the ability to get on top of the first-page search results without having to dedicate the time and resources for SEO.
Claiming ad space where most eyes will see them will increase your odds of getting solid lead generation and return on your investment.
2. Place Your Ads in Front of YOUR Audience
This is two-fold.
First, you can use specific keywords in your PPC ads. This will allow you to reach a specific target audience based on your location. For example, using keywords such as…
“Sell my house fast in Baltimore”
“Sell my house in Chicago”
“We buy houses fast in Boston”
This allows you to reach the local audience by choosing keywords that are targeting your audience location.
Second, you have the ability to use geo-targeting to limit who can see your ads based on locations. For example, if you are searching for motivated sellers in Baltimore, it wouldn’t be smart to allow searchers in D.C to see your ads.
You’d be would wasting your budget to allow searches from outside of your target areas to see and click on your ads.
3. Control Your Budget
Adverting with PPC ads offers you ultimate control of your money. You set your desired ad spend. If your budget runs low, platforms such as Google Ads will notify you that your budget is limited. This allows you to reassess your current PPC strategy and make the necessary adjustments to optimize your accounts.
As mentioned above, the majority of your PPC campaigns will follow the model that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
4. PPC is Immediate
There’s no wait time! Unlike SEO, PPC is live the moment you decide to turn your campaigns live. If increasing your buyer list for your real estate website is your goal, PPC ads allow you to get in front of your target audience NOW rather than waiting the span of time it takes for an SEO campaign.
5. Testing
PPC ads are an excellent way to split test your website, ad copy, or images that resonate with your target audience.
Using the A/B testing approach, you can test your ads and landing pages to see what form, color scheme, design… etc., are generating the best results. Once you gather enough date, you can use this information to make strategic moves to your campaigns to maximize your PPC ROI.
6. Track Your Results to Maximize ROI
Proving ROI is a major part of being a marketer today. Luckily, PPC ads allow you to track every aspect of your ad campaign to connect your efforts to your results.
You can see how each keyword is performing. You can see how each ad is performing. And, you can see exactly where and when your leads are reaching you.
You want to prove the worth of your PPC campaign. You’ll want to be sure your conversion tracking is linked to your website and for most of you, you’ll also want to be sure your lead source is relaying to your CRM.
Then you’ll be able to track from click to deal to see your profits that have come from your PPC strategy.
Plus, PPC website visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors (i.e. they’re more motivated).
So, who should use PPC? Those who have the ability to plan, have patience, and are willing to spend money to get results.
If you make well-informed decisions from the time you launch a PPC campaign, you will be able to increase traffic and leads to your website.
However, PPC usually isn’t best suited for those who are looking to dabble. You need to have a mindset that provides enough strategy to sustain months and sometimes years. Those who have similar “go-get-em” attitudes have fared especially well with PPC advertising.
Real estate also has a bigger advantage over other industries who utilize PPC. Profit margins can more than justify the costs associated with PPC.
If you are looking for a simplified answer of how to get started with PPC advertising, it can be summed up into a relatively easy process.
Here’s a simple look at how to plan your own PPC for real estate strategy:
1. Conduct a competitor analysis.
Identify the competitors who might be outranking you in your market. Analyze their search terms and search volumes using tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest as listed above.
2. Choose the real estate keywords you want to advertise for.
Conduct keyword research to learn how your target audience is searching for your real estate niche. If you’re looking for buyers for your agent website, then use such terms as, “new homes for sale” or “homes for sale in”.
3. Create ads based on thorough research.
Develop ad copy that will resonate with your target audience. Looking for motivated sellers? Use ad copy such as “We Buy House in Any Condition” or “Sell Your House As-Is Fast”.
4. Split test ad copy and/or landing pages to compare how different aspects of your PPC campaigns perform.
For ad copy testing, track metrics like click-through rate and cost per click. For landing page testing, track metrics such as conversion rates to determine the success of your PPC campaign.
You’ll also need to continuously manage keyword bids based your results. This will help you get the most ROI from your efforts.
5. Optimizing beyond your ads.
Real estate PPC campaigns are created from many parts beyond keyword bids and the ad copy. It’s important to think beyond the landing page and start to think about optimizing other pages that will help build credibility and connection with the searchers.
Three important pages to consider optimizing are your “Our company”, “Testimonials”, and the “How it works” pages.
This heat map from specific PPC traffic, confirms the need to optimize these pages. PPC traffic is looking for confirmation.
Conclusion
Don’t feel overwhelmed by this PPC intro. By having a sound strategy, educating yourself and putting in some time, you’ll be off and running with a successful PPC account. Or, consider hiring a third-party to consult or manage your account.
Overall, PPC can provide immediate results and be a lucrative piece of your online real estate marketing strategy.
Be sure to hit us up with questions in the comments section below. Also, if you’re a Carrot member, join us on our weekly Coaching Calls where we cover many PPC topics as well as SEO, lead generation, website design, and much, much more!
Not a Carrot member? Whatcha waiting for! Check out our plans and get started today!
You want to generate more organic leads but you don’t know how to track your real estate SEO performance. That’s common.
You want to pull more traffic to your website (with less money) and you want to convert that traffic into cash for your real estate agent or investing business.
That’s good — you’ve chosen the right strategy: SEO. Since people who find your website all on their own are usually more motivated than those who see your ad on Facebook, SEO doesn’t just drive traffic but works to improve the conversion rate of your website. And with high-quality traffic and leads comes less time spent dealing with tire-kickers who’ll never convert, regardless of how hard you try.
In other words, SEO benefits your business in a multitude of ways. Less time spent on the wrong leads, more time spent on the right leads, more website traffic, higher conversion rate, consistent lead generation, and even financial predictability.
But there’s a problem…
How do you know if your SEO strategy is working? How do you know that you’re SEO performance heading in the right direction?
Here are 4 mission-critical SEO metrics to keep an eye on while you’re climbing your way through the rankings.
4 Mission-Critical Real Estate SEO Performance Metrics You Need to Be Using
1. Rankings
This metric might be obvious to you…
If you’re going to drive passive traffic to your website and you’re going to convert more leads without running more paid ads, you must get to the first page of Google.
But that can take months, years even. How do you know you’re making progress?
The simplest way to check is to open an incognito web browser window and type in the search phrase that you’re trying to rank for. Then click through Google’s results and see if you can find your website.
Problem is, that’s time-consuming, especially once you’re trying to rank for 10 or 20 different keyword phrases. At that point, you don’t want to manually check all those rankings.
This tool tracks your rankings for specific keyword phrases in near real time. You can use it to quickly determine where your website is at for multiple keyword phrases you’re targeting. Every page in Google typically has 10 results, so 1-10 means you’re on the first page, 11-20 is second page, and so on.
2. Domain Authority
Another way to determine whether you’re making progress in the eyes of Google is to check your website’s domain authority.
What is domain authority?
It might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple when you get down to it. Domain authority is the overall authority that search engines (Google, mostly) attributes to your domain. More authority is better and means that your website has a higher chance of ranking in results. Conversely, a low authority means that Google is unsure of whether you’re trustworthy or not (yet) and it’ll be more difficult for your website to get on the first page of Google’s results.
But the more content you create, the more opportunities you’ll have to rank in search engines (each page or blog post has a chance to rank). This is why we include monthly expert-written content as a part of our (Carrot’s) Content Pro and Advanced Marketer Plans.
You might, for instance, get your website ranking for “real estate investors who run 6 miles per day”, but that ranking doesn’t do you any good if people aren’t already typing that phrase into Google — and not just anything, the right people.
The reason that it’s so important to do keyword research before you start executing an SEO strategy is that you want to make sure that the phrase(s) you’re targeting isn’t a total waste of time.
You can use Ubersuggest to check the search volume for any given keyword phrase.
Just type the phrases you’re thinking of trying to rank for into the search bar and click “Search”. This will provide you with some information about how that keyword phrase performs in Google and with other keyword phrase ideas.
[cta offer=”seobible” color=”orange”]
But, back to website traffic.
When you start ranking for your target keyword phrase(s), that’s when the rubber meets the road. Check your analytical information to see where your website traffic is coming from and if you’re actually getting more traffic from search engines.
Look at the “Traffic Sources” in the bottom right hand corner to determine where you’re website traffic is coming from and if you’re SEO efforts are paying off.
If they aren’t and you’re already on the first page for multiple keyword phrases, then you might want to target a keyword phrase with higher search volume.
4. Conversion Rate
Imagine that you’re ranking on the first page of Google for several different keyword phrases. Let’s even imagine that those keyword phrases are driving passive traffic to your website every month — maybe a few hundred visits.
When analyzing your SEO strategy, there’s only one more step in the funnel to make sure everything is working as it should: is that search engine traffic converting on your website?
Because it doesn’t matter at all how much website traffic you get if none of that traffic is turning into leads or, when you call them, they have no interest in your services.
So keep a close eye at how that SEO-based increase in traffic is affecting your overall business — are you getting more leads? Are you doing more deals?
You should be.
And if you’re not, then either something is wrong with your website (maybe it’s not building enough credibility or it loads too slowly — Carrot website’s are proven to be high-converting out of the gate) or something is wrong with the traffic you’re driving (they aren’t people with the right intention.
If you’re a real estate investor in Idaho, you might be able to get your website ranking for “The best mountain biking trails in Idaho”, but that website traffic isn’t going to do your business a whole lot of good. Something like “Sell my house fast in Idaho” would be far better.
Adapting Your SEO Strategy To Dominate Your Market…
In the SEO series we’ve been working on over the last few months, we’ve laid out lots of different strategies to help you get ranking in Google.
But here’s the thing: each market is different and different strategies will work better (or worse) in different markets. Some markets are more competitive and difficult to rank in while other markets will only require a few months of effort to see results.
In the end, you need to do whatever is best for your business.
Here are a few final thoughts that might change the way you approach SEO in your market:
Competitive Market — If you’re in a highly competitive market with lots of other investors or agents gunning for the same keywords that you’re trying to rank for, then you might be better off aiming for long-tail keywords to start. These are just long keyword phrases that tend to have a lot less competition (and are thus easier to rank for). Consider, for example, “Sell my house fast for cash easily in [location]” versus “Sell my house in [location].”
Uncompetitive Market — In an uncompetitive market, you might find that you can target more basic keyword phrases with higher search volume and still see results within a few months. In that case, take advantage of the market you’re in and create new content to rank for each phrase your possibly can.
Paid Ads VS. SEO— While we’ve talked a lot about SEO over the last few months, let’s not forget that paid advertising should be a critical part of your overall marketing game plan — especially when you’re just starting out. SEO will provide you with long-term success and financial predictability, but paid advertising works quicker and can get you leads by the end of next week. So use both as you need to to build a thriving business.
Conclusion
SEO has lots of benefits to offer your business if you put in the work to make your website rank.
It’ll take time… but stick with it and you’ll pull it off.
On your journey, you can use the above tips to track your progress and adjust your strategy based on your market.
And let us know if you have any questions along the way — we’d love to help however we can. :-)
You want to rank your real estate website on the first page of Google.
And you’re no SEO rookie — you understand that ranking on the first page for your target keyword phrase is going to take some time, it’s going to take some work, and it’s going to take some content creation.
That’s the question I intend to answer for you in this article.
But first… just how powerful is the first page of Google anyways?
The Power Of Google’s First Page…
What is the primary reason that anyone — real estate investors and agents included — want to rank their website in Google?
The answer is simple. Passive traffic. High-quality leads. And less money spent on advertising. With that, you can build a bigger business and establish yourself as the go-to real estate expert in your market. Financial predictability and businesses growth — that’s what high rankings promise your business.
But here’s the thing… ranking in Google isn’t enough.
Most online tools will consider your website as ranking if it’s within the first 100 results for your given keyword phrase. Answer me this, though: when has anyone ever clicked through 100 results after searching for something in Google?
Yeah… never.
Which is exactly why the first page of Google is the only place with significant click-through rates (1st position takes 35% of the clicks).
If your result gets to page 2, 3, 4, or 5, the click-through rate is negligible. In other words, if you want to live the passive-traffic and high lead-gen dream that SEO promises, you must be on the first page. Nothing else will get you the results you’re looking for.
Once you pull off getting your website on the first page of Google’s rankings, though, click-through rate isn’t the only benefit — the lead quality is typically much higher than those from paid advertising, meaning a high close-rate for pennies on the dollar.
Here’s what Tyler Ford (a real estate agent and investor) has to say about this.
How Long Will It Take You To Get To The First Page?
Okay — so you know how valuable the first page of Google is. You understand that the lead quality is typically much higher, the leads are much cheaper, and they take much less work to generate (over the long term, of course).
Note:This isn’t to say that you should ignore paid advertising altogether. Many Carrot members use PPC and direct mail to get leads immediately but then invest in SEO for their long-term business sustainability and financial predictability.
But how long is it going to take you to rank on the first page of Google?
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question with a simple number of months. Generally speaking, though, you should expect to see some type of positive movement with your rankings within 3-12 months, depending on a few different factors.
Here are the 4 biggest factors I’m referring to. Taking these into consideration, your website should take between 3-12 months to get near the first page of Google for your target keyword phrase, moving up and down that spectrum depending on…
The 4 Biggest Ranking Considerations
1. Keyword Competition
The more real estate investors or agents that you have to compete with for page one of your target keyword phrase, the longer it’ll take to see the results you’re looking for.
Of course, different keyword phrases will have different levels of competition. You can use Ubersuggest to check the competitiveness of various keyword phrases. While less competitive phrases usually also mean less monthly search volume (meaning less passive traffic), it is often easier to get your website ranking on the first page for those phrases.
So, if you want a few first-page rankings under your belt faster, then try targeting some longtail keyword phrases with lower search volume and minimal competition. Over time, you should still focus attention on highly competitive phrases (such as “sell my house fast “) since those generally have a high payoff once you’ve reached the first page, but don’t be afraid to start with the lower-hanging fruit.
With more content comes more opportunities to rank in Google. Think of it this way: every page on your website get crawled by Google’s bot and has a chance to rank in search results. It logically follows, then, that with more content optimized for search engines on your website come more opportunity to rank for a variety of high-intent keywords.
Often times, the real estate agents and investors who claim the first page of Google are the same ones who consistently publish new content… on their website, blog, and social media channels.
The more stuff you create and put out there, the more that Google likes your website. And so long as the content you create is optimized for search engines, every single page is another chance for you to beat your competitors. The more content you create and the more consistently you create it, the faster you’ll reach the first page.
So long as the website that provided you with the backlink (Website A) is trustworthy in the eyes of Google (see the dangers of black-hat link building over here), that link will lend your rankings some additional gusto. The more quality backlinks your website has, the faster your pages will crawl their way to the top of Google’s rankings.
In fact, there’s a direct correlation between the number of backlinks and ranking position.
That’s not to say, though, that you need 35,000 backlinks to see significant results from your SEO efforts — trying to rank for real estate keywords in your specific market is far less competitive than the demands of most online marketers.
Sure, backlinks will increase how fast you rank your website, but they aren’t totally necessary for a beginning SEO strategy (citations are more important, actually — learn more over here).
At this point, this last consideration probably goes without saying… but I’m going to say it anyways: the longer that a page exists, the more authority it gains. Period. There’s a direct correlation between how old a page is and how high it ranks in Google. The average age, for instance, of a position 1 ranking is almost 950 days.
In other words, and if you take anything else away from this article, understand that SEO takes times — there’s simply no way to get around it. When you’re trying to get a page on the first page of Google, the reality is that Google has already chosen 10 results for that first page and you have to beat those results — that takes time.
It can be done, to be certain, and you will do it if you stick with it, but it’s important to know really what you’re up against. And the 4 above considerations should help give you a better idea of how long you should expect your website to take to get to the first page of Google.
As always, though, if you have any additional questions, hit us in the comments!
“I’m not getting any leads through my Carrot website. I’m just going to cancel it.”
That’s what Troy told himself one day as he drove to work. He almost did it, too. Thankfully, he gave it another shot.
And he couldn’t be happier…
Watch Troy’s Case Study
Meet Troy
Troy is a real estate investor out of Milwaukee. He’s no rookie – with over ten years of experience and plenty of closed deals, it’s clear that he knows his stuff.
Troy had a good thing going. He was spending his time buying and selling income properties to other investors and making a healthy profit.
One day, Troy decided to take things to the next level. He found out about Carrot and got his hands on one of our high-converting websites — powerful, lightweight sites that are made to dominate Google rankings and convert visitors into leads.
They’re made just for real estate investors like Troy, so once he set up his own site, he was hoping to get a lot of new leads…
But leads started drying up…
Some time passed, and he didn’t do much with the site beyond a bit of customization. He wasn’t actively trying to drive traffic to it with PPC or SEO, so it really just sat there.
That wasn’t a big deal until the market started shifting and Troy found that leads were getting harder and harder to come by. The other lead sources he used had all but dried up, and his Carrot website didn’t seem to be doing much for him.
“Sources that were giving me enough leads and deals these last years just weren’t enough to keep me busy. A lot of those have dried up… I had to find something else.”
That’s when he decided he could save some money every month If he got rid of his Carrot site. After all, what good is a high-converting website if no one ever sees it? It doesn’t matter how optimized it is if it’s just sitting there collecting dust. So he started researching how to cancel his Carrot subscription.
But then he thought, Quitting is the easy way out… maybe one more shot.
And he decided that he wasn’t ready to quit just yet. He realized that he hadn’t been doing as much as he could to drive traffic to the website, so he wanted to give it another go.
“I knew if I took the DIY route it wouldn’t have gotten done the way it needs to get done… so, I hired out and the leads that came in were more than enough to pay for it. So, it’s totally worth it — and it happened faster than I expected.”
How Troy made it work…
The second time around, Troy took it a lot more seriously. He found some great AdWords marketers and hired them to help him with PPC. It was a hard cost to stomach, especially while his leads were buckling, but once the PPC started bringing in traffic, he realized how powerful his website was.
“It was a bigger upfront cost, but it only takes one deal to pay for it, so it would be crazy not to give it a try.”
Steady leads have been flowing in ever since.
For Troy, the high cost of marketing and PPC quickly paid for itself. All it takes is closing one solid lead in a month. Troy closed four. He brought in $50,000.
Better yet, he started working on SEO, and now that more organic traffic is flowing in, his PPC is cheaper than it used to be, and he’s pulling in even more leads.
“Early on, the cost per lead was hitting $3,000…but now that I’m starting to get SEO leads that’s helping quite a bit.”
This gave him the freedom to focus on improving other aspects of how he does deals.
He experimented with different follow-up methods to see which worked best, and now that he adopted a more aggressive follow-up method, his leads per deal ratio is up from 10:1 to 5:1. He’s always experimenting with direct mail.
Troy realized that paying for his Carrot website and the AdWords marketers that he hired wasn’t a necessary evil – it was a sound investment. If he left his website without trying to make it work, he wouldn’t have saved money. He would have lost it…
“I knew the cost would be significantly higher in the first few months, but it didn’t take all that long. Now more deals are coming in, I’ve had some bigger deals come through, and that cost per lead is dropping down.”
Troy paid for services that ramped up his business. If he left Carrot and decided that the AdWords marketers were too expensive, he would have lost $50,000 in opportunity costs. That’s a type of cost that people don’t usually factor in, but it’s essential if you want to be a successful real estate investor.
Troy says it best:
“Commit to finding a way to drive traffic to your website. Whether it’s you or you hire out, you have to do it. The site converts, it’s proven…but you have to get traffic to your website before you experience any kind of return.”
An underperforming website or a lack of marketing can cost you. On the other hand, putting down money for services that can boost your income in the long term is a solid investment.
If you’re using Carrot and PPC marketers like Troy did then you can rest assured that you’ll get a lot more eyes on your website while maintaining a high ROI.
These services can pay for themselves many times over. Here at Carrot, giving our clients a good return on their investment is one of our biggest goals.
What is real estate SEO? By definition, it is “creating relevant content with keyword focus to improve website visibility in the organic search results for real estate professionals. The process includes building landing pages, updating metadata, content modifications, and analyzing keywords.”
Whether you’re doing apartments, looking for motivated sellers, cash buyers, private lenders, or note sellers — even if you’re a real estate agent — the whole thing is you need to understand search engine optimization and how it can change your business for the better.
What is Real Estate SEO?
So, what is real estate SEO? To break it down simply, by giving Google and other search engines what they want, Google will reward you with higher rankings.
You see, each search engine — Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. — has an algorithm that crawls online web pages to determine which results to show people when they search for any given keyword phrase (i.e., the words they type into the search engine).
By “optimizing” your real estate web page(s) for a search engine’s algorithm (usually Google since it’s the biggest), you can rank for high-value phrases and drive passive traffic to your website.
Carrot members, for instance, often rank for market-specific phrases.
Here’s the best part: that algorithm determines where you and every other website ranks in Google — experts already know what factors that algorithm considers.
Partly, they know because of testing and experimentation. And partly, they know because Google consistently releases updates about how their algorithm interacts with websites and online content.
Note: I’ve transitioned from talking about search engines in general to talking about Google specifically. This is because Google accounts for about 93% of the search engine traffic online. It’s the heaviest-hitting player in the search engine world and the one whose algorithm you should most seriously consider when crafting your SEO strategy.
Which means you can too.
But it’s important to note the difference between working to please the search engines… and trying to trick them.
One will get you rankings. The other will get you banned.
Black Hat SEO VS. White Hat SEO
Black hat SEO and white hat SEO, are basically just search engine marketing jargon for a bad way to build rankings and a good way to build rankings.
Black hat is gaming the system. It’s trying to trick Google’s algorithm into giving you higher rankings. While this will sometimes work over the short run, it is likely to get your website into trouble when Google finds out what you’re doing.
White Hat SEO Strategy – Maintaining Your Integrity.
White hat SEO strategies, on the other hand, build rankings the way that Google wants you to.
That’s the way that we work at Carrot. That’s how we’re going to train you, is on white hat strategies.
With white hat SEO, there’s less risk and more opportunity.
As an example, if you go to Google and type up phrases like “Sell my house fast Pittsburgh,” “Sell my house fast Baltimore,” or “Sell my house fast Birmingham,” or “We buy houses Bakersfield,” or hundreds of other phrases.
Or, on the cash buyer side, “Investment properties in Baltimore, Baltimore wholesale properties.” Or maybe “real estate agent in Boston.”
You’ll see Carrot members popping up very high on the search rankings, leveraging their training and our search engine optimization tools, and getting more leads.
For SEO search engine optimization, we’re focusing on the section in the Google search results and Bing search results, and Yahoo search results. But mainly Google. We’re focusing on the area that’s above the orange box, you can see the parts where it says, “Ad.” Those are ads that people paid to be there.
The part in the orange box is called the organic search listings. That’s where, with search engine optimization, tweaking some things, and following Carrot training, you’re going to be able to get there in your market when you follow our training and our system.
Inbound Marketing for Real Estate – Draw Clients to You.
One of the reasons that we love search engine optimization is inbound real estate marketing. Inbound marketing is essentially when people go online, go to Google, type up questions, or they type up problems. They’re typing up something that they want to be solved, and then they land on your website.
They land on a website that is ranked high on Google. There was a study done by HubSpot that found that 28% of searches for something nearby (local SEO) resulted in a purchase. Also, 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases. So, local SEO is very powerful.
Direct traffic is people who already know about your website. They already knew your website name. Maybe they got it through your business card; maybe they got it off of a billboard, direct mail, or something like that. Direct traffic also performs very well because they’re already familiar with you. They already know about you. Then down the line you’ve got paid search, Google Ads, they go through PPC, and it’s all still insanely effective.
The reason we love search engine optimization so much is that with this higher lead to customer close-ratio, you have a higher quality lead. You tend to close more leads per the leads you’re getting than outbound marketing or things like that.
For example, here are the lead volume numbers accumulated by Carrot members (not counting phone calls.) 31.71% of the leads that came into our Carrot member websites were from Google organic search traffic. This drives home the importance of good SEO.
Why SEO for Real Estate is So Important for Lead Generation
101,000 Leads Coming From Organic in 2018!
Why Real Estate SEO Matters
If you’re closing one out of every 40 leads into a deal or a listing, from your radio ads, with SEO, you might close one out of every 10, one out of every 15. You don’t have to get as many leads to close the same amount of deals, which is why we love SEO.
Every day people are raising their hands for help by going to Google and other search engines, and they’re searching for solutions to their problems.
What search engine optimization and inbound online marketing do is the equivalent of a seller or a buyer or a private lender or a note seller going and knocking on your door and they’re asking you for help. Rather than the other way around, rather than you going to their door and knocking on it and saying, “Hey, do you need to sell your house,” or, “Hey, are you looking for properties?” interrupting their thought process.
Inbound marketing joins them in their thought process. They’re coming to you.
They’re reaching out and asking you for help, putting you in a position of power. Inbound marketing, specifically with search engine optimization, is the most remarkable form of marketing ever created because the people are coming to you, and it puts the prospect in a whole different mindset when they are the ones who reached out to you rather than the other way around.
Does Real Estate SEO Work?
A common question is, “Does SEO work, can it close deals, what’s the ROI of search engine optimization?”
Of course, it does! We have so many Carrot members generating SEO leads and closing SEO deals.
Here’s one of those stories…
Currently, Carrot members are pulling in a little over 60,000 leads per month. That doesn’t include phone call leads, people, landing on your websites, and calling on their phones.
The system’s effective and exciting, seeing you jumping into SEO and learning what you can do to increase your rankings in any city you’re in.
Baltimore, DC, Birmingham, Bakersfield, Houston, Oahu, Salt Lake, and even smaller cities. In smaller cities, it’s easier to rank well with SEO. But in bigger cities, we have members all across the country ranking very well, very high for SEO, with their Carrot websites, using our SEO training you’re going through right now.
For example, for the search phrase “we buy houses in Los Angeles” Carrot members rank #1 and #3 in organic results.
If you find another member in your market who is already ranking on page one, don’t panic. We have markets where there are four or five Carrot members on page one, all getting better results than they would be without Carrot, and they’re sitting there battling it out, but they would never have even gotten those results without SEO training and our system.
This works in any market, no matter how large or small.
As we mentioned, Carrot members currently hold more page one rankings and top five rankings on search phrases that matter more than any other website platform for real estate.
That’s an empowering thing for you reading the post or watching the SEO training video because it shows you that you have a powerful tool at your fingertips, and we’re here to help you get there and get the same results as other people in those markets if you implement the system and work it. Let’s get you there, too.
It’s crucial to say what you do and do what you say… your personal reputation is too important.
Jack Bosch
Jack Bosch is the expert when it comes to land. In 17 years of flipping land, he has successfully flipped over 4,000 lots, and plans to flip about 15 deals PER MONTH this year!
2019 has been his best year ever and he’s going to share why now is an amazing time to start and how you can break into the market with a few tips and tricks.
Learn how to create cash flow that provides generational wealth and get the knowledge, capability, confidence, and courage to succeed.
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast:
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The Conversation
4:03 – Jack’s background in Real Estate – His main game is land flipping, but his team also deals in multi-family and other markets.
8:46 – Creating cash: Using the wheel of wealth to reduce expenses and invest it into assets.
23:21 – The 3 types of land Jack goes after and exactly how to find land buyers and sellers that turn into the best deals.
27:46 – Jack Bosch’s top tips on how to start buying and selling land.
35:30 – Breaking down the math behind Jack’s investments. How much revenue are his deals generating?
42:30 – Jack’s marketing mix for finding buyers and sellers. How direct mail and online are working together.
47:27 – Top resources for where to find buyers for land. Carrot.com with PPC and, LandWatch, Lands of America, LandFlip, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, RedFin, and Zillow. Start with free resources and amplify them with paid marketing.
EP 57: You Can Achieve Financial Freedom and Build True Wealth w/ Jack Bosch: CarrotCast
EP 47: Flipping Vacant Land: How Gary Horton Pivoted His Wholesaling Business In A Tough Market To Be On Track To Flip 100 Pieces Of Bare Land In 2017: CarrotCast
EP 36: What’s Your Credibility Score? The Top 5% Of Earners Are Doing These “Simple” Things To Build More Credibility In A Cluttered Market w/ Trevor Mauch: CarrotCast
We want to hear your thoughts on the podcast! Drop them in the comments section below or hit us up on Facebook or Instagram
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below!
Focus on progress, not perfection.
Trevor Mauch, CEO of Carrot
Meet Troy. Troy is a 10-year real estate investor, so he kind of knows his stuff. One day while driving to work, Troy thought
“I’m not getting any leads through my Carrot website, I think I’m just going to cancel.” But Troy’s not a quitter, so he decided “Ya know what, I actually like making money. Maybe I’ll give it another shot.”
So Troy started ramping up his marketing through PPC and got some help from the Carrot folks. It turns out his work paid off… Troy made over $50k last month by closing 4 deals he got through his site.
Now Troy is getting results. Now Troy is ramping up his business. Now Troy is happy! Here’s how he did it…
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The Conversation
2:29 – Troy’s started out 10 years ago as a real estate investor and house flipper in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Right now, he’s averaging about 8-10k per PPC deal and closing roughly every 1 in 5-10 leads. Get in touch with the PPC experts he used HERE.
8:41 – What one thing is costing you the most money? Lack of follow-up with your leads. Consistent follow up is key to closing your deals. Sometimes we think we’re bugging people by calling, texting, and emailing him. Without his persistence through 8-10 phone calls, Troy would’ve missed out on $30k from someone who wanted to sell their house.
13:12 – How he plans to ramp up his marketing this next year. Doubling down in online, optimizing his website, and committing to larger direct mail campaigns.
17:32 – How much can you afford to spend per deal? Figure out your max cost per lead and max cost per deal by watching this video: https://carrot.com/blog/max-cost-per-lead/
18:16 – When something is not working, make a mindset shift and ask yourself “Have I truly given this a real chance?” Troy knew his time could be better spent on getting deals done so instead of going the DIY route with his website and marketing, he outsourced it and hired experts, and switched to Carrot’s advanced marketer plan.
21:15 -Suggestions for success from a Carrot customer. Commit to finding a way to drive traffic to your website. There’s a reason why we repeat ourselves at Carrot… the model works! Implement and educate, implement and educate.
The Secret To True Happiness For Ambitious Entrepreneurs w/ Seth Buechley: CarrotCast
My Struggles And 8 Success Lessons Learned… From Paying Taxes With My Credit Card To Multi-Million Dollar Businesses:CarrotCast
What’s Your Credibility Score? The Top 5% Of Earners Are Doing These “Simple” Things To Build More Credibility In A Cluttered Market w/ Trevor Mauch: CarrotCast
We want to hear how we can make our products better and what we can do to help you! Drop them in the comments section below or hit us up on Facebook or Instagram
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below!
We had no advantages. We had ups and downs just like everybody else. I think that’s what you know a lot of people in this real estate game don’t show that other side of the downside and we stuggle everyday. I mean it’s not easy. Max Maxwell
What’s up CarrotCast community. It is the end of a week right now as at the time I record this. I’m actually getting ready to head out to North Carolina and Tampa on Sunday for my last, last, last trips of the year for business.
It’s been … It’s definitely been cramming a lot of stuff in this past month and a half, it’s been all amazing stuff. Just meeting a lot of amazing people. I’ve talked about it in recent episodes of the CarrotCast and different masterminds and high level. I’ve been in boardrooms with two multi-billion dollar companies, their CEOs, different masterminds with just amazing, amazing people.
Speaking of North Carolina, the guests I’ve gotten today’s episode of the CarrotCast, they were actually out here from their home in North Carolina. They were here at CarrotCamp and it’s actually Max Maxwell and Tony Robinson. Max and Tony had been friends for … Shoot for decades and are going way, way, way back.
I think everyone in the industry knows that Max has been kind of taking the industry by storm with his YouTube channels, podcasts, his Instagram following. He’s just building a big, big, big movement. And it’s cool. I love seeing what he’s doing because he’s just sharing what he’s doing as an investor. And originally the whole aim was hey, how can I get from $20K a month to $100,000 a month? And he passed that, and here at CarrotCamp, he’s talking about doing some amazing, amazing things. They’re already doing crazy, crazy great things.
Anyway, we had a chance to kind of, hole away at CarrotCamp in my office, I pulled them to the side and I said, guys, everybody knows Max’s journey from the past two years. Everybody knows how he was broke and how he dove in and started tackling real estate investing and really nailed cold calling and really nailed PPC with Carrot and is doing great. Everyone knows that story.
But, one thing that hasn’t been told is the backstory before that, what happened 10 years, 20 years prior. What happened with their relationship? How did they get to know each other? And how did they support each other through the ups, through the downs?
So we sat down for this candid interview going all the way back to when they were 12 years old and they met, and through the struggles, through a jail stint, through both of them going broke at times, but opposite times through Tony making millions and then losing it all and going to jail.
It’s just crazy, crazy things during the story, but the cool thing I want you to guys to notice is what made these guys who they are today.
People see the success of the past two years as instant, just overnight success, but it wasn’t. It was success decades in the making and I’m insanely proud to sit down with these guys, they’re making an impact, so proud to call them a Carrot customer, Carrot member, Carrot client, and I’m just pumped to be able to see them again and see the impact they’re going to make on more people.
So listen in to this candid conversation with myself, Max Maxwell and Tony Robinson, his business partner, as they discuss their journey and their path that led them to a multi-million dollar real estate business.
Also, please give us a rating on iTunes and listen to other episodes of the CarrotCast!
Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast
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The Struggles, Lessons, Failures, and Keys That Led to a Multi-million Dollar Real Estate Business
1:55 – Tony and Max’s backstory. How they came together and their relationship. 3:15 – Their high school years and how those years impacted their success. 6:00 – Trevor’s brief backstory about a period in his life when he was introverted. 7:40 – Where Tony and Max ended up after high school. One to the NFL and the other to the Military. How they helped each other during this time and how it ties into their real estate business now. 16:40 – Failed businesses and following the entrepreneurial spirit. Their route to real estate. 21:15 – The ups and downs of 2016 and starting the wholesaling business. 25:00 – Stop trying to duplicate what “gurus” are doing. 26:35 – How Max started creating a YouTube and Instagram following and starting their first meet up. 28:50 – How their business is shaping out to be in 2018. 30:10 – How they get over the fear of having a partnership while being best friends.
LINKS TO ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE
$15M++ Revenue in 5 Years… How Raul Bolufe Has Built the Momentum to Crush Wholesaling in a Very Competitive Market: CarrotCast
Closing 25% of His Leads: How Max Maxwell Leverages Online Marketing and Inspirational Storytelling to Close 1 in 4 Leads:CarrotCast
Need Inspiration? Jason Is Almost Single-Handedly Renovating His Small Ohio Town by Investing… One Building at a Time w/ Jason Duff:CarrotCast
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