What You Need to Know About Content Optimization

Google’s search engine algorithms are incredibly advanced and only grow more complex with every new iteration. The goal, of course, is to serve better results to its users, and that means if you want to get your content in front of potential clients, you need to give Google’s web crawlers what they’re looking for. This means optimizing your content for search engines so that the content gets flagged as authoritative, relevant, and useful. Therefore, content optimization is essential to any real estate professional marketing themselves online. Here’s what you need to know about how it works and why it’s important.

Google Prioritizes “Helpful Content”

Thanks to one of the most recent updates Google made to its algorithm, its so-called Helpful Content update, there’s a new sheriff in town: content that’s considered high quality by the search giant. While you may think it’s hard to hard to qualify good content from bad using an algorithm, Google’s recent advances in AI and machine learning have made its quality detection methods much more robust, and that means you may need to pivot your content strategies.

In this particular case, Google is now ranking content that provides site visitors with a positive overall experience. In this context, it’s about providing visitors with what they’re looking for by creating people-first content instead of prioritizing optimization for search engine web crawlers. This doesn’t mean that you should be ignoring SEO best practices, of course - keywords and meta descriptions remain crucial for visibility. Now, however, the usefulness of your content is just as important - or arguably even more essential.

Location, Location, Location

Any real estate professional will tell you that targeting location-based demographics is an excellent way to build your brand. Tying your efforts to specific geographical neighborhoods of which you have the most knowledge and expertise allows you to showcase yourself as an authority. Thankfully, content optimization can support this goal in a major way through location-based tools and opportunities.

This can be done by creating content that specifically focuses on aspects of the locality or region that you want to target. Promoting local events and festivals, profiling local businesses, touring local parks - there are dozens of different opportunities that you can make use of in this way. Sharing this content across not just your website but also local landing pages and your social media accounts will help Google pick up on this content and serve it to users looking for local information.

AI-Based Tools Are Growing More Prevalent

Between ChatGPT, Google’s own Bard chatbot, and others waiting in the wings, the age of artificial intelligence is upon us. AI-based tools can be used to generate marketing content quickly and easily with just a few well-worded prompts, and this can cut down on the time and effort it takes to create marketing content by hand. This makes these types of tools something to watch as they continue to develop in the future.

And develop they certainly will. While they’re not quite perfect yet - AI-generated content still needs to be carefully vetted and edited by a human to ensure it’s hitting the right notes - every iteration of these machine learning algorithms grows more adept at creating good content. You can use AI content generation to create first drafts of marketing content and then fine-tune them to your needs.

The Last Word on Content Optimization

Between prioritizing helpful content, creating marketing content focused on local neighborhoods, and using AI tools to help generate first drafts of content before revising it by hand, there are other content optimization tools and techniques to be aware of. However, these three are excellent starting points for anyone looking to maximize their content optimization.