Personalized Search For Real Estate

So you rank #3 for “Real Estate in Denver” and your pretty proud of that fact. Well done except that you may not be #3 for everyone searching that keyword. Welcome to the world of personalized search, where no two searchers will likely get the same results anymore.  Personalized search is here for everyone there is no going back to static search results. How is search personalized? There can be alot of factors that go into search including:

Types of Search Personalization:

Location Based Personalization:
Geo-graphic personalization
IP address personalization

Time based:
Time of day
Time of year
Historical data

Behavior Personalization:
Query history
SERP interaction
Selection and bounce rates
Interactions with advertising
Surfing habits (frequent surfer – fresher results)

Other personalizations:
Social Search
Bookmarks (and sharing)
Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook
Demographic (including geo-graphic)

How will search personalization affect real estate searches?

The first thing to keep in mind is that you some of the control is taken away from you and put in the hands of the searcher. Their previous behavior will have more to do with how you rank than it used to. But that doesn’t mean that SEO is done for or that you can’t optimize your site for personalized search. It becomes even more important to take on a comprehensive online strategy. By blogging, writing articles, social networking and link building, you can show up in the increasingly segmented search results.

Here are some examples of why this is important:

1. Searcher “A” likes to click on videos. So when he searches on “homes for sale in denver” videos tend to rank a little higher for him. If you don’t have any videos out there optimized for that keyword, then you are at a disadvantage from an agent who does.

2. Searcher “B” likes the real time web and clicks on the Twitter and Facebook feeds in the google search results. Don’t have a tweet out about “homes for sale in denver” recently, or a post on your Facebook? Again, you are not ranked as high as the agent who is doing that.

3. Searcher “C” likes news results. By submitting articles and PR pieces, you have a better chance of showing up in designated news results than if your not doing that.

4. Searcher “D” tends to click on images more. If you aren’t applying alt image tags to your house images, then you are less likely to rank for this searcher.

There are many more examples of optimizing for segmented searchers. The takeaway is this, everything is changing but some things never do. Providing quality information to your customers in a clear and concise manner will never go out of style. What does change is that you need to adapt and be in the more segmented markets of search to be in from of the different searcher “archetypes.”

Another thing that will be increasingly important in the future of real estate personalized search is how your previous traffic has interacted with your site in the past. Metrics such as bounce rate, click through rates, time on site, and conversion rates will be used by Google to establish what sites are providing relevant information and which ones are wasting their time.

Spend time optimizing your site for the segmented searchers mentioned above, provide quality content and great information on your site in a clear and concise layout, and split test and measure via analytics, and you will be doing more than most to adapt to personalized search. But start now before the rest of the real estate industry sees the importance of personalized search optimization and they react. You will be one step ahead of the competition, and that is all you need in the world of internet marketing and SEO.

Aaron Evans

Vice President

Real Estate SEO Pros, Inc