6 SEO Questions to Ask a Marketer (for Home Builders & Developers)
4-min read
Learn the right SEO questions to ask an expert here.
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is a powerful digital marketing strategy for ranking websites. Its purpose is to rank a specific website in the top positions on the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP. SEO helps home builders and developers like you, to increase qualified traffic to your website, gaining leads, and improving conversion rates as well as sales. Continue reading about SEO questions to ask…
Do you need help in understanding SEO? In this article, you’ll learn the appropriate SEO information needed to learn if you’re a home builder or developer. I created this article for you to better understand how SEO works, what it can do for your business, and what questions to ask if you want to get started.
Table of Contents:
- 6 SEO Questions to Ask a Marketer:
- What can SEO do for my business?
- How does SEO work?
- How do I speed up my website for SEO?
- What do I need to do to get started with SEO?
- How much does SEO cost?
- What can I expect from SEO?
6 SEO Questions to Ask a Marketer:
What can SEO do for my business?
Since SEO’s goal is to rank your company website in the top positions on page one of search engines such as Google. The outcome of this marketing tactic is to drive more qualified and potential customers to your site and increase your brand awareness. According to Search Engine Watch, the number one position in Google gets 33% of search traffic. The second position gets approximately 18% and it decreases dramatically from there.
This is important to consider because if your home builder website ranks in the number one position, then prospects are more likely to visit your site before your competitor’s. In addition, the more traffic you have arriving to your site, the more business you’ll potentially gain. The end result is that by driving more potential buyers to learn about your company and homes, there is much greater chance of increasing your sales.
How does SEO work?
This is one of the most common SEO questions to ask. In short, SEO works hand-in-hand with content marketing and other technical processes to increase your site’s visibility. For example, marketers use a combination of both blogging and internal linking for on-site techniques. For off-site SEO, marketers use backlinking, which is a link from a quality third party website linking back to one of your pages or posts.
There are more tasks taking place behind the scenes when it comes to optimizing a website for SEO. For example, you can optimize each media file on your website. First, ensure there are no missing images on your website and that they aren’t too large. Big files and imagery can slow down a website, and speed is an important factor for SEO and your homebuyers. Google mandates that your site loads quickly because so many consumers are using smart phones and tablets to surf the web so the site has to load quickly for such devices.
How do I speed up my website for SEO?
This is the third of many SEO questions to ask. Page speed/site speed is a measurement of how fast the content loads on a given page on your website. There are multiple ways to speed up your website for SEO. The first strategy to consider is enabling compression. This reduces the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files on your website that are larger than 150 bytes.
Another digital marketing strategy to consider is reducing redirects. With each redirect, your page will load slower and speed is essential to SEO. The page loads slower with redirects because it’s waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. With fewer redirects, your website will load much faster.
The last strategy to consider which will speed up your website for SEO is by using a Content Distribution Network (CDNs). CDNs are also called a Content Delivery Network and essentially, they copy your website at multiple, geographically data centers so your visitors have a more reliable and faster way to access your website from different areas of the country and world.
What do I need to do to get started with SEO?
To start an SEO program, you’ll first need to determine your goals. Ask yourself how much traffic do you have now versus how much traffic do you desire? Another question to keep in mind is regarding your content. Since content marketing fuels a large component of SEO, you’ll need to determine which keywords will help fuel traffic to your site and include those in your content writing. Your keywords should clearly define both your company and the homes or developments you build. When consumers search the web using these keywords, then your site will eventually rank higher over time to increase new prospects.
Many SEO companies tend to publish two to four blog articles a month for their clients, depending on their client’s budget. Although you can choose whether or not to review your blog articles beforehand, I recommend to always double-check the content on your end to ensure it meets the needs of your business and consumers and accurately portrays your company.
Often, SEO companies supply blog articles to their clients. However, if you wish to write your own blog articles for your company’s website you can certainly do so. There are a few caveats to writing your blog articles, such as time, SEO optimization, backlink building, and consistency. It requires a fair amount of time and learning to clearly understand how to perform SEO successfully. I recommend that you partner with a quality SEO firm instead.
How much does SEO cost?
The cost of SEO can vary depending on your goals and digital marketing strategies. Some things to consider when determining your budget are: How many blog articles you will post per month and how long those blog articles will be for you to rank higher than your competitors? Whether you will write the articles yourself or hire a writer. Lastly, how many backlinks you will need to build per month? Most SEO agencies offer packages to their clients that match their budgets and meet their needs. Check with several firms to see how their prices compare, but beware of low-cost SEO companies, you too often get what you pay for. Continue reading to learn the last SEO question to ask.
What can I expect from SEO?
Keep in mind that every SEO agency manages their clients’ plans differently, so these expectations might differ for each home builder or developer. However, expect to receive blog articles at the beginning of the month and a full report of your SEO progress at the end of each month.
Most home builders and developers for whom I manage their SEO, order between two to four articles per month. Our SEO services include publishing them to their website, as well as some of their social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Google My Business to assist in the backlink strategy. I always recommend my SEO clients have a social media presence and a verified Google My Business profile to take advantage of this feature.
In the end, you should work closely with your SEO agency to discuss content, keywords, and reports about your website. A high-quality SEO agency will always strive to improve your rankings and will offer you new recommendations on additional keywords and other strategies.
Do you have any more questions about SEO to ask a marketer? Do you need more help in understanding SEO? Lastly, do you need assistance in your digital marketing strategy? Let me know in the comments below.