Four digital marketing tips and tricks for practitioners

Most of your business is likely to be sourced from your local area. An up-to-date website is a good start, but it’s just one of a slew of online tools that can help boost your profile — and you don’t have to be a computer whiz to get started.

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Many people use search engines like Google to find services. Ideally, you want your business to appear on the first search engine results page (SERP) because that’s where most people click. Regularly updating your website with interesting, relevant content is the best way to achieve this. Think about including content about why people need conveyancing services and helpful articles about buying and selling a property. Other useful SEO methods include keeping a blog, making your website easy to navigate, and sprinkling it with appropriate keywords. For the latter, including specific local search terms – for example, ‘conveyancer Brunswick’ rather than ‘conveyancer Melbourne’ – will help to attract local customers.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

Pay-per-click refers to the advertisements you see when you’re searching the web. The ads are priced using a bid-based system — advertisers bid on keywords and the ‘winners’ appear in the ad space on the search engine results page.

Each time your ad is clicked, you pay the search engine a small fee, hence the names pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC). Generic search terms such as ‘conveyancing quotation’ tend to be quite expensive, so it’s usually wise to bid on more specific and location-based searches. Try search terms based on the keywords you used on your website, such as ‘conveyancing Brunswick’ or ‘property conveyancing costs’.

It’s important to note that PPC ads don’t simply go to the highest bidder; the search engine will also consider each business’s Quality Score before selecting the winners and the position of their ads.

The Quality Score is based on the performance and relevance of the pages people see when they click through to your ads. You can reduce your online advertising costs by improving your Quality Score (Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank). To help with budgeting, some websites offer PPC ROI estimators.

Facebook advertising

Facebook’s 1.7 billion daily users include plenty of home buyers, and Facebook advertising is a great way to connect with them. Ads can be targeted based on demographic information they’ve shared, as well as their history of likes, shares and other data. Facebook’s Audience Insights tool aggregates and displays this data so you can fine-tune your message for users who are most likely to respond.

This means you can target your advertising to people who are talking about buying or selling a property, or who are looking at Facebook pages of websites that list properties for sale.

Google My Business

Listing your business on Google My Business is a powerful way to promote your brick-and-mortar presence. The free platform spruiks contact details, street address, opening hours, and photos of your choosing, and helps you control how you appear on Google Search and Google Maps. The customer review feature might be daunting for some, but you can respond instantly via the Google My Business mobile app.

Author: Matt Meakins