Grilling Troy Stanley

Recently we gave our SEO consultant a grilling over the ins and outs of SEO for Estate Agents. Now the team at Resource Techniques feel it’s time that we give our Chief Technical Officer, Troy Stanley the same treatment.

Firstly, do you have any messages for Estate Agents?

‘Such a broad question. [Pause] In my experience I have found that Search Engine Optimisation – or SEO – is changing at an outstanding rate. This won’t be obvious to Estate Agents, and the general public, but SEO is a full time job.

There’s no denying that Google are changing their criteria or ‘signals’ on how they rank websites on a daily basis. In fact Google have just released a video saying that there are 200 different signals, and each one carries different weight, as well as being able to be influenced in different ways, so the true number would be a multiple of this.

Do you have any upcoming plans?

There are quite a few dates in my calendar, but the one that stands out is the SMX [Search Marketing Expo] conference. The 3 day conference is hosted by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman from Search Engine Land, who both have a combined experience of over two decades in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

With previous experience at the SMX San Francisco conference before and I can safely say that the American Realtors are years ahead of Estate Agents in the UK. Each Realtor I met were on the cutting edge of latest social networking developments as well as local and in depth blogs that could put all of us to shame. The SMX East (New York) conference will not disappoint.

What can you see in the foreseeable future?

Mobile, GPS, Apps, touch screens are all in the news, and with a highly competitive market, these gadgets are becoming increasingly commonplace for Estate Agents to utilise as a formidable marketing tool. I seriously recommend that Estate Agents keep their eyes open and their ears to the ground for this exciting industry.

How do you see the search engine market developing?

Many eyes are now on Bing. Microsoft has recently spent 2 million dollars in the UK on TV advertisements for Bing and their search engine market share has steadily grown. Saying that, recent stats show that Bing has 3.5% UK market share, plus Yahoo’s market share of 2.6% gives Bing only a 6.1% share within the UK. There’s no denying that with a 92% market share, Google could be ‘top dog’ for quite some time.

In your eyes, what online marketing tool is underrated or underused for Estate Agents?

I would say that it’s a toss between online video and social networking.

Choose one.

If I had to choose it would be video for Estate Agents, but it is a difficult choice. There are many Estate Agents who have signed up to social networking and are still not fully utilising it, but video is a rare treat for any online property searcher. Video adds depth and gives Estate Agents to flex their creative marketing muscle, not to mention the possible SEO benefit on their Estate Agent website.

What is the state of online video at this present time?

YouTube is a colossal online entity and to get a picture of its growth Estate Agents only need to know one thing – For every minute of the day, people are uploading 24 hours of video to YouTube alone. With the announcement of Google TV, Estate Agents can watch as their branded online videos are transmitted directly into people’s front room. I can safely say that online video has the same growth potential of mobile and touch screen.

Google certainly has been the word on Estate Agent’s lips. When do you think they will list properties on Google Maps?

Google already lists properties on the American (.com) and the Australian domain and its only time before they place it on the .co.uk.

Give us an estimate

Only Google UK know – why would Google spend money developing it if they are not going to use it?

I guess it’s time for a little self-promotion, what are your top 3 Estate Agent websites designed by Resource Techniques?

Design is subjective and we have so many great websites for estate agents, but one of the first sites we developed using our latest generation of web technology stands out, penyards.com, incorporates stylish design, fantastic functionality and outstanding performance for SEO. Team Association are one of our key clients and we have developed some great websites from them along with the portal site teamprop.co.uk and regional sites like teamprop.co.uk/Wessex but also local real estate agent sites like fsb4homes.com that again works on all levels from on brand design, functionality, a top SEO. I guess lastly would be another of our key client sites, having originally developed the mayfairoffice.co.uk site a year or so back, when we were asked to develop their international site - mayfairinternationalrealty.com we were delighted and having launched the site at the beginning of this year to high acclaim, this has to be one of my personal favourites.