SEO and Real Estate

I'm not a Countrywide, Wells Fargo or Lending Tree yet I want to advertise online...is it worth it?

In the Real Estate business competing for terms like 'home loan' or 'refinance' is next to impossible on an organic search front due to the large lenders having hundreds of sites, microsites, and online information referring to them regarding loans. In essence, they've won the link popularity contest and are now deemed the most 'relevant'.

Paid search however is a bit different because there is room for even the small guy to have a fighting chance at showing up high in the sponsored links area. One can imagine what the cost per click on a term like 'refinance' must be (around $10 from experience). At $10/click a small lender or brokerage firm would have to have a pretty hefty marketing budget to play in that game and not many do, in fact the referral business tends to be the best bet for most brokers.

Does this mean forget advertising online because it's already been done and is so saturated with big dollar lenders that it's not worth it? The short answer is NO.

I have had recent experience with the loan business, in fact I launched a first ever online lead-generation campaign for a small San Francisco based lender. The trick isn't always to try and compete with the big guys like Countrywide Home Loans or Lending Tree but rather find a niche area where your business fits in. You might just find it's a segment of the market that the larger companies just overlooked or perhaps made a decision to not pursue.

I'm confident there are opportunities for smaller players to still make an impression (pardon the pun) online. To find out how I would approach a real estate ad campaign send me an email at adam@infocation.com or read about some of the services Infocation has to offer. If you haven't already visited my personal portfolio site I invite you to browse AdamSouza.com.

Happy Marketing!

Adam Souza's Linking Scheme Revealed

Ok. So now I've started the google and the tumblr blogs, I have my Adam Souza portfolio site, and I have links to my business Infocation as well as friends and family who also link to me. I should have no problem keeping adamsouza.com ranked #1 now.

Moving forward, I will start to experiment with new linking schemes and hopefully start to use some query strings or other method to track the effectiveness of each activity. For now I'm just hoping to rank at all.

In a previous blog I had mentioned how I sometimes drop entirely off Google's radar for now apparent reason (see: Is Relevance Still King?). With my new blogs and linking schemes in place I will be really surprised if my site drops out of #1 for the keyword Adam Souza.

Stat tuned...the saga continues.

Adam's Blog - The Tumblr Experience

I have to admit I've been unfaithful to Google and actually started a blog with another company first. My Tumblr blog was the first experiment by me to try and get into this whole blogging thing as well as an opportunity to try and get my voice out to the world and share in things I deem intersting and somewhat socially relevant.

The Adam's Blog on Tumblr was very easy...I have to say now after creating this Google Blog that it wasn't much different although I instantly was able to pull an RSS feed from Tumblr (something I'm sure I can do and with more control here but wasnt' as readily available).

So once again I'm back to working on a linking scheme to promote my personal portfolio site: adamsouza.com

Adam Souza Joins the World of Blogger

So I've finally decided I should create a blog. I think until I have an inspiration to really write about something compelling or socially on topic, I'll stick to using this purely as a way to help my site ranking by way of link popularity and keyword phrase relevance.

For instance, by referencing my name adam souza, as well as my website: adamsouza.com, I'm trying to create some cross-linking schemes that will ideally help keep my portfolio site ranking #1 for my name.

Sure it's a small feat to rank #1 for my name Adam Souza but what if I start creating blogs with not just my name but other keywords and phrases that I eventually hope to be ranked on.

This is what I'll dedicate the next few days posts to doing and maybe even learn something about blogging in the process.

If you'd like to follow my journey as I work to rank higher and higher for terms like marketing consulting, SEO, Web design, and of course Adam Souza, keep visitng my post...I just might have other things to say as well!

Cheers,
Adam