What’s on your Google Log? Who’s on your Social Media Profile?
Keep a simple log for one week.
Call it “My Google Search Log”. Just jot down all the searches you did at Google for a one week period.
Now, let’s say your week has passed by. (My, that was fast!)
What’s on your log?
photo credit: vice48sr5005
Dozens of searches phrases? Hundreds maybe?
Now scan the list.
How many times did you approach Google with the idea of buying something?
(Not very many, I’ll guess.)
Most of the time, I reckon you went to Google looking for information.
And when you went to the sites that Google served up as plausible answers to your question — how’d that work out for you? And just how relevant were the answers you received?
A few days ago, the TechCrunch blog noted that keyword search is hitting the breaking point in terms of usefulness.
Glance at your Google log, and think about it.
How relevant is search for your company’s particular market niche? How well are those visitors converting into conversations?
Another quick exercise: go to Google Trends, and enter your company’s most precious keyword phrase. For an example, I’m going to enter “real estate agents“.
You’ll note that the search volume for this phrase — at Google alone — has gone down over 100% (from 2004 to 2008). In four years!
That’s a dramatic decline! If you’re a real estate agent, you can’t afford to rely on search alone to develop leads in a declining market.
The online audience looking for Realtors isn’t using “Search Engines” as much as they were in 2004. And they won’t be coming back anytime soon!
So, where might the search audience have gone?
Well, you might argue that in this economy, hardly anyone is looking for a Realtor anymore. (It’s not true, but if you want to argue, go ahead.)
So those who DO want to find a Realtor — why aren’t they using search engines?
I can think of two reasons –
- Many real estate sites worked on building their online brands and marketing systems when search WAS hot. They did not squander their search capital! Once you found a solid agent site through the search engine, the agent and their marketing approach made themselves memorable. They provided you with a great experience and service. The next time you needed an agent, you didn’t go to the search engines — you went straight to the source that hooked you up with a great agent.
- Search engines don’t do a satisfactory job of answering relationship questions. You’re not just searching for a “Grand Rapids real estate agent” — you’re searching for one you can trust! Social media plays like FaceBook and LinkedIn answer the relationship, referral, and trust questions — much better than search engines can. The Real Estate Zebra posts that real estate agents who don’t invest in social media will quickly become irrelevant. The same is true for any service professional.
You still have time. Search isn’t irrelevant — yet.
When people visit your site, ask yourself 3 questions:
- What are you doing to make your company memorable?
- How are you building trust and relationships?
- And what are you doing to continue the conversation with your visitors?
Don’t squander your search audience!
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Comments
I agree — people have become more savvy, “long tail” searchers. The more specific the search, the better the result (usually!)
They’ve learned that broad searches “real estate agents” yield less fulfilling results than the specific: “des moines real estate agent non-smoker junior league member”.
Thanks for commenting! See you on Twitter!
Laura,
Thanks, for the nice compliment-coming from you that means something. But OH MYYYYY-Pat & I are just getting comfortable w/google. Need to set-up a meeting w/you to go over more on social media & connecting w/people vs. google.
Keep us in the loop.
Thanks,
Pam Murphy
Pam:
Well, you’re commenting on blogs — so that’s a fine start!
Putting your fine-looking Joomla! site in the URI field might help you a tad!
That’s http://omurphy.com !
Let’s touch base next month…
Hi,
Excellent blog - I really appreciate your blog about “What’s on your Google Log? Who’s on your Social Media Profile?”, I have bookmarked it for later viewing and forwarded it on.
Cheers.
I think that the use of social media in order to find service professionals will most certainly increase over the coming years. The reasons for this are many, the first of which is that much more information about the individual is available through social media than through more traditional web sites. Social media usage in the real estate industry is growing quickly, although overall penetration amongst agents is still only fractional when compared to the whole.
As far as the usefulness of search is concerned, REALTORS in particular, have moved towards keywords like “area x real estate” or “area x homes for sale.” Most people search for actual property when they search for real estate, and not for real estate agents. The movement in real estate search has been toward the “transactional buyer.” Those are the people who are likely to actually engage in a transaction as a result of their search. These people tend to use more direct keywords like the ones mentioned above.
No matter what approach one takes to attracting website visitors, if the end result is not an informative site that is easy to navigate, then all the hard work will be for naught.
Just like you said, people are looking for information. Information access is easier than ever before. I know that if my site doesn’t have the information people seek, or if I make it too difficult for people to get to that information, they will move on.