May 28 2014
Google's long term motto is:
"Do no evil"
That may be all very well, but Google might as well claim that all's fair in love and war, right? Because every time they change their algorithm, some business or other crashes and burns.
The latest casualty is RetailMeNot. Shares plunged 19% on news that their search page results were hammered by the new Panda 4 update.
That's been an all too familiar story after almost every change Google has made.
Unfortunately, if you have a business that relies on organic search results, even if you are currently doing well from it ... in the long run, it's not a sustainable business.
For real estate agents, this is especially hard to swallow when the portals (Zillow, Realtor.com, etc.) dominate the results, followed closely by the paper brokerages (Movoto, Estately, etc.). The truth is that they all have bigger SEO and programming budgets that even a large brokerage can't match.
So what is a real estate agent to do?
DON'T PANIC
Unless you or some guru you hired has been doing black hat "optimisation" to your site, you should be fine.
If you have been regularly feeding your site with appropriate new unique content you should be even "finer."
If you don't feel inclined to write (it's OK, I won't judge), you can resort to PPC and you will be fine.
Just don't be under the mistaken belief that your search engine rankings will bring you a never-ending stream of business forever.
Because sooner or later, a Google update is gonna getcha ...
Many clients will confess that they checked you out online before engaging your services. So be sure that you have a great web presence that will encourage a potential client to convert.
To view the original article, visit the Web Real Estate Tools blog.