Real Estate SEO Adviser

How Usage Data Affect Your Search Engine Rankings

A lot has changed with real estate SEO over the years (and with search engine optimization in general). But here’s one thing remains constant. A useful real estate website will outperform a useless website over the long haul, from a search engine ranking as well as a profit perspective.When readers come across your real estate website, what do they do? How do the react? Do the majority of them hit the back button? Or do they hang out for a while and read an average of, say, five pages per visit?

If you can’t answer these questions, you cannot properly optimize your real estate website for rankings and sales. Why? Because “usage data,” as it is called, is becoming more and more important in modern search engine algorithms. And this trend will continue with time.

An Obvious Point About Usage

Let me address an obvious point before we continue our discussion about search engine optimization. The most important thing about usage data is that it tells you how well people can use your website, and how useful they find it. Usage data also indicates how well your website visitors are converting (downloading, subscribing, purchasing, whatever). Clearly, these are the most important factors of real estate Internet marketing success. But this is an article on real estate SEO, so let’s talk about the impact of usage data on your search engine rankings.

Search Engine Evolution

Search engine companies (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) make most of their money from advertising, through the form of pay-per-click / sponsored search. The more people who use their website, the more money they can make from ad revenues. Thus, the search engine companies have to protect the quality and relevance of their search listings in order to retain (and grow) their user base. It doesn’t take a business genius to connect those dots.

Protecting the Quality of Search Results

So, how do search engines protect the integrity of their listings? How do they ensure relevance or search returns? By constantly developing new technologies that are able to “reward” popular websites with higher ranking. But a lot of folks in the SEO industry have learned how to trick the search engine ranking algorithms to make their websites appear larger and more popular than they truly are. Call it “black hat SEO” if you want — labels are beside the point.

[Note: My book on real estate search engine optimization will teach you to climb the ranks while avoiding search engine penalties.]

Here’s the bottom line. Search engine companies are always trying to weed out the more manipulative websites and reward the truly useful and popular websites. So they use many ranking factors to determine this popularity. One particular factor that seems to be on the rise (especially with Google) is usage data.

What Is Usage Data?

Website usage data is information that reveals how people use your website. Let’s say a person is researching real estate in your area, and they find your real estate website through a search engine. The search engine can actually track that visitor after they click through a search listing — at least long enough to find out how they react to your website.

You can probably see where this is going. So, for example, if 85% of the people who locate your website through Google hit the back button upon reaching the home page, then the usage data suggests an irrelevant website, a low-quality website, or a combination of the two. Thus, the website should not be ranked high for that particular search phrase.

On the contrary, if 85% of the people who locate your real estate website through Google continue on to read several pages of content, then the usage data suggests a higher quality website (and a good match with the person’s search query). Thus, the website deserves its curent search engine ranking, or possibly a higher ranking.

Improving Usage Data and General Web Success

When you improve your real estate website’s usage data, you are also making your website more successful in general. How? Because positive usage data suggests a useful website — the kind of website people come back to and recommend to others. And that’s a primary requirement in the success of any website, real estate or otherwise.

Here’s how to make your website more useful and usable at the same time:

1. Overall usability - The easier your website is for people to use, the more likely they will be to actually use it. They will navigate more easily and read more content. Your conversion rates will also be higher if you improve usability, so this is a double-benefit. If you’re serious about your online success, I recommend reading a book (or at least some articles) on website usability.

2. Home page usability - Overall website usability is important, but the usability of your home page is paramount. Most people who find your real estate website through search engines will enter through the home page (unless you have sub-directories with unique topics). So you need to make sure the home page is enticing, inviting and easy to understand. Secondly, people who enter your website through an internal page will often go to the home page to find their way around. It’s the equivalent of a “You are here” poster in a shopping mall. If people can’t figure out your home page, they can’t figure out your website.

3. Home page enticement - Even if you have pages and pages of useful, interesting content, you still have to lure people in to read it. This will reduce the number of people who hit the back button upon reaching your home page, and it will also increase your conversion rates and general web success. What is your website’s primary benefit to visitors? Unique listing data? Virtual tours? Whatever the primary benefit, make sure it’s crystal clear on the home page.

4. Quality of content - I always get a good laugh out of SEO “experts” who say that content doesn’t matter, that only links matter. These people are shortsighted to the point of being harmless, so I prefer to let them think whatever they want. Linking may increase a real estate website’s search engine ranking, but without quality content your search-driven traffic will bail out on you. Goodbye visitors. Goodbye conversions. Goodbye clients. And goodbye usage data!

5. Organization of content - Organization is a sub-theme of usability, which we talked about above. All other things being equal, good organization will separate a successful website from a flop. But it also takes some effort. I always say that “it sure is hard to make a website easy,” but you have to do it. You have to map things out in advance to create a website that makes sense to people.

6. Interlinking for stickiness - If you have plenty of quality content on your site (and lots of web pages as a result), interlinking can help you increase your website’s “stickiness.” In this context, interlinking is linking between various pages on your real estate website. If you’re writing a page about purple widgets, and that page mentions orange widgets as well, make it a hyperlink to the page on orange widgets. WebMD.com and About.com both do this well.

Conclusion

Despite the constant arguments in SEO circles, usage data matters. It matters for search engine optimization and ranking, and will continue to evolve in this role. But most importantly, it matters to you (or it should) because it’s a direct measurement of how people are using your website, which relates to your website’s success in general.

Get the Book on Real Estate Search Engine Success

If you enjoyed this article, you will love my new book on real estate search engine optimization (SEO). Top Ten Agent is basically a detailed road map of my process for search engine success. I have taken more than a dozen real estate websites to the top of Google, Yahoo and MSN, and I reveal my process in this easy-to-understand book. More reasons to buy.