Semalt Advice On How To Position A Developer's Website
The developer's website is not the same as an advertisement website with many sets of apartments or investments. The construction developer has a very narrow offer, which depends directly on the number of investments carried out at the same time and the areas in which it operates.
So how to position the site of a developer! Read on to discover our valuable tips!
How is the developer's website built?
In SEO activities for a developer, we must take into account at least three ways of constructing a development offer:
- Each investment is a separate domain.
- Investments can be found directly on the developer's website as part of his / her website structure.
- The mix, i.e. information about the investment, can be found on the developer's website and as a separate investment.
In the first case, the entire investment must be positioned from scratch. In the second case, it is easier because the investment is nested within the structure of the website, which is already subject to SEO activities.
The third case is specific, but only because the content on both websites is identical
What are the intentions of potential customers?
When analyzing organic results on Google, we must be aware that over the years the expectations of potential customers have completely changed. The client, by entering a specific keyword, expects results that will be appropriate for him / her (as Googlers say - relevant).
The intention and method of entering the keywords dictate, in a way, how the developer should be positioned. Let's look at some examples:
- Developer + city or any other phrase clearly indicates that the user is looking for information related to the developer. So it's a potential customer using the developer's name.
- The name of the investment indicates that the client has already seen, heard, or been recommended a specific investment somewhere, so he or she is intentionally only looking for that one thing.
- A keyword, e.g., "studio apartment Prague south", can mean many intentions. On the one hand, it is possible that he / she is looking for a developer and his / her offer, but on the other hand, he / she is not determined to do anything and may be looking for a rental or sale. All we know is the location where he / she wants to find a studio apartment. We just don't know if he / she wants to buy it or not. That is why the portal with advertisements will immediately appear in the organic results here. We will not find the developer's direct results in the top10.
- If the phrase includes the word "buy, sell, rent", it will already indicate an interest in the portal, but not in the developer
Based on these 4 examples only, it can be said that we must very carefully analyze the intention of users and clearly define which keywords will potentially be selling for the developer.
Time with the developer is the basis of sales, so?
The basic criterion for a developer is time. The time when the sale of a flat or a specific investment begins. Due to the fact that the sale of apartments begins with the purchase of the plot, SEO activities are performed by the PR department, but not by positioners.
Why? Because the first mentions appear in the analog or electronic press, which clearly indicates the beginning of the developer's investment. This, in turn, means that it is already "too late" for SEO specialists.
Algorithms and Google itself work so slowly that to achieve the goal we need:
- Websites with the investment located either as a separate domain or as information on the developer's website and this is usually not available
- Time because the positioning of any information requires several months of work in SEO, which in turn means that the developer simply cannot afford such things
In addition, restrictions related to the secrecy of investment (because, for example, a tender for a given property is in progress) prevent the SEO specialists from starting work early enough.
And here the whole odium of matters flows to the Public Relations department since it must be able to play SEO. The PR department should take care of the following things:
- Having a website dedicated to the investment (no matter if it is a website or a subpage on the developer's website)
- Matching the timing of external publications with the information on the website
- Making sure that each external publication includes a link to the investment (first link) and the developer's website (second link)
So SEO has to work already at the PR stage and you just have to take care of it.
Why is time slow in SEO and what can be done about it?
SEO experts have done research showing how many days it takes to get into the top10, i.e. positions 1-10 of keywords that are already in the top50 (thus positioned) and can be boosted to enter the top10.
In the real estate industry, it takes 87 days. The housing industry counts 101 days and 133 days for the social industry. Why do I indicate these 3 industries? Because they are related to each other in the development market: apartment construction, renovation, and home furnishings, the potential or popularity of a given segment depend on the wealth of the portfolio of a given social group, i.e. social conditions.
But the above statistics already refer to portals that exist, so based only on this assumption, it is worth describing the investment within the developer's website, which has been on the market for many years. From the SEO point of view, new content on portals that have existed for some time now position itself faster, i.e. using the above statistics after a minimum of 87 days.
Does it make sense to invest in developer positioning, since we have to wait so long for the results?
If at the stage of publishing materials for a given investment, we make sure that the PR department publishes articles with links to the investment or (and) to the developer's website, then these will be activities positioning one or both websites. So you have to take care of SEO at such an early stage.
And this is the first and basic rule when building the SEO potential of all websites running with the developer.
The second rule is the positioning of the developer's website itself - it is a continuous process that in consultation with the PR department, will bring long-term effects in organic results. Mainly for phrases related to the developer's name and areas of his / her activity.
The keywords that will give the most value are the name of the developer, the word "developer", and the city(s) in which it operates. Additionally, at this point, there is a need to perform local positioning. There is no need to push for key phrases, where offer aggregators appear.
The third rule that is worth remembering is the steps to be taken when the investment is a separate page for positioning.
What to do with the investment page after it is closed from the SEO point of view?
At the beginning of the article, I wrote that the investment may be a separate website, and information about the investment may also appear on the developer's website. From the SEO point of view, it is only necessary to ensure that the content is different because then the content will be duplicated.
Cannibalization will occur between the two domains, but this is not a problem as then we have two paths to reach the client's investment. We simply deal with the phrase related to the investment in two outcomes.
In the event that the investment is completed or close to completion and when the developer decides to eliminate the website, SEO comes in all white. You need to think carefully about the method of closing the website and using the accumulated SEO potential.
Despite the fact that a separate website has not been positioned (I made my assumptions), it still has SEO potential. The PR department, by publishing information about the investment, caused that there were links to this investment as a website.
Keywords for developer positioning
As I mentioned above, to properly select the keywords for the positioning process, we need to verify the intention and check what type of results we get in the Google search engine. This activity will take us an hour for about ten words, but it will allow us to evaluate if the given words make sense from a business perspective.
The Dedicated SEO Dashboard can help you to do this so that you can do thorough research on each chosen keyword.
Indeed, this tool is mainly known by old-school SEOs or anyone who deals with SEO for large online businesses. The tool is mainly used to increase the visibility of any site. Thanks to it, it is possible, among other things, to make a deep search of key phrases, as well as to check if the link leading to our website has the dofollow or nofollow attribute. The tool also allows you to analyze the competition in order to know their promotion strategy and their keywords that generate more traffic.
|
Word: developer + city / district. Developer name.
Developer name + city / district |
These are the most desirable keywords and should
always be your focus |
|
Name of the investment |
In this case, the only obstacle may be the
unfortunate choice of the name, which may turn out to be, for example, the
name of a restaurant (I have met with this case) and then the meatball,
because the # 1 restaurant takes a lot of organic traffic |
|
Developer name + investment name |
Keywords desirable due to the name of the developer
and his / her investment |
|
Organic keywords such as "two-room
apartments" + city + district + region |
Here you should verify what Google shows in organic
results. If these are aggregator-type portals, I suggest kipping the keyword.
It may turn out that such a result is interesting for the developer due to
the showing of his / her pin in the maps. |
Positioning the developer locally, i.e. in a given city
An important aspect of all processes related to the ranking is positioning for phrases with the word "developer" in Google maps in a given city, for example, "developer London"
Summary
In conclusion, I would like to point out the following four things when approaching developer positioning:
- Each SEO activity must start at the stage of planning the purchase of land for investment
- The PR department should be able to SEO and understand why you need links and an investment website already at the publication stage
- Not every keyword is needed for a developer to be happy. The customer's intention should be analyzed and verified as a potential consumer
- Removal of pages must be carried out in consultation with the SEO department
If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.