I recently wrote about the unintended consequences of blogging and I thought I should also provide a brief explanation on tangible metrics. Blogging is not a fad, it is not a trend – it is now a must for every professional marketing plan. In real estate, if you are serious about expanding or building your business, blogging is an absolute necessity. I will not go into how to start a blog in this post, I am really just going to review the metrics and how they translate to your real estate business.
Search Engine Optimization – SEO - The One True Metric
SEO is probably the simplest and most complex metric you will encounter online. It can be defined and redefined in various ways, then be completely changed with a new algorithm release. When I talk about SEO I am talking about Google. I know there are companies that will talk about Yahoo and Bing, however, the numbers show, Google owns the market. On a more personal level, have you ever searched with Bing or Yahoo?
SEO is one of the best reasons to start blogging. Study after study shows blogging increases your website views, leads, and even sales. Hubspot, an online marketing firm out of Boston Mass, quotes that nearly 40% of US company’s blog for marketing purposes. Additionally, they mention 71% of readers say blogs affect their purchase decision! In fact, what is often the case is leads from blog posts are typically better quality because they are qualifying themselves as they read your posts. With numbers like these it is important to see that users are looking for blogs and are basing purchase decisions on blog articles. SEO is how users find your posts.
How do we measure SEO?
SEO in itself is not something that is measured at the time of writing. It must be measured after a post is published. Let me be clear, SEO in itself is not something that is actually measured, what is actually measured is numbers relative to previous numbers with different strategies. Numbers measured after a blog is published are the tangible metrics bloggers can use and are the true measure of your blog's success. Remember with business blogging there are some unique goals that traditional blogs are not using. SEO is the increase or decrease in these numbers based on your content, keyword placement, and a few other factors.
The best way to measure your blogs metrics is to connect it to a Google Analytics account. Again, I am not showing you how to do this, there are several videos you can find and they will walk you through how to connect a blog to Google Analytics. For the purpose of this post, I want to explain why adding Google Analytics is important and what it measures.
Measurability – Google Analytics
Google Analytics first measures who is visiting your blog. It goes into the geographic location, which browser, and even what time people visit your blog. This information is quite helpful in real estate because you can see what feeder states are reviewing your blog; for example here in Tucson we have several people from California and the Midwest looking for information on living in Tucson. Can you see how this information can be used to re-frame your marketing plan? The browser information is helpful because it will give you an understanding of what kind of web surfers you are attracting. If your content is coming from internet explorer from desktops, it is most likely coming from an older demographic. Again, a great place to re-frame your marketing plan. Finally, if your web viewers are peaking at a particular time, this gives you an estimate of when the best time to post is. This is especially helpful when it comes to local traffic.
Some additional metrics Google Analytics can provide are how users arrived at your site, how they interacted with your content, and even when they left your site. All of this information is critical in term of usable metrics for your blogging strategy. Keep in mind, Google Analytics can do so much more than what I have mentioned here. It is a full-service measurability tool for all types of online marketing outlets. One can not simply provide every aspect of Google Analytics in one blog post. For the purposes of real estate blogging, I wanted to go into some brief metrics bloggers can use immediately upon setting Google Analytics up for their blog.
A brief recap – What Google Analytics Measures
Basically, if it can be measured with a direct relationship, I would consider it a tangible metric. I also believe this is what we refer to as an intended consequence. If you blog to attract more website views, you can see which posts attract more hits. You can also see which ones are not attracting visitors.
SEO is a great reason to blog, but do not lose sight of your readers. Writing for a search engine is the number one way to not get SEO results. Google looks to the users and to see if they are interested in your content. Write for your users first and the search engines will take notice.
No comments:
Post a Comment