Real Estate SEO and Technology Blog

Randy Eagar, CRS

One of the strongest ways of marketing your listings is through the venue of online video and real estate SEO. Video has the capability of demonstrating the various rooms of the home, hear an auditory explanation of the home, as well as a background musical effect. However the most lavish video tour in the world is no good if nobody knows that it’s there. Therefore, this article will give you some ideas as to how to get that video tour that you create not only visible, but highly visible to those online.

1. Target Keywords for Video SEO

Let’s make sure that we understand one thing first. While your video might look nice and have a great sound track, none of this is indexable to the major search engines. While Google is working on some new technologies here, none of it is practical at this point in time. Thus what we will be restricting ourselves to is the various text that is used in and around the video in such places as the Title code, Description code, Content itself, Alt Tags (Alternative Text that explains what the graphic is) and Indexed Tags.

All of these areas can and should contain targeted keywords for your video. Each video should target only a couple keyword phrases that accurately describe the video content. If done well, videos that are created can rank as well as blogs and articles.

There are two ways to create great keyword phrases for your video. One is to brainstorm what you think your best keyword phrases would be by thinking of what your prospects might type into the search engines. A good tool for this is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

The above method will give you highly searched keyword phrases. However this may or may not be the area of expertise that you wish to exploit. The second method of getting highly valuable keyword phrases is to create those that you would like to be found under. In other words, create your own marketplace. If you want to be known for “foreclosures” or “short sales”, don’t use the generic terms like “real estate” or “homes for sale”.

2. Make Sure You Remember YouTube

Since YouTube is owned by Google, you can be sure that videos posed there will have an edge when it comes to video SEO. In addition to YouTube, there are many other sites to place your video such as your blog site, website and specific landing pages.

3. Landing Pages are Great for Each Video 

To make your video tours even stronger, make each one with its own landing page or web page. Because this page will get its own URL, Title, Description and other tags that the normal website gets, it will compete well with major websites. In addition, each page gives you another use for your targeting keyword phrases.

4. Content is the Key

Content is key to getting your videos highly ranked. Since the major search engines can’t watch your video, they’ll index all of the text that you write about it. Make sure that when you write this content, you focus on your keyword phrases a few more times.

5. Don’t Forget Backlinks to Your Video

When we mention the word “backlinks”, what we are really saying are those “inbound links” that others use to link to you. There are three things to remember about “backlinks” or getting “inbound links” from others to you.

The first is the more links you can get from other to you, the better. However this is often a long and tedious process. A MUCH more effective act is to get highly popular websites or blog sites to link to you. Popular websites that link to you are much more powerful than a large quantity of unknown websites linking to you. Finally, making sure that the link that comes to you comes through using one of your keyword phrases is highly significant.

To illustrate, let’s say that in your description you say “to see this video, CLICK HERE”. What do the words “click here” have to do with anything? If on the other hand you wrote “to see this video about Boston short sales you can use the previous link”. Now the backlink also is encoded with your keyword phrase of “Boston short sales”.

One final thought is to create your own backlinks by adding the URL to blog comments and forum postings. This is especially effective in popular blogs and forums. Make sure when doing this that your link is relevant to the post.

6. Use Social Bookmarking to Bookmark Your Video

Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious can be used to improve your video tours. Bookmark your video page on each of those sites (using your target keyword phrases), and you’ll create inbound links and increase your viewership. You can even put buttons next to your video to make it easy for viewers to add it to a social bookmarking site if they like it.

Now that you have created your video and made it highly relevant to the major search engines, you won’t believe how many viewers you’ll get. Plus, since video knocks the socks off regular text, you’ll be creating a genuine marketing plan that works.

For more information on other topics similar to this, feel free to investigate the free webinars at WebsTarget SEO.