This post is based on a conversation I had with a client earlier this week. They are based in Dallas – Fort Worth, and their area of expertise is Short Sales. This client serves a very specific niche of real estate, but during our initial intro call they mentioned they wanted to appear in the search results for terms like “Divorce” and “Real Estate.” There was a couple of things I thought were interesting or maybe concerning:

1. The client thought they could rank for such broad terms.
2. The client felt these were applicable keywords for their business

What I thought would be a usual intro call became an education of how search engines determine natural results and how important selecting keywords are to your business, especially if your specialty is specific to certain properties or transactions.

If you all have been reading this blog, clearly you are ahead of the curve, but you also have a strong idea of how search engines determine natural results. While I won’t go into a full explanation with you all the client above was not so lucky. Her website is new, lacks inbound links, and most importantly there is very little relevant content on the site, especially for her Short Sales expertise.

Once we defined what key terms were applicable putting together a real marketing plan could be realized. I encouraged her to think from the perspective of a potential client, someone looking for exactly what she does. More than likely clients would not be searching for her services by going into a search engine and querying “Divorce.” However, I venture to say someone searching for “Short Sales Dallas” would be right up her alley. The first thing she needed to do was install unique, rich content targeting her specific keywords. So over the next few weeks we plan to write content serving those terms. We’ve also begun a Pay-Per-Click campaign reaching out to potential clients for quicker web exposure. We took a step back and are not targeting broad terms, but again only the keywords that are applicable to her niche.

The ROI has been encouraging. She will most certainly doesn’t have the volume of traffic had we targeted “Real Estate” or “Divorce,” but the visitors to her site are now highly qualified and have searched for her actual services. She is reaching her niche, and with the upcoming addition of her content pages I am willing to venture over the next couple of months we will see strong growth in the natural results.

Lessons Learned:

1. Identify what keywords you are trying to serve and are they too broad?

2. Identify your specialties or niche and create a marketing plan to capture visitors searching for those needs.

3. Think like your potential clients. How would YOU find you?