Google continues to tread into the real estate listings market with its real estate placement pages here. There has also been speculation and rumors of Google buying up some competitors such as Trulia. These rumors supposedly were started at the Inman real estate connect conference, when a Google rep said they were looking to acquire one to two real estate companies a month. This rumor was later dispelled somewhat when it was clarified that these may be general acquisitions and not just real estate related. However, Google is obviously taking its foray into real estate very seriously, and it would not surprise me at all to see them go after some major real estate listing sites.

What would this mean for SEO and real estate internet marketing? Well the short answer is that we do not yet know the full ramifications of these possible acquisitions. But it would mean more data for Google to use in determining how to rank websites for certain terms. It would also open up more listings to be indexed by Googles spiders. This would make it even more important to have a properly optimized real estate websites, and to have inbound links coming in from other relevant real estate industry sites.

It will also make it more important than ever to expand your online presence. There are more and more places that you will be required to have a presence on in order to have a verifiable network of links and profiles. With the advent of Google’s Trustrank on other major ranking algorithms, Google is looking to see if you have a comprehensive presence in all of the places it would expect a top agent to be. This means you need to have your social profiles on Activrain.com, Zillow.com, Linkedin.com and Realtor.com among others. It also means you need to be blogging and have a number of links pointing back to your well optimized website.

I’ll do my best to keep you apprised of the latest rumors and drama in the ever changing world of real estate SEO and internet marketing, so stay tuned.

Aaron Evans

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