May 28, 2025 • 18 mins
I had an awesome time on the Real Estate Investors Club Podcast talking about one of my favorite topics: SEO that works 🙌
We covered so much:
📈 Why SEO is still one of the most powerful tools for real estate pros
🔎 How to get found without paying for every single click
🛠️ What to ask before hiring an SEO expert
🏘️ Tips for standing out—even if you're competing with giants like Zillow & ReMax
📍 And how local keywords & niche strategies can give you a huge edge
Since 2007, I’ve been helping businesses get more traffic, leads, and clients through SEO—without breaking the bank 💰
If you're in real estate and want to get more qualified leads from Google (instead of fighting for scraps on social), this episode is for you.
🎁 I also shared a free gift—an SEO crash course + free site audit you can grab at seooptimizers.com/gift
📲 Watch the full episode now and drop a comment with your favorite takeaway!
#SEO #DigitalMarketing #RealEstateMarketing #BrandonLeibowitz #SEOOptimizers #OnlineTraffic #LeadGen #SmallBusinessTips #MarketingStrategy #RealEstateInvesting #GrowYourBusiness #GoogleSEO #SEOHelp
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's good to have a presenceeverywhere.
You don't want to just focus onone thing because you don't
really want to put all youreggs in one basket.
Because if you onlyfocus on Facebook,
which a lot of people did in thepast, now you're like, alright,
well,Facebook doesn't get that same
reach anymore and that exposureis really dropped.
(00:28):
Hello and welcome to this week'sepisode of the Real Estate
Investors Club podcast.
I'm here with Brandon Leibovitzfrom SEO Optimizers,
and Brandon's going to tell us alittle bit about his business
today and about how that canhave a positive income impact
for us real estate investors.
Thanks for being on the show,Brandon.
Thank you for havingme on today.
(00:48):
So by way of introduction,why don't you just tell us a
little bit about your journeythrough life that has led you to
be here on the showwith me today.
I got my degree in businessmarketing and just kind of fell
into this digital marketingworld. Wasn't planning on it,
but after I graduatedfrom school,
the first job I got out ofcollege was helping a company
(01:10):
out with their digitalmarketing.
And I don't really know muchabout it. They said,
don't worry,we don't know much either.
We're going to learn alongsidewith you and take you to classes
and workshops and seminars.
And this is back in 2007 andafter working there
for a few months,just kind of realized this
is probably the future.
Everyone's probably going tohave a website in the future.
And there's a lot of differentways to get traffic,
(01:32):
such as social media,doing paid ads,
doing email marketing,doing SEO,
which as I was doing initiallyfor this company,
was helping out with everything.
And it all works to get traffic.
SEO is just a way toget free traffic.
And I thought over the years,buy some money on paid ads if
you could get up there for free.
So,worked at different advertising
agencies as a director of SEOand also realized that I could
(01:56):
pick up freelance clients hereor there as long as there's no
conflict of interestwith my job, which I was able to
do before work,after work and on
my lunch breaks.
I work on my own company andeventually built that up where
I was able to quit my job andfocus solely on this and been
doing that ever since,just helping business owners get
more traffic to the websites.
Great.
(02:16):
So explain to me, like,because we're like a
real estate show,why should everybody who's
involved in the real estateindustry, so that is, you know,
investors,brokers people who are looking
to do business in the space.
Why is SEO important for us?
And how have you worked it in anindustry specific kind of way?
(02:40):
What kind of tips could you giveto my, me and my colleagues?
Basically,it just depends on what type of
what you're doing specifically.
But with the SEO,it's all about just
figuring out,do people actually search for
your product or service?
That's where.
If you're a real estateinvestor, you might think,
all right,do people search for real
estate investing online?
(03:01):
You could double check using atool called the Google
Keyword Planner.
It's a free tool from Google.
It'll show you how many peopleactually search for your keyword
every single month.
So they can figure out,is real estate investing
a good keyword?
Or maybe nobody searches for it,but people search for real
estate investment companies.
They're like, okay,maybe I should use this
or whatever it may be,but you're going to get a list
(03:22):
of keywords that gives you ideasof what people actually
search for.
And if you see that people aresearching for your services,
then if you're not up thereranking on Google,
someone else is taking thattraffic away from you.
But if nobody's searching foryour services with
your keywords,then there's not much you
could really do for SEO.
But anything related to realestate nowadays has really
heavily become popular ononline. So if you're not online,
(03:45):
someone else is up there takingthat traffic away.
And it's usually some of thesebig real estate agency companies
that are just kind of dominatingfor local realtors.
But if you're an investor or abroker or whatever it may be,
there's some more unique nichething that's going to help you
differentiate yourself and standout against the crowd.
But essentially,if you're trying to get more,
(04:06):
more leads, more clients,and SEO is a great way because
nowadays almost everyone'sconnected with the cell phone.
It's really easy,just pull out your phone,
search for something,talk into your phone.
It'll speak back to youand give you answers.
And that's a great way to justhave really good information
about investing.
Like people might want to know,like,
(04:26):
how do I invest in real estate?
Where the different types ofreal estate investments.
So if you have content on yourwebsite about that and someone
asks that question on their web,on their phone, or on Google,
then you potentially will showup for that and get that traffic
or give that answer,become that authority figure
that people are like, okay,this person gave me that answer.
They must know something aboutreal Estate investing,
(04:48):
maybe I want to learn more aboutwhat they have to offer and
learn more about their services.
So what I want to know or whatI'd like you to maybe break down
for our audience a littlebit is so like,
like obviously I havea website you know,
as a real estate coach andbroker and property manager and
when I was going through theprocess of building that site
out, specifically the,the fact that, you know,
(05:11):
real estate is so competitiveand that there are such big
players on the market, you know,be it ReMax or every,
anybody else who's dominatingtheir particular space,
it's a bit difficult for a smallplayer coming in to think that
you can actually getany traction.
So I mean,what might you say to kind of
the smaller investor who.
(05:31):
Or smaller broker or smallerplayer, let's say in their,
in their niche. That's like,okay, am I gonna you know,
invest in.
Because obviously like,you know,
for lay people like myself,like, realistically,
I'm not going to bedoing my own SEO,
I'm going to be hiring somebodywho's going to SEO,
optimize my site site and I onlyhave so many marketing
(05:53):
dollars to spend.
How am I going to stand out andhow are those marketing dollars
going to compare to, let's say,you know,
paying for some Facebook adsor like boosting posts
on Instagram?
Like if that's my choice,I have a thousand dollars to
spend or $2,000 to spend,$10,000 to spend.
Like how and why am I spendingit on SEO to not get
(06:14):
buried by Google?
Well,you want to get traffic from
as many ways as possible.
So most important thing istaking a step back and thinking
if you're looking for yourproduct or your service
specifically,where would you go if you're
looking to investin real estate?
Some people might go onInstagram, tick tock.
But I feel like most people areprobably going to search on
Google to learn more about that.
But it's different forevery industry.
(06:36):
So you just gotta figure out whoyour audience is and how do
I get in front of them?
Because some people willgo on social media,
but I feel like the majority ofpeople are probably gonna
go on Google.
So it's good to have apresence everywhere.
You don't want to just focus onone thing because you don't
really want to put all youreggs in one basket.
Because if you onlyfocus on Facebook,
which a lot of people did inthe past, now you're like,
all right,well Facebook doesn't get that
same reach anymore and thatexposure is really dropped that
(06:57):
I should have focused onInstagram or YouTube or TikTok
nowadays because itnever really ends.
And with social you don't reallyown any of that stuff either.
You just kind of renting spaceoff those platforms that
they can take you down,they control everything.
Whereas your website,you get full control,
you get put whatever you wantdown there with your messaging.
There's no ads todistract people.
(07:18):
There's no messages or friendrequests to distract people
as well. But with SEO,it's all about just finding
those keywords that aren'thyper competitive.
Because if you're just tryingto rank for like Realtor
in Vancouver, hyper competitive,lot of real estate agents.
But if you could niche it downand find something more unique,
flexibility.
So maybe finding individualprovinces or counties, towns,
(07:40):
cities or even communities.
So finding little areas likegated communities or
neighborhoods and targetingthose specifically because those
are going to have lesscompetition.
So maybe there's a unique gatedcommunity that popped up that
has 100 homes in there.
It's probably not goingto be as competitive,
not as many people are going tobe targeting that keyword.
So it'd be create pages on yourwebsite about all these
(08:01):
different communities,towns, cities, provinces,
all these areas and really breakit down and get it
really granular.
That's going to help you becomemore relevant and not have
to deal with these hypercompetitive keywords where these
bigger cities are just goingto be saturated.
It's going to be really toughunless you're a big corporation
to break through to thosebigger keywords.
It's going to takea lot of time,
especially with real estate.
(08:22):
It's a lot of,a lot of Realtors.
And the more competitiveyour industry is,
the more time it's going totank to rank for SEO.
So if you can find somethingmore unique and niche
and break it down,like maybe only focus on
townhomes or condominiumsor whatever it may be,
ski lodges or winter sportsactivities or whatever it is,
but finding somethingmore unique,
that's going to help you reallypenetrate that market and not
(08:44):
just get lost in thesea of thousands,
tens of thousands of otherwebsites competing for
those same keywords.
And the other kind of challengethat I ran into when I started
doing my own website and kind ofunderstanding how this game
works is how do you pick who towork with? Because again, as a,
(09:04):
as a laypersonwith only a limited amount of
marketing dollars to spend,the challenge is what kind
of solution am I buying?
Like in terms of what kind ofcompany am I working with?
What are they really selling me?
Because it happens that maybeI don't really know, right?
Like we all know,you go on Google,
type some search terms,and obviously the more
(09:25):
specific you are,the more likely you are to
get a specific answer,the more niche you
are as a result,the more likely you are to
show up in those answers.
But how should I go aboutinterviewing a specialist
to work with?
What are the questions to ask?
What do I need to understand tomake that decision
in a smart way?
I would ask them really whattheir strategy is,
how they're ranking websites,because you want to figure
(09:48):
out what are they doing,how are they ranking you?
Are they focusing onjust your website,
or are they also going tooptimize your videos?
Because videos showup on Google,
Optimize all your images,because images show up on
Google. For your local business,you want to get up on the maps
because the maps also rankreally high on Google.
So not just optimizingyour website,
but trying to take up as muchfree real estate as possible on
(10:09):
that first page of Google.
Also, you could ask them,show me a portfolio of who
you've worked with.
But the biggest thing is howare they ranking you?
And ranking websites entails?
Well, it's different forevery business,
but some of the basic kind ofsimilarities are content,
meaning text on your pages.
Google reads the code andthey're looking for keywords in
(10:29):
the coding for you to put allover the coding in the website.
But Google doesn't really carewhat you put on the website
because they don't believeanything anybody puts on any
website without you.
Building trust up.
And the way to build trust isby getting what are
called backlinks,getting other websites
to talk about you.
The more websites thattalk about you,
the more trustworthyGoogle sees you as.
(10:49):
And then they look at thosekeywords on your website.
But it doesn't work theother way around.
If you're not buildingbacklinks, Google's not going to
rank a website.
So you got to figure out,how are these companies
building backlinks?
What type of backlinks are theybuilding? How do they,
what strategies arethey utilizing?
Because unfortunately,in the past,
it was just a numbers game.
If I have a hundred backlinksand you have 200 backlinks,
(11:10):
you would rank higher than me.
But nowadays Google's changedwhere it's not the number
of backlinks,but the number of quality
backlinks.
And what is a qualitybacklink to Google?
Quality backlink to Google is abacklink that comes from a site
that's related to whatyou're doing.
So if you're doing realestate investing,
you should find other websitesabout real estate, homes,
investing, financing.
(11:31):
It doesn't have to be realestate investors linking
out to you,just anything summer related
and authoritativeness.
How popular is this website orhow big is this website?
The bigger the website,the more SEO value that's
going to be passed on.
So in a backlink from mywebsite, which is good,
but it's not the same tiers likeForbes or New York Times or Wall
(11:52):
Street Journal or entrepreneurs.
So the bigger the website,the more SEO value and
the more relevant,the better off it's going to be
when you're buildingthose backlinks.
And that's really what I'd focuson is figuring out how are
they building backlinks,what type of backlinks
are they building?
Because they build thewrong backlinks.
Instead of ranking higher,you're actually going to
drop down in rankings,which we don't want
that to happen.
Mm.
(12:13):
Have you really been listeningto the episode or has your
monkey mind been taking you offin one direction or another?
Our mental habits can be ourbiggest assets or our biggest
liabilities as we pursuecertain goals.
For me,the biggest performance gains
have always come fromtraining my mind.
In my book Mindful Landlord,I talk about how you can train
(12:33):
your mind and how you can applysome of these strategies to your
journey in the realestate field.
The book is available on Amazonand also on its website,
mindfullandlord.com Now I'llstop evangelizing for the power
of mental training and letyou get back to the show.
And I think also you know,again,
as I was like learning a littlebit about how this works,
I think there's interms of like,
(12:54):
understanding the algorithms,like, there's a lot of like,
technical stuff in there.
So like, I think in terms of,you know,
let's say posting multipleidentical content or like
various things that you can sortof be penalized for the, the,
you know, backlinks.
If I'm a real estate company andall of a sudden my backlinks is
like a sunglasses company orlike some other kind
(13:14):
of sketchy things.
Those are,those are things that you can
quite easily get penalized for.
So, you know,if you were giving people,
let's say,I think you already mentioned
like a few guidelines.
So one is get as nicheas possible,
the other one is workon your backlinks.
Is there something else that'sthat like Another strategy that
people should be using when theywant to be on top of their SEO.
(13:39):
Or am I forgetting something?
Well, I mean there's over 200ranking signals,
so there's a lot that goes intoGoogle. But it's like a puzzle.
There's a lot of piecesof that puzzle.
Some pieces are a lot bigger,like the content on your
website, meaning text.
So having text on every singlepage on your website is
so very important.
Not just having a bunch ofimages or having a
(13:59):
couple settings,but really breaking it down on
every single page and thenbuilding that trust up through
those backlinks are twomore important things.
But there's so many otherlittle things.
Like you could add schema codewhich enhances your listing or
your website to make it pop out.
So if you go to schema.orgthey'll tell you how
to write that code.
It was created by Google,Bing and yahoo about like
(14:19):
10 plus years ago.
And that's just a way to makeyour listing pop out.
So when you're searchingon Google,
sometimes you might see stars oryou might see things besides
just websites appearing.
That's all from schema.
If you add that to your website,Google looks at how long or how
fast your website loads.
The faster,the better user experience.
They look at how long peoplestay on your website.
(14:40):
So people just go to yourwebsite and then hit that back
button that tells Google maybeyou're not the most relevant and
that maybe you shouldn't beranked at the top or whatever
position you're in,they'll drop you down.
But there's so many variablesand I was just really focused on
providing good quality contentand a good user experience
to people.
That's really the mostimportant thing,
is not just spamming or throwingkeywords in your website content
(15:03):
just to throw them in there,but really trying to focus on
the user and providing valuethat's going to be the most
beneficial nowadays.
That's really what Google'slooking for, is offering value.
Yeah, all about good,good quality content.
What what have I not asked you?
Like what what am I,what am I neglecting in terms of
somebody trying to understandthe value of SEO and the
(15:25):
importance of what youdo with the value.
It's really just coming down tohow many people search
for those keywords.
If people search foryour keywords,
then you're missing outon potential leads.
But if no one's searchingfor those keywords,
then you gotta drivethat awareness.
And if no one's searchingfor your keywords,
a great way Alternativeis social media.
It's a great way where peoplearen't really searching on
(15:46):
social. They're. I mean,some people do,
but most people are browsing andthey get recommended feed or
Explorer feeds or topics thatrelate to what they're doing.
So if no one's searchingfor your services,
then SEO is not gonnabe the best for you.
But if there are peoplesearching for it,
someone else is taking thattraffic away from you that you
could be potentiallygetting into your,
into your website and into yoursales funnel to get them to
(16:09):
convert into a clientor paying client.
So biggest thing is just tryingto figure out what keywords
to utilize.
That's always the firststep for SEO,
is figuring out what keywords touse and then incorporating them
into the coding on your websiteand the text and the backlinks.
So everything is relevant in thelines and make sense to Google.
So understanding the lay of theland with digital marketing and
(16:30):
seeing how that kind of fitsinto the bigger picture
and understanding howyou capture your leads in terms
of how people find yourbusiness or service.
So I think those are allsome really good tips.
Anything else that I'm missing?
Anything else you want to add?
I mean,there's so much more with SEO.
Just depends on what routeyou want to go.
I would just say be patient.
It takes time.
(16:51):
Don't get discouraged if you'renot seeing immediate results.
With SEO, it does take months,if not years,
depending on how competitivethose keywords are.
So if you find something moreniche and less competitive,
you'll be able to ranka lot faster.
But if you're just targetingthose really broad,
generic keywords,especially like bigger cities,
it could take a long,long time because there's all
(17:12):
these websites that have beenaround that have established
trust with Google.
And if you're just a startup,a new small business,
Google's not really going totrust you and they're not going
to want to rank you until,until you build that trust up
by getting those backlinks,essentially.
Okay, well, look,thank you so much for taking the
time to educate my audience alittle bit on the value of SEO.
(17:32):
Do you want to maybe saysomething specific about how
people get in touch with you,how they can learn more about
what you do if they want to takethis to the next level and
understand specifically howyour company operates?
So anyone that wantsto learn more,
actually you create a specialgift for them if they go to my
website@seoptimizers.com that'sS E-O-O-P-T-I-M-I Z-E-R-S.com
(17:57):
forward slash gift.
And they can find that there,along with my contact
information and a bunch ofclasses I've done over the years
I've thrown up for free.
So they can see step by step,how to do a lot of stuff
that we talked about.
And also if they want to booksome time on my calendar,
I'm happy to check out thewebsite from an SEO point of
view and let them know what'sworking, what's not working,
or if there's potentialto rank higher.
And they can book some time forfree on my calendar
(18:18):
there as well.
So we'll make sure to drop thoselinks in the show notes for our
audience. And Brandon, you know,thank you for taking the time
to chat with me today.
It's.
This is a topic that we don'tmaybe focus on a lot in the
industry because we're so busyfocusing on actual, you know,
investment strategies or ways toservice clients or to deliver
(18:41):
better service. But definitely,if you're looking at working
on your business,not working in your business,
understanding the digitalmarketing environment,
specifically as it relates towebsites and SEOs, so important.
And so don't hesitate toreach out to Brandon,
share the episode,go follow him on social
media and learn about SEO.
It's good to have a presenceeverywhere.
You don't want to just focus onone thing because you don't
really want to put all youreggs in one basket.
Because if you onlyfocus on Facebook,
which a lot of people did in thepast, now you're like, alright,
well,Facebook doesn't get that same
reach anymore and that exposureis really dropped.
(00:28):
Hello and welcome to this week'sepisode of the Real Estate
Investors Club podcast.
I'm here with Brandon Leibovitzfrom SEO Optimizers,
and Brandon's going to tell us alittle bit about his business
today and about how that canhave a positive income impact
for us real estate investors.
Thanks for being on the show,Brandon.
Thank you for havingme on today.
(00:48):
So by way of introduction,why don't you just tell us a
little bit about your journeythrough life that has led you to
be here on the showwith me today.
I got my degree in businessmarketing and just kind of fell
into this digital marketingworld. Wasn't planning on it,
but after I graduatedfrom school,
the first job I got out ofcollege was helping a company
(01:10):
out with their digitalmarketing.
And I don't really know muchabout it. They said,
don't worry,we don't know much either.
We're going to learn alongsidewith you and take you to classes
and workshops and seminars.
And this is back in 2007 andafter working there
for a few months,just kind of realized this
is probably the future.
Everyone's probably going tohave a website in the future.
And there's a lot of differentways to get traffic,
(01:32):
such as social media,doing paid ads,
doing email marketing,doing SEO,
which as I was doing initiallyfor this company,
was helping out with everything.
And it all works to get traffic.
SEO is just a way toget free traffic.
And I thought over the years,buy some money on paid ads if
you could get up there for free.
So,worked at different advertising
agencies as a director of SEOand also realized that I could
(01:56):
pick up freelance clients hereor there as long as there's no
conflict of interestwith my job, which I was able to
do before work,after work and on
my lunch breaks.
I work on my own company andeventually built that up where
I was able to quit my job andfocus solely on this and been
doing that ever since,just helping business owners get
more traffic to the websites.
Great.
(02:16):
So explain to me, like,because we're like a
real estate show,why should everybody who's
involved in the real estateindustry, so that is, you know,
investors,brokers people who are looking
to do business in the space.
Why is SEO important for us?
And how have you worked it in anindustry specific kind of way?
(02:40):
What kind of tips could you giveto my, me and my colleagues?
Basically,it just depends on what type of
what you're doing specifically.
But with the SEO,it's all about just
figuring out,do people actually search for
your product or service?
That's where.
If you're a real estateinvestor, you might think,
all right,do people search for real
estate investing online?
(03:01):
You could double check using atool called the Google
Keyword Planner.
It's a free tool from Google.
It'll show you how many peopleactually search for your keyword
every single month.
So they can figure out,is real estate investing
a good keyword?
Or maybe nobody searches for it,but people search for real
estate investment companies.
They're like, okay,maybe I should use this
or whatever it may be,but you're going to get a list
(03:22):
of keywords that gives you ideasof what people actually
search for.
And if you see that people aresearching for your services,
then if you're not up thereranking on Google,
someone else is taking thattraffic away from you.
But if nobody's searching foryour services with
your keywords,then there's not much you
could really do for SEO.
But anything related to realestate nowadays has really
heavily become popular ononline. So if you're not online,
(03:45):
someone else is up there takingthat traffic away.
And it's usually some of thesebig real estate agency companies
that are just kind of dominatingfor local realtors.
But if you're an investor or abroker or whatever it may be,
there's some more unique nichething that's going to help you
differentiate yourself and standout against the crowd.
But essentially,if you're trying to get more,
(04:06):
more leads, more clients,and SEO is a great way because
nowadays almost everyone'sconnected with the cell phone.
It's really easy,just pull out your phone,
search for something,talk into your phone.
It'll speak back to youand give you answers.
And that's a great way to justhave really good information
about investing.
Like people might want to know,like,
(04:26):
how do I invest in real estate?
Where the different types ofreal estate investments.
So if you have content on yourwebsite about that and someone
asks that question on their web,on their phone, or on Google,
then you potentially will showup for that and get that traffic
or give that answer,become that authority figure
that people are like, okay,this person gave me that answer.
They must know something aboutreal Estate investing,
(04:48):
maybe I want to learn more aboutwhat they have to offer and
learn more about their services.
So what I want to know or whatI'd like you to maybe break down
for our audience a littlebit is so like,
like obviously I havea website you know,
as a real estate coach andbroker and property manager and
when I was going through theprocess of building that site
out, specifically the,the fact that, you know,
(05:11):
real estate is so competitiveand that there are such big
players on the market, you know,be it ReMax or every,
anybody else who's dominatingtheir particular space,
it's a bit difficult for a smallplayer coming in to think that
you can actually getany traction.
So I mean,what might you say to kind of
the smaller investor who.
(05:31):
Or smaller broker or smallerplayer, let's say in their,
in their niche. That's like,okay, am I gonna you know,
invest in.
Because obviously like,you know,
for lay people like myself,like, realistically,
I'm not going to bedoing my own SEO,
I'm going to be hiring somebodywho's going to SEO,
optimize my site site and I onlyhave so many marketing
(05:53):
dollars to spend.
How am I going to stand out andhow are those marketing dollars
going to compare to, let's say,you know,
paying for some Facebook adsor like boosting posts
on Instagram?
Like if that's my choice,I have a thousand dollars to
spend or $2,000 to spend,$10,000 to spend.
Like how and why am I spendingit on SEO to not get
(06:14):
buried by Google?
Well,you want to get traffic from
as many ways as possible.
So most important thing istaking a step back and thinking
if you're looking for yourproduct or your service
specifically,where would you go if you're
looking to investin real estate?
Some people might go onInstagram, tick tock.
But I feel like most people areprobably going to search on
Google to learn more about that.
But it's different forevery industry.
(06:36):
So you just gotta figure out whoyour audience is and how do
I get in front of them?
Because some people willgo on social media,
but I feel like the majority ofpeople are probably gonna
go on Google.
So it's good to have apresence everywhere.
You don't want to just focus onone thing because you don't
really want to put all youreggs in one basket.
Because if you onlyfocus on Facebook,
which a lot of people did inthe past, now you're like,
all right,well Facebook doesn't get that
same reach anymore and thatexposure is really dropped that
(06:57):
I should have focused onInstagram or YouTube or TikTok
nowadays because itnever really ends.
And with social you don't reallyown any of that stuff either.
You just kind of renting spaceoff those platforms that
they can take you down,they control everything.
Whereas your website,you get full control,
you get put whatever you wantdown there with your messaging.
There's no ads todistract people.
(07:18):
There's no messages or friendrequests to distract people
as well. But with SEO,it's all about just finding
those keywords that aren'thyper competitive.
Because if you're just tryingto rank for like Realtor
in Vancouver, hyper competitive,lot of real estate agents.
But if you could niche it downand find something more unique,
flexibility.
So maybe finding individualprovinces or counties, towns,
(07:40):
cities or even communities.
So finding little areas likegated communities or
neighborhoods and targetingthose specifically because those
are going to have lesscompetition.
So maybe there's a unique gatedcommunity that popped up that
has 100 homes in there.
It's probably not goingto be as competitive,
not as many people are going tobe targeting that keyword.
So it'd be create pages on yourwebsite about all these
(08:01):
different communities,towns, cities, provinces,
all these areas and really breakit down and get it
really granular.
That's going to help you becomemore relevant and not have
to deal with these hypercompetitive keywords where these
bigger cities are just goingto be saturated.
It's going to be really toughunless you're a big corporation
to break through to thosebigger keywords.
It's going to takea lot of time,
especially with real estate.
(08:22):
It's a lot of,a lot of Realtors.
And the more competitiveyour industry is,
the more time it's going totank to rank for SEO.
So if you can find somethingmore unique and niche
and break it down,like maybe only focus on
townhomes or condominiumsor whatever it may be,
ski lodges or winter sportsactivities or whatever it is,
but finding somethingmore unique,
that's going to help you reallypenetrate that market and not
(08:44):
just get lost in thesea of thousands,
tens of thousands of otherwebsites competing for
those same keywords.
And the other kind of challengethat I ran into when I started
doing my own website and kind ofunderstanding how this game
works is how do you pick who towork with? Because again, as a,
(09:04):
as a laypersonwith only a limited amount of
marketing dollars to spend,the challenge is what kind
of solution am I buying?
Like in terms of what kind ofcompany am I working with?
What are they really selling me?
Because it happens that maybeI don't really know, right?
Like we all know,you go on Google,
type some search terms,and obviously the more
(09:25):
specific you are,the more likely you are to
get a specific answer,the more niche you
are as a result,the more likely you are to
show up in those answers.
But how should I go aboutinterviewing a specialist
to work with?
What are the questions to ask?
What do I need to understand tomake that decision
in a smart way?
I would ask them really whattheir strategy is,
how they're ranking websites,because you want to figure
(09:48):
out what are they doing,how are they ranking you?
Are they focusing onjust your website,
or are they also going tooptimize your videos?
Because videos showup on Google,
Optimize all your images,because images show up on
Google. For your local business,you want to get up on the maps
because the maps also rankreally high on Google.
So not just optimizingyour website,
but trying to take up as muchfree real estate as possible on
(10:09):
that first page of Google.
Also, you could ask them,show me a portfolio of who
you've worked with.
But the biggest thing is howare they ranking you?
And ranking websites entails?
Well, it's different forevery business,
but some of the basic kind ofsimilarities are content,
meaning text on your pages.
Google reads the code andthey're looking for keywords in
(10:29):
the coding for you to put allover the coding in the website.
But Google doesn't really carewhat you put on the website
because they don't believeanything anybody puts on any
website without you.
Building trust up.
And the way to build trust isby getting what are
called backlinks,getting other websites
to talk about you.
The more websites thattalk about you,
the more trustworthyGoogle sees you as.
(10:49):
And then they look at thosekeywords on your website.
But it doesn't work theother way around.
If you're not buildingbacklinks, Google's not going to
rank a website.
So you got to figure out,how are these companies
building backlinks?
What type of backlinks are theybuilding? How do they,
what strategies arethey utilizing?
Because unfortunately,in the past,
it was just a numbers game.
If I have a hundred backlinksand you have 200 backlinks,
(11:10):
you would rank higher than me.
But nowadays Google's changedwhere it's not the number
of backlinks,but the number of quality
backlinks.
And what is a qualitybacklink to Google?
Quality backlink to Google is abacklink that comes from a site
that's related to whatyou're doing.
So if you're doing realestate investing,
you should find other websitesabout real estate, homes,
investing, financing.
(11:31):
It doesn't have to be realestate investors linking
out to you,just anything summer related
and authoritativeness.
How popular is this website orhow big is this website?
The bigger the website,the more SEO value that's
going to be passed on.
So in a backlink from mywebsite, which is good,
but it's not the same tiers likeForbes or New York Times or Wall
(11:52):
Street Journal or entrepreneurs.
So the bigger the website,the more SEO value and
the more relevant,the better off it's going to be
when you're buildingthose backlinks.
And that's really what I'd focuson is figuring out how are
they building backlinks,what type of backlinks
are they building?
Because they build thewrong backlinks.
Instead of ranking higher,you're actually going to
drop down in rankings,which we don't want
that to happen.
Mm.
(12:13):
Have you really been listeningto the episode or has your
monkey mind been taking you offin one direction or another?
Our mental habits can be ourbiggest assets or our biggest
liabilities as we pursuecertain goals.
For me,the biggest performance gains
have always come fromtraining my mind.
In my book Mindful Landlord,I talk about how you can train
(12:33):
your mind and how you can applysome of these strategies to your
journey in the realestate field.
The book is available on Amazonand also on its website,
mindfullandlord.com Now I'llstop evangelizing for the power
of mental training and letyou get back to the show.
And I think also you know,again,
as I was like learning a littlebit about how this works,
I think there's interms of like,
(12:54):
understanding the algorithms,like, there's a lot of like,
technical stuff in there.
So like, I think in terms of,you know,
let's say posting multipleidentical content or like
various things that you can sortof be penalized for the, the,
you know, backlinks.
If I'm a real estate company andall of a sudden my backlinks is
like a sunglasses company orlike some other kind
(13:14):
of sketchy things.
Those are,those are things that you can
quite easily get penalized for.
So, you know,if you were giving people,
let's say,I think you already mentioned
like a few guidelines.
So one is get as nicheas possible,
the other one is workon your backlinks.
Is there something else that'sthat like Another strategy that
people should be using when theywant to be on top of their SEO.
(13:39):
Or am I forgetting something?
Well, I mean there's over 200ranking signals,
so there's a lot that goes intoGoogle. But it's like a puzzle.
There's a lot of piecesof that puzzle.
Some pieces are a lot bigger,like the content on your
website, meaning text.
So having text on every singlepage on your website is
so very important.
Not just having a bunch ofimages or having a
(13:59):
couple settings,but really breaking it down on
every single page and thenbuilding that trust up through
those backlinks are twomore important things.
But there's so many otherlittle things.
Like you could add schema codewhich enhances your listing or
your website to make it pop out.
So if you go to schema.orgthey'll tell you how
to write that code.
It was created by Google,Bing and yahoo about like
(14:19):
10 plus years ago.
And that's just a way to makeyour listing pop out.
So when you're searchingon Google,
sometimes you might see stars oryou might see things besides
just websites appearing.
That's all from schema.
If you add that to your website,Google looks at how long or how
fast your website loads.
The faster,the better user experience.
They look at how long peoplestay on your website.
(14:40):
So people just go to yourwebsite and then hit that back
button that tells Google maybeyou're not the most relevant and
that maybe you shouldn't beranked at the top or whatever
position you're in,they'll drop you down.
But there's so many variablesand I was just really focused on
providing good quality contentand a good user experience
to people.
That's really the mostimportant thing,
is not just spamming or throwingkeywords in your website content
(15:03):
just to throw them in there,but really trying to focus on
the user and providing valuethat's going to be the most
beneficial nowadays.
That's really what Google'slooking for, is offering value.
Yeah, all about good,good quality content.
What what have I not asked you?
Like what what am I,what am I neglecting in terms of
somebody trying to understandthe value of SEO and the
(15:25):
importance of what youdo with the value.
It's really just coming down tohow many people search
for those keywords.
If people search foryour keywords,
then you're missing outon potential leads.
But if no one's searchingfor those keywords,
then you gotta drivethat awareness.
And if no one's searchingfor your keywords,
a great way Alternativeis social media.
It's a great way where peoplearen't really searching on
(15:46):
social. They're. I mean,some people do,
but most people are browsing andthey get recommended feed or
Explorer feeds or topics thatrelate to what they're doing.
So if no one's searchingfor your services,
then SEO is not gonnabe the best for you.
But if there are peoplesearching for it,
someone else is taking thattraffic away from you that you
could be potentiallygetting into your,
into your website and into yoursales funnel to get them to
(16:09):
convert into a clientor paying client.
So biggest thing is just tryingto figure out what keywords
to utilize.
That's always the firststep for SEO,
is figuring out what keywords touse and then incorporating them
into the coding on your websiteand the text and the backlinks.
So everything is relevant in thelines and make sense to Google.
So understanding the lay of theland with digital marketing and
(16:30):
seeing how that kind of fitsinto the bigger picture
and understanding howyou capture your leads in terms
of how people find yourbusiness or service.
So I think those are allsome really good tips.
Anything else that I'm missing?
Anything else you want to add?
I mean,there's so much more with SEO.
Just depends on what routeyou want to go.
I would just say be patient.
It takes time.
(16:51):
Don't get discouraged if you'renot seeing immediate results.
With SEO, it does take months,if not years,
depending on how competitivethose keywords are.
So if you find something moreniche and less competitive,
you'll be able to ranka lot faster.
But if you're just targetingthose really broad,
generic keywords,especially like bigger cities,
it could take a long,long time because there's all
(17:12):
these websites that have beenaround that have established
trust with Google.
And if you're just a startup,a new small business,
Google's not really going totrust you and they're not going
to want to rank you until,until you build that trust up
by getting those backlinks,essentially.
Okay, well, look,thank you so much for taking the
time to educate my audience alittle bit on the value of SEO.
(17:32):
Do you want to maybe saysomething specific about how
people get in touch with you,how they can learn more about
what you do if they want to takethis to the next level and
understand specifically howyour company operates?
So anyone that wantsto learn more,
actually you create a specialgift for them if they go to my
website@seoptimizers.com that'sS E-O-O-P-T-I-M-I Z-E-R-S.com
(17:57):
forward slash gift.
And they can find that there,along with my contact
information and a bunch ofclasses I've done over the years
I've thrown up for free.
So they can see step by step,how to do a lot of stuff
that we talked about.
And also if they want to booksome time on my calendar,
I'm happy to check out thewebsite from an SEO point of
view and let them know what'sworking, what's not working,
or if there's potentialto rank higher.
And they can book some time forfree on my calendar
(18:18):
there as well.
So we'll make sure to drop thoselinks in the show notes for our
audience. And Brandon, you know,thank you for taking the time
to chat with me today.
It's.
This is a topic that we don'tmaybe focus on a lot in the
industry because we're so busyfocusing on actual, you know,
investment strategies or ways toservice clients or to deliver
(18:41):
better service. But definitely,if you're looking at working
on your business,not working in your business,
understanding the digitalmarketing environment,
specifically as it relates towebsites and SEOs, so important.
And so don't hesitate toreach out to Brandon,
share the episode,go follow him on social
media and learn about SEO.
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