Episode #96 – SEO For Real Estate Investors: Don’t Break The Chain

You're listening to the “REI Marketing Nerds” podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords Nerds, a high-tech digital agency, focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition, and live a freer, more awesome life. And, now, your host, Dan Barrett.

Dan: All right, welcome to this week's episode of the REI Marketing Nerds podcast. As always, this is Daniel Barrett here from AdWordsNerds.com.

How are you? Hope you are doing well. I hope everything is working amazingly for you. It has been beautiful weather here in Connecticut, so I've been kind of outside soaking it in a little bit. But I wanted to come back inside and get in front of this computer and talk to you, of course. [01:11.2]

And I want to talk to you about a really, really invaluable mental model that you can use. I'm specifically going to apply it to search engine optimization for real estate investors for motivated seller leads, but even more than that, this is a mental model you can use for any type of marketing that you do.

And I think I've talked about this on this podcast before. I've talked about the theory of constraints. I've talked about the “kink in the hose” process, which is our diagnosis process that we teach to our high level coaching students in the Search.Click.Convert Bootcamp and REI Marketing Mastery. This is a way that we are able to very quickly diagnose the problem with any Google Ads account or any Facebook ads account, and very quickly figure out what the issue is and how to fix it. Right? And it doesn't matter if you're not technical. You can learn this skill. [02:01.8]

I'm going to lay this out for you for SEO right now. This is something that, for me, when I used to realize that you could boil things down in this way, it almost sounds commonsensical, right? It's almost obvious when you say it, but once I realized you could do this, it really has clarified my thinking to the extent to which I use this probably five to six times a day, every single day now.

So, here is the mental model. When you are trying to get leads from SEO, when you are trying to generate motivated seller leads from Google, every single lead has to go through the exact same process in order to become a deal. Every single lead has to go through this process exactly. There is no skipping part of the line. There is no bucking the system. You cannot break the chain. It has to go in this order and it will go in this order every single time someone comes to your website and becomes a deal. [03:06.9]

And here it is—they have to see your website listed in Google. They have to click on your website above all others. They have to then convert, which means they contact you. They either email you or they call you. And then they have to close.

This is a pretty basic idea, right? They've got to see you. They've got to click on you. They've got to convert and they've got to close. Really basic. But let's back up and think about this. Most investors, when they get started with SEO, they don't understand what they need to work on and what's important, and what do you do? And do I need links or do I need content? And yada, yada, yada, yada, right? And there’s a million and one options.

Here's how you boil it down. You start at the point in that chain that is the constraint. You start at the point of the system that you are being throttled, where you are, maximally limiting your own progress. [04:09.2]

Let's start at the very beginning. Okay, we want people to see the site and Google, but before we do that, what do we need? We need to get ranked for keywords. This is how people see us, right? They type something in Google. We show up. We can't be on page 50. We've got to be where they see us. So, that's step one. I need keywords that I can rank for.

Step two is if I have keywords that I'm ranking for, am I getting views? Because rankings and views are not the same thing, right? I could rank for “Dan Barrett AdWords Nerds swimsuit pics,” right? No one else in the world is competing for that keyword. I can rank number one for it all day. But I'm not going to get any views if nobody searches for it.

This is something that investors fall for all the time. They say like, I want to rank for sell my home in foreclosure in San Antonio. And the problem is even if you rank for it, nobody searches for it. So, if step one is “I need to get ranked,” step two is “I need to get views.” [05:17.5]

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Now, if you're getting the views, the problem becomes “Am I getting clicks?” because people can see you in Google and not click on you, right?

If I type in “I need to sell a house in San Antonio” and your website's title is “I put dogs to sleep for free because I think it's fun”—yeah, that was a little dark, got a little dark on this podcast, but you know what I mean—it’s something universally unappetizing, very unpleasant. No one's going to click on you, right? If your website says “Click here to get a virus,” no one's going to click on you. [06:24.2]

So, if you are ranking for keywords and you're getting views, the problem is “Am I getting clicks?” If you are getting clicks, now, the problem is are they converting?

If no one is contacting you, meaning you're ranked and they see you, and they click on you, but no one is contacting you, you have to think about why that is. Is the page working? Is it appealing? Does it speak to what they need? Does it answer the questions they have? Is this the right traffic for this page? Right? You can have the best real estate investor website in the world. If everybody that clicks on you is trying to sell a cell phone, they're not going to contact you. [07:04.5]

So, again, if we have keyword rankings and those rankings are getting us the views, and those views are getting us clicks, then we need to think about the constraint now is conversions. And if we are getting conversions, meaning people are contacting us but they are not closing, that's the constraint.

How do I address that? Well, you could address it in two ways, right? You could deal with your messaging, which is everything from your follow-up, the email that you send, the channels that you use, whether it's text message or RVM or whatever, could be your sales skills over the phone, what your team does when they see the seller in person, or it could be traffic quality.

Are those keywords not generating the right types of searches? Are these people that all want to buy houses? Is there a reason that people that want to buy houses are contacting you? Is your page unclear about what you do? [08:00.6]

So, again, worrying about whether my page converts, if I don't have any views is pointless. It's wasted time. You have to focus on the earliest part of the chain, the place that is the constraint. It's either going to be keyword rankings, or views or clicks, or conversions or closes, and that is it. Those are the only problems you can have in SEO. They are the only things you ever need to worry about.

And for every single specific step in that chain, there's only a few things you do about it. There's not an infinite array of ways to make your website good for Google. There just isn't. So, once you know what the constraint is, it's very, very simple to figure out what the plan of attack is, and that is exactly what I teach my coaching students.

So, if you think that's valuable, write those steps down—rankings, views, clicks, conversions, and closes, and figure out where you are right now, where your kink in the hose is, and I can guarantee you will be able to figure out how to ramp up your lead flow and ramp up the amount of deals that you get from SEO. [09:17.0]

If this was useful to you, by the way, I do these videos like a live. I do posts. I post all this stuff in the Facebook group, it is absolutely free. Go to AdWordsNerds.com/Group to get forwarded to that Facebook group. It is absolutely free. We would love to have you. Or just go on Facebook and type in “REI Marketing Nerds,” and you will find us.

This is Daniel Barrett. I will talk to you next week. I love you. I'll talk to you soon. Cheers.

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