At InvestorCarrot one of the coolest features of our system is our SEO feature set that helps our users (including me!) get great rankings in Google. Some of our members have had #1 or #2 rankings in Google for months and months for great terms like “we buy houses ct” or “klamath falls apartments” or “we buy new jersey houses“… and things like that… and have been getting leads each and every week from those rankings.
But, I started to notice a couple weeks back on my KlamathFallsApartments.net website (it’s a Carrot site) that I use for a small apartment building I own that my site was slipping from the #2 / #3 position it held for months… to number 5, then #8, then #15… now it’s been hovering around #12 for the past 10 days or so.
Is Google Making An Update That’s Effecting Website Rankings?
The easy answer to that question is yes… Google is always making updates that effect the ranking of websites… including yours. You’ve probably noticed that your website one day is ranked in one spot… then the next day you google it and it’s ranked somewhere totally different. That’s normally Google just picking up new data that helps it determine more accurately where it feels your site belongs at that time.
But, from time to time Google makes big updates that effect websites on a mass scale… and it looks like that’s whats going on right now. If you’re interested in SEO at all… here’s a post I found discussing this latest round of changes.
And, here’s a video from Matt Cutts from Google (Google’s search engine guy) that explains the “Panda” update… which it looks like these changes we’ve seen recently are part of that update happening again.
If you’re an SEO nerd, check out the video below:
The big key here is if your website doesn’t recover from a search ranking drop… Matt really harps on creating “great content”. So, come up with some original content that motivated sellers or investment property cash buyers may really love about your market… and post it on your blog.
We’re staying on top of things and honestly… we’re not too worried.
What Should You Do If You See Your Rankings Drop?
If you’ve seen your rankings drop a lot and didn’t change anything on your website recently to cause the drop… it’s likely reacting to Googles latest update.
According to the Google algorithm patent… we should see our rankings start to climb back up in the next week or two and settle in where Google feels it deserves to stay. That could be higher than your old ranking or lower.
So what should you do?
First off, follow the advice we always give you and give Google what they want. Great content that helps your customer. If you haven’t written a good blog post in a while (or ever)… maybe start writing once a week.
If you haven’t set up social media profiles yet and linked them to your Carrot websites… do that. It helps more people find your site and Google likes that. Heck, tweet out your website on twitter and let people know about it… (Google likes that too :-).
That kind of stuff is stuff everyone should be doing.
Wait It Out.
But, our advice is to wait it out. Hold tight for a couple weeks and see how things shake out. Put in a bit of work and write some content for your real estate investing blog, and keep hustling out in the real estate market to grow your business.
One thing I’ve learned about SEO for real estate investors is that SEO can be a great thing… but you NEVER want to rely on one thing too much. If that one thing goes away… you’re outta business. So, make SEO a part of the overall mix in marketing your real estate investing website… but make sure you’re also out there doing other types of marketing to bring in motivated seller and buyer leads.
Hit us with questions below!
– Trevor
