3 Quick SEO Tips for Chartered Surveyors

 

Search engine optimisation or SEO can seem a daunting process to many commercial agents and chartered surveyors. But with the vast majority in the commercial property sector paying little attention to the process, it opens up a huge opportunity for agents who want to get ahead of their competition.

What Is SEO?

SEO is the term used to describe a process that improves a websites visibility to search engines. Visibility results in improved rankings within unpaid search, sometimes referred to as ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ search. Ultimately the higher an individual commercial agents website is ranked and the more often it appears in search results, the more visitors it will receive.

SEO can be a complicated process, but here are three quick tips to get all you commercial agents started.

1. Picking Your Keywords

Look at the individual audiences that you are trying to connect with. Landlords, developers, investors, tenants - put yourself in their shoes and then try to identify what words they would use to search for a business like yours.

Once you have your list, you need to get an idea of the frequency of use for each keyword. Using a tool like Google Adwords will help you do this and will also identify other suitable terms for the commercial property sector.

2. Using Keywords In Your Website

Think about which keywords you use on which pages of your website. Remember not to over use keywords because you will make copy awkward to read. Conversely overusing keywords or ‘keyword stuffing’ will actually have a detrimental effect and cause your website to be penalised by search engines.

Also think about the use of keywords in page descriptions, urls and titles. Finally create links from other pages in your site to these pages using the keywords as the links.

3. Build Links

It could be argued that external link building is the most important aspect of SEO. When a search engine like Google sees a website that other websites link to, it assumes that it must be of importance and deliver value. The more links, the more popular and this can only boost your SEO ranking.

Nevertheless it is probably one of the hardest areas of SEO, perhaps because you have limited control over much of it. So, start with areas that you have some control over, in particular that dreaded word for commercial agents, ‘social media’. In a sector that is so social, I’m always surprised at the resistance to social media.

Your social media channels are a great start to your link building. Make sure that you link everything from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ to even your Yellow Pages listing.

On-going

Your market, your competitors, web trends and search engine algorithms are constantly changing. It means that SEO is an on-going process requiring you to regularly monitor and refine your strategy. If you want to ensure you stay ahead of your competition and on top in the commercial property sector, SEO has to be an on-going process.

Philip Burrows, Marketing Consultant