November 2015 - Page 2 of 2

New Update Sticker for iDashboard Products

New Reports, Contact Details & Functionality

The team at iProperty are proud to announce a New Update to iDashboard, below is a summary of the main items that have been updated.

Activity Stream

The Activity tab on a contact is now known as Activity Stream. This newly titled Activity Stream provides iDashboard users with more details than ever before. Giving users at one click an overview of all Comments from Inspections, Opinions on Properties & Offers Made by the contact you are viewing. No longer will you have to go through each property to find the feedback on that property by a particular client, simply pull up the Contact in iDashboard and have all this information right in front of you.

Send Emails from Workspace

iProperty has made emailing your contacts even easier. Workspace has always been a great place to SMS and Mail Merge a selected group of clients from in iDashboard. We have now made Workspace even more powerful by adding in the functionality to send emails to these clients. Simply add your clients to Workspace and from there you can easily click ‘Send Email’, select your Email email design and fill out the contents you want to send. Its as easy as that!

Automatically Subscribe Contacts based on Category

Subscriptions can now have ‘automatically subscribe these contact categories’ set on them; when contacts are created in these categories they will automatically get subscribed to that email, this applies to ANY method on creating a contact, including when using our mobile apps iDashContacts & TREA.

New Report – Contacts with no subscriptions

This report shows you contacts that have no email subscriptions. Please be aware that while contacts in this report currently have no subscriptions, they may have had subscriptions at some point and they have since unsubscribed – if you want to know more about these contacts you should use the Contacts Subscriptions report instead.

New Report – Contacts with subscriptions

This report shows you contacts and their email subscription status. If a contact has ‘None’ in the Campaign(s) column and nothing in the Unsubscribe(s) column, this means they have never had an email subscription.

How Do Google Paid Search Results Work?

The more you read, the more you understand there is something pretty important about Google search. But, so many terms are thrown around that it makes it difficult to keep information straight. If you’ve heard of paid results ads on Google, but don’t know how they work, we’ll help explain them to you. When you better understand how they work, you’ll glean greater insight into how to make them work for you.

Paid ads appear in search results alongside organic search results. They come in a variety of formats depending on extensions, the advertising copy, and position.

Paid results appear in various positions on the Google results page:

Top of Page—Google allows three ad positions at the top of the search results page. This is prime real estate, because these ads appear before organic search results.
Bottom of Page—At the bottom of the page, there are also three ad positions.
Right Column—There are eight ad opportunities available in this position.

Paid-per-click (PPC) advertisements are graded on many factors that make up a quality score. Just as in organic search results, keywords are the basis for PPC ads. It’s these keywords that determine which text ads are matched to search results. These key factors impact text advertisement position in Google:

How Precisely Your Keyword Matches Searched Phrases—Searches, on average, contain 4.29 words. This means you’ll want to focus on longer keyword phrases as opposed to one keyword. For example, target a phrase such as “single family homes in Melbourne” as opposed to “homes in Melbourne.”
How Closely Ad Text Relates to keyword Phrases—If you’re targeting search results for “Melbourne waterfront properties,” your ad will rank high if you use exact or similar phrases, especially in the headline of the advertisement.
How Much You Spend—Popular keyword phrases cost more because you’re competing with other advertisers for them. So, if you’re willing to spend more, you may get a better position.
How Well Other Ads are Performing in Relation to Key Phrases You’re Competing For—The more clicks your ad receives, the better it does. The better it does, the better your positioning. The same is true for the opposite.

Data shows that 36 percent of searchers don’t realize that paid ads are ads at all, which is good news for advertisers. Users are more likely to click on ads when they don’t realize they are ads. Studies suggest that a strong PPC ad closer to the top of a page can receive a higher click-through rate and outperform organic search results.

If you’re creating PPC ads, it’s a good idea to have great copy and a budget that allows for a higher position on the page.

When it comes to paid advertising, here are some additional things to remember.

Search results change for every keyword phrase.

When you utilise paid advertising, your business will compete for a number of search phrases. Organic and paid search results will look different based on the keyword search term, even for small changes. For example, “Melbourne condos for sale” yields a completely different result than “condos in Melbourne.”

Your search results can be influenced by autocomplete.

The autocomplete function in Google search lists popular key phrases that are similar to the terms you’re typing into the search box. A search can be influenced by these suggestions, and often is, so it’s important to make note of what keyword phrases appear. Decide whether or not they compete with your phrases and if you should use them for your keyword campaign.

How your user searches changes click-through rates.

When someone searches with purchase intent or with the intent to conduct a business transaction, the click-through rate for paid results is higher than for organic search results. In searches where the user is looking for information, organic search results get a higher click-through rate.

Keep these factors in mind when you’re preparing for your keyword campaign. It is wise to focus your paid ads on keywords and content that is focused on buying or selling. Your information content should, therefore, focus on organic SEO strategies.

Rankings constantly change.

Every single day, new content is produced. This means that the rankings are constantly changing. Some blog posts will climb higher in the search result rankings while others will lose their position and fall. Since Google bots constantly crawl the web, your position—organic or paid—will move over time.

A mixed strategy focused on organic and paid results can boost your reach.

You’ll likely have keyword phrases for both organic and paid search results that overlap, which is ok. The same consumers looking for information are often looking to purchase or find services as well. Studies have found that by competing for target keywords with paid advertising you can significantly boost your traffic beyond the reach of organic search results. So, it’s a great practice to use both SEO strategies and paid advertising for your online brand.

Paying for ads does not help your organic search results ranking.

Paying any company or consultant for services is not guaranteed to increase your organic search ranking. SEO strategies take time, and strong SEO comes through consistency. It’s great to invest in well-established SEO tactics, but, remember, your ranking won’t improve over night.

We hope the How Google Search Results Work series has benefited you a great deal, and that you now understand a bit more about how google search really works.

Tips for How to Rank High in Google Search Results

If you want to rank high in Google search results, you’ll have to produce strong content and consistently use strategic SEO tactics for an extended period of time. The amount of information available about SEO can be overwhelming, but here are some quick tips to begin with:

Use Strong Keyword Phrases

Use strong keyword phrases between 2-4 words in length. The average search contains more than four words, so it’s important to use longer phrases.

Identify and Understand Your Target Audience

Once you’ve identified your target market, it’s important to understand your customers’ behaviours. This will help you create content they’re attracted to and want to consume.

Optimise Your Site for Strong Keywords

Optimise your entire site, not just your blog posts, for SEO—especially local SEO. Use competitive keywords with local citations in order to drive traffic to your site. The right keywords help you attract the right customers.

Use a Mix of Online Content

A strong online brand will have a mix of consistent onsite content, social media content, and reviews.

Develop Content that is Share-Worthy

Share-worthy content is content that meets your customers’ needs and engages them. It’s quality information that they want to share with their friends and family members. Write with your audience in mind.

Utilise Creative Promotion Strategies

Brainstorm and get creative about how you promote your content. This will help you maximize your reach and generate engagement.

Watch Your Competitors

Watch what works for your competitors and implement those tactics into your own strategy.

There’s a lot to learn about ranking high in Google search results, but these tips will help you get started. In order to avoid overwhelm, it helps to learn the basics about SEO before you dive right in.

Our How Google Search Results Work series will continue with our final post How Do Google Paid Search Results Work? We hope you’re understanding more and more about Google and how you can leverage it to work for your business.

Understanding Unpaid Search Results in Google

When you search Google, the results will vary based on the term you search for, type of device you’re searching from, the content timeliness, and your proximity to a business. Here are what the organic positions mean and what they look like:

Standard Unpaid Listing

A standard unpaid listing has a tile, URL, and a description.

Local Knowledge Panel

The local knowledge panel lists contact information and addresses that are pulled from business data.

Local “Pack” Results

This group of listings is also tied to map and pin results, and is a list of 2-7 results with pins and addresses.

Google Map and Pins

These results appear at the top of the page and are plotted on a map, so users can view the proximity of a business to their location.

Local “Near” Results

These local results consist of three results that are returned when you search for “{search term} near {your location}.”.

The Knowledge Graph and Google My Business

When searchers look for your business name—and you’ve set up Google My Business—a knowledge graph appears with business information. This data includes your contact details, street directions, ratings, photos, Google reviews, and more.

Social Results

If the individual who searches has a Google+ account and is signed in, he or she will be able to see your recent Google+ posts.

Image Results

These results display images related to the search term.

Video Results

Video results appear with brief information and a video preview.

News Results

These are timely articles that cover information related to the search terms.

In-depth Articles

Similar to news articles, these are evergreen articles that are deemed related to the search terms.

Sitelinks

The number one position in the search results page can receive expanded sitelinks, with up to six internal pages from their website.

Review Mark-Up

Highlights reviews and ratings for a business based on Google consumer reviews, on the right hand side of your screen.

Omitted Results

There are several reasons for Google to omit pages in your site. A page might be omitted if Google finds it to be worthless for users, or the most common reason is because Google omits pages that have same similar content (duplicate content). For Real Estate this could be because you have the property listed on multiple real estate portals e.g realestate.com.au, realestateview.com.au, domain.com.au, homely.com.au and your own website. Google looks at this as duplicate content so only displays a version or in some cases a couple versions that come from the website with the highest ‘authority’. Most of the time this is realestate.com.au because of the volume of traffic this website receives, as well as the volume of content realestate.com.au has on their website, so it is regarded as the highest ‘authority’ for this search and all the other results are omitted.

Open House Listings

If your real estate agency uses feed form to offer open house listings, you can add that data to your website so it appears within Google’s results for related searches.

Hopefully, this helps you understand the types of unpaid search results on Google and what they look like. Our How Google Search Results Work series will continue, so stay tuned for the next post Tips for How to Rank High in Google Search Results.

How Google Search Results Work for Real Estate

Search engine optimisation is important for every business. Buyers and sellers turn to search engines to find real estate listings and services, and it’s important that you take advantage of search to drive buyers to your website.

In order to get this traffic, however, you need to understand how search engines—like Google—work to help users. When you understand how Google search works, how it ranks pages, and the difference between organic and paid results, you can ensure your site ranks better in the results page.

How does Google search work and what appears in the search engine results page (SERP)?

When you search for information or products in Google, you begin by typing a keyword into the search bar.

The search engine results page, which provides a list of web pages that Google has deemed most relevant, is the outcome. At the top, under the search bar, you’ll see how many results your keyword search generated. Many results can appear, but there are two main categories of results: paid and unpaid search results. Let’s discuss them.

Unpaid Results

Content the search engine identifies as a good match for your search is defined as organic results. These results appear in the main area of the SERP page and 10 options are shown on each page. Organic results are ranked based on content quality and are typically informative resources. Organic results are unpaid, and you cannot pay to improve your ranking.

Paid Results

Businesses target search terms by paying for advertising through Google Adwords. Advertisers specify how much they will pay each time a user clicks on their ad and then they bid on search terms. Google then sets the order for how the ads will appear based on how accurate the ad is for the search term, how much the advertiser will pay, and the past success of the ad.

The ads that will most likely pay off are the ones that are prioritized, which lines up with what users want. Most users want relevant search results, whether they’re paid or unpaid. You can identify paid ads by a yellow box on the left of the result that says “Ad.”

Result Position and Why it Matters

Page one of Google’s search results page is a big deal, because data reveals that 71% of searches result in a click on the first page. An Advanced Web Ranking CTR Study found that the first unpaid position on the search results page gets an average 31.24 % of the total clicks. At the second unpaid position on the page, the click-through-rate drops by over half and continues to drop as the results appear down the page.

The average user selects a result very quickly—within 8-9 seconds—making page position crucial. Your position in organic or unpaid search results directly impacts the amount of traffic to your website.

Who is Responsible for my website ranking?

Google considers hundreds of factors when calculating your ranking for certain search terms, so responsibility falls in a couple of different places.

Your website developer should take responsibility for ‘best practice’ optimisation on things that you may not be able to access, such as title tags and code structure (having said this, in the modern version of Google, tags and code structure makes up a very small percentage of your ranking).

You (the website owner) are responsible for your website content, which makes up the majority of your ranking. If you are not putting relevant content onto your site then your ranking may be suffering. You should take care when modifying content that you do not inadvertently cause 404 Page Not Found errors, which may have a negative effect on your ranking. You should also take care when putting on new content, ensuring that it is unique and not duplicated content that can easily be found on other websites. If you are paying a specialist Search Optimisation company, they may be responsible for your existing content, new content, structure and recommended code changes, however you should check your agreement with them to see exactly what is covered.

We are continuing our How Google Search Results Work series, so be sure to check out our next post Understanding Unpaid Search Results in Google. You’re going to understand the intricacies of Google search in no time!

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