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SEO for Real Estate Agents: What Actually Works (and What Doesn't) in 2026 · Know Like Trust for Real Estate

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[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, what SEO is strategic use of web pages as a way to drive traffic to your site.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It involves two parts, your technical side, which is making sure that your website is accessible by search engines, and then it also involves the content on your web pages.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, it is, is your website accessible and are you putting content on your site that meets searchers needs?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it really boils down to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everyone, welcome to the No Like Trust podcast where I help you craft branding and marketing strategies that align with your unique strengths.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Christine George, an agents who work with meat grow their business on average by 40% by aligning their marketing with who they are, not what they sell.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today is all about search engine optimization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is a term that honestly makes me want to poke meals in my eyes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I am joined by Emily Gertenbach, who is a content creator, a writer and an SEO expert,
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[SPEAKER_01]: And today, she's going to actually tell you why she hates AI.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm on many other things and amazing takeaways about how you can improve your search engine optimization through your website.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So take a listen and make sure to let me know what you love most about this episode.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Emily, welcome to the Knowledge Trust podcast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to have you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we're just going to get right into it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This topic SEO and now GEO, I feel like at least for me and I'm guessing if it's.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If it's this way for me, it's this way for many is like poking needles in my eye.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like SD level is I feel like this big monster of a topic that nobody truly understands.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All it's you hear about keywords and everybody, it is a question I get all the time as a
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[SPEAKER_01]: brand strategist that I'm marketing strategist is how do I improve my SEO?
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[SPEAKER_01]: So can you just start, you are the expert?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Can you just start and tell us what is SEO really?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I totally understand the feeling of it being like as you said, putting pins in your eyes, I think a lot of folks feel that way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, there's a lot of bluster around SEO, a lot of folks who,
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[SPEAKER_00]: might try to make it sound a little more confusing that it actually is because then they're needed, but ultimately what SEO is strategic use of web pages as a way to drive traffic to your site.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is what it is at its core.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It involves two parts, it involves your technical side,
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that usually involves code and things you don't see with your human eyes happens behind the scenes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then it also involves the content on your web pages.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that's a very top level view.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There are some other bits and bobs that go into it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately it is, is your website accessible?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And are you putting content on your site that meets
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[SPEAKER_00]: searchers needs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it really boils down to.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I sort of get content, but I still want to break that down, but the technical piece I think is a way people get hung up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that like indexing?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that what that means?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it means that your website can be accessed by search engines and indexed for search.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So what that means is that
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[SPEAKER_00]: back up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So search engines, and I'm using that term broadly, that does include both Google and now tools like ChatGPT or Anthropics Cloud or people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a chat tool where people are using it to search and it is going out on the web.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So these tools don't search engines don't read websites the way you and I do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, they send out bots, which are called spiders because they're crawling on
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[SPEAKER_00]: look at what pages are on those sites and what the topics of those pages are about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if these bots, if these spiders cannot access your site, if they're blocked from it, or if your site is laid out in a very clunky way, like you have a bunch of pages, but none of them
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[SPEAKER_00]: your code on your website is very old and outdated or just incorrect, which we can see happens sometimes when people build websites entirely with AI.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If it can't fully access your site, then it can't determine what on your site if anything should show up in certain
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[SPEAKER_00]: who has a website that's built on a platform that, let's say, you're associated with, like, you're realising, you're associated with a larger.
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[SPEAKER_00]: larger agency if they've set you up with a website and that's connected to their larger, maybe it's a nationwide firm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably going to be pretty technically sound because that's such a large organization.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, never say never, but generally speaking, they've probably, I would hope, invested in a good solid website structure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you are someone who is
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to want to use an existing website building platform or hire someone to build the site for you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you strictly want to DIY it and you're using something like WordPress or square space, and those aren't the only two, but just two examples, wicks is another one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Generally speaking, your site will have the basic
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[SPEAKER_00]: correct foundation for technical SEO.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There can be some quirks that happen along the way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have certainly viewed and analyzed sites built on these platforms where people may be added a bunch of plugins that they're not using or just created a bunch of pages that they no longer use.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There can be some things that reduce your
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[SPEAKER_00]: SEO viability, but generally speaking, those platforms put all of the necessary structure and files in place to make sure that your website is at least crawlable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those of you in the search engines are going to like your site, but they can access it and see what's on there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so then that leads you to content right so let's say you're on a wicks platform and you know you've gone through this steps once you build your site to make it searchable accessible by will and all the search engines.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But you're still not finding that you're.
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[SPEAKER_01]: you're getting the leads or the traffic that you hope.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Does that then lead to the content part of SEO?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Typically yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there could be a few issues happening in that instance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have seen some real estate websites where when you land on the page, there's like a big video of a house and they're going through it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's beautiful, but it's very large.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like the file that videos very large.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very slow to load.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard to use, especially if you're trying to look
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[SPEAKER_00]: on your phone, maybe you're out and about and you see a sign and you're like, oh, who is this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to go, I want to look at that house.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It can be very slow to load.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that can be an issue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the first part is to make sure that your website works well on computers and phones, something you can check yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: From there, if you're like, okay, yes, it loads well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a pain to use.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then you do want to consider what kind of content you're putting on your site.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, most web sites have two kinds of pages.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They have landing pages, which is akin to your homepage or your about page, where people can just read a little blur about your bio.
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[SPEAKER_00]: See your photo.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then they have longer content, usually taking the form of a blog.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not it's called blog,
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[SPEAKER_00]: might some people might call it resources, or tips for home buyers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you're going to be publishing articles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that content is very important for SEO.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Landing pages are important as well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those are really important for
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[SPEAKER_00]: You and I, the human users, to land and be like, oh, this person looks professional.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to have them sell my house and search engines do find that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But those pages all tend to have very few words on them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have a paragraph about you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Might have some thumbnails of homes you've recently sold.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have longer form or in-depth content that really answers questions, buyers and sellers, investors might have, then it's going to be harder for you to appear in search results because there's simply not much text on your site for which you can even rank in search results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you only have four pages on your site, well,
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[SPEAKER_00]: do you kind of have four chances?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I knew blogging was important, but it sounds like it's like critically important.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it is critically important.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that includes for no matter what kind of search someone is using if they're looking it up in Google on their phone if they are using chatGPT, if they're using Gemini, like the Google app on their phone and talking to Gemini,
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[SPEAKER_00]: no matter how someone is initiating their search, these tools are all searching the web, either you're searching the web or you're when you ask like chat GPT, hey, tell me about XYZ.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can't see it, but chat GPT is actually just running web searches in the background.
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[SPEAKER_00]: doing the typing of the question for you, so it's very important that you have content on your site that can be returned as an answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So on my website, if I only had my home page, my about page and my portfolio page, someone could ask Google or chat GBT, who is Emily Gernbach, what service does she provide and who are her clients?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It could return answers about that and it would,
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[SPEAKER_00]: But if they asked for advice on a specific topic, you know, I work in SEO.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if someone was like, hey, I heard about this SEO topic, I'm gonna type it in and be like, is that true?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I may, if I haven't written a blog post on it, there's no way I'm gonna come up as a result because there's no snippet of text for the AI or for the search engine to show and say, hey, you should consider reading this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: that's so interesting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so my next question then is, because I will get this question too, you know, what about my blog versus my social media versus, you know, writing an article on my LinkedIn in terms of searchability or SEO.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it really about your website or do you come up in the search if you've got content in various places?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's very good question.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So
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[SPEAKER_00]: kind of a two-part answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So for real-iters, in addition to your website, you'll want to have something called a Google Business Profile, which is if someone searches for you or for the name of the firm you're working with, it's going to come up along the side on Google Search.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I have your photos, going to have a link to your website, typically your business hours, and your contact information.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You want to have that, so when people
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[SPEAKER_00]: in your area in which you work search for you, you can come up in that side panel.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That will also come up on Google Maps.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can link to your social media accounts there, and that's very valuable because people can click through and see, you know, this is a very visual job, you know, you are selling things, but people have to be able to see in attractive picture of a house or they're gonna wanna go and look at it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So people can click through and they can see that, and that's beneficial.
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[SPEAKER_00]: However, the posts you make on,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Those are less likely to appear in search results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that they can't, they can LinkedIn articles are probably the most likely out of the bunch.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But think about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How many times have you done a Google search and found a results page that is predominantly TikTok Instagram Facebook?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not a lot, it's usually websites.
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[SPEAKER_00]: ChatGPT and Claude might return some YouTube videos, but generally I haven't seen them return a lot of like carousels of Instagram posts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So SEO is very specific to what comes up in search results, which is 95% gonna be your website and your Google Business profile.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Anything you wanna do for,
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[SPEAKER_00]: social media platforms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's very valuable, but not necessarily for SEO.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's valuable for your other marketing channels reaching your audience where they're at.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If let's say you're doing quite a bit of blogging on LinkedIn and through LinkedIn articles.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And you do that because you're able to generate business there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You get the engagement there or whatnot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Could you repurpose that and also put that article on your website?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can, however, I would, instead of posting it on LinkedIn first, you'd want to post it on your website first.
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[SPEAKER_00]: then take the text of that article if you're publishing full like articles natively I'll link it take the text of that article and put it on LinkedIn and at the bottom right this post was originally published at and then put the URL to your site.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is in in this example we are assuming that you are getting a lot of engagement on LinkedIn because people are finding you within a LinkedIn platform.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're following you where they're searching for
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[SPEAKER_00]: agents and you're coming up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because again, while LinkedIn articles can appear in search, it's not the primary way people find you there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What you're doing here is you are telling LinkedIn and search engines that are crawling that the original version was on your website.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there is a new, there is a, it's duplicated onto LinkedIn because if there are duplicate pieces of content online, without that signal that it was published elsewhere first, Google will be like, okay, well, which website has more traffic and is more reputable like then.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, then we're not going to show the other one in search results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that one's the one that's more likely to be paired with specific keywords.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I know this is where it gets confusing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you want to think about what channels do you own?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you as a business owner,
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[SPEAKER_00]: own or professional own your website and you own your email list.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You do not own your social media profiles because they can be shut down at any point much easier than your website or your email platform can be shut down.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not impossible if you stop paying the bills, but like
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[SPEAKER_00]: Instagram does not care that metal will just delete your account if they if there's some quirk in the system even and then you have to jump through whoops to get it back.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you want to think about what platforms you own first, put your content there first if there's a place for it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not expecting everyone to build their own version of like TikTok but written content put that in a spot you own first and then disseminate it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is brilliant advice.
15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's huge.
15:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So speaking of ownership, let's talk about Google Business Profile.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't usually bring my own examples into this, but I'm going to bring my own example into this.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I changed my Google Business Profile, made some changes, and it shut me down, because it decided that I was no longer an eligible business.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After bookable appeals, they've still shut me down.
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you Google me, you'll see my business profile there, but I can't
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I would assume you would put the business profile in the same camp as the social media that we don't want to own it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you don't own it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you want to make sure that your contact information is always up to date on your website, because that can be pulled through into Google search results, even if you're not actively updating the business profile.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sorry they did that to you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that is an example of a company being like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Too bad, you're out of luck.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, as long as you have your active contact information, always up to date on your website, even if Google pulls that nonsense, people can still find you because when you search your name, your professional website will come up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, aside from looking at your traffic and seeing your traffic is not as high as you want it to be.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What are other signs or things you should be looking for?
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[SPEAKER_01]: or auditing to find out if you are SEO friendly.
17:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And this actually connects perfectly to what we've been talking about because clarity and your business isn't just about marketing, it's about what's happening behind the scenes too.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a solopreneur, you know how this goes.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Receipts everywhere, expenses for gotten, and then tax season shows up, and, well, it's just not fun, right?
17:22
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17:25
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17:40
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17:59
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18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: very good question.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, your traffic is one part of it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of website platforms will have some built in traffic analytics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, there's Google analytics and I know that in itself can be very re overwhelming to people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I will say as an aside.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you want something that gives you analytics, some of the stuff we're going to talk about in just a minute, but is not as overwhelming as Google Analytics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There is a platform I use called Fathom, Fathom Analytics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It does cost money.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's $15 a month, but you can connect multiple websites to it, and it gives you a really stripped down view.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It shows you the core things you need to know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the average person DIY in their website only needs to know the following, which is what
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[SPEAKER_00]: How many people have come to your website over a certain time period?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Where they are, like, are they in your city?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are they coming to you from Timbuktu?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How long they're staying on the website?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And what pages they're entering your website on?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And where they're leaving your website?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's really all you need to know if you're doing this yourself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you want to see one that you're getting traffic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You want to see that the traffic is
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[SPEAKER_00]: ideally going up gradually over time if you see lots of peaks and dips and peaks and dips like very sharp spikes and glow-low dips that can indicate that your site isn't consistently showing up in search results and that can lead mean that your your content library isn't strong enough.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to want to look at something called the bounce rate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that is how quickly people leave your site after entering it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you want a low bounce rate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it goes 0 to 100.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Lower is better in this case.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It means people are taking some time to browse on your site.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're engaging with what you have there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a signal that shows you that one, your content is being shown in the right search results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And two, people really do find what you're saying valuable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another very useful tool, and of course for an agent, you'll want to make sure that the traffic you're getting is from within the region that you are licensed to operate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you know, if you only sell in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but all of your traffic is coming from Colorado, well, there's, they're getting traffic, but it's not really going to do too much for you unless everyone there is planning to move to.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Massachusetts or New Hampshire.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another tool that is useful in this is free is called Google Search Console.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And this is separate from Google Analytics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can go to, if you just Google Google Search Console, it'll come up, it'll walk you through connecting it to your website.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty simple.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And after a few weeks, what that will do is it will show you how many times you
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[SPEAKER_00]: and for what terms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So you can look through there and you can see exactly what terms you are appearing in Google search for and say to yourself, okay, do these align with what I'm actually talking about?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or is there something in here that seems very weird?
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[SPEAKER_00]: As an example, I was once working with a client that was getting a ton of traffic that was not converting and it turned out that
21:17
[SPEAKER_00]: that meant something different in a different industry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So they were getting a bunch of people from another industry clicking on their site and being like, this is not what I thought it was and immediately leaving.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we just changed the terminology they were using in the issue resolved itself and they started the traffic went down but they were getting traffic from the qualified traffic people who actually wanted to know what the page was about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a very useful tool.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I highly recommend both of those.
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that that's huge.
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about AI.
21:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's new term right now called GEO, which is generative engine optimization.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What is it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: and how can we make a damage of it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we're talking about this at a really good time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I actually just wrote a blog post about this and published it today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll have to link that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We'll link that in the show notes.
22:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, okay, it will be helpful because, so geo, which you'll sometimes also hear people say, A, E, O, like answer, engine optimization, but generally people say geo, that is a term that has come up
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: not because Google or OpenAI or anyone said, hey, this is a thing now, but it came up because people in marketing and in the SEO industry were like, okay, well, this is a shift, right?
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something different.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Along the way over the past 18 months or so, there's been a lot of talk about, well, are there different techniques?
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the techniques that are going to work?
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: People try things and they'll work at first and they
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: get very excited and might treat it as the gospel and say this is now what we have to do for GEO.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But so a week ago from when we're recording this, Google itself published an update to its guidelines that it maintains about how search works.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And they essentially said, and I'm paraphrasing everything essentially said, GEO isn't really a thing.
23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
23:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of, so here's an example.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the past 18 months, a lot of people realized that if you very clearly state a question and you answer it on your website, that can be picked up.
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That snippet can be picked up by chat, GPT, open AI, cloud, et cetera.
23:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's true.
23:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That, that's still a whole true.
23:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
23:51
[SPEAKER_00]: All you really need to do all along, and I was telling people this people were like, no, that can't be, all you really need to do is put the question like as a subtitle in an article and then
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: answer it.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But a lot of folks were concerned that they needed to go change the code and apply a special type of code called schema, or sometimes called structure data to that.
24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they wound up putting this code on all sorts of web pages, including web pages that aren't supposed to have that code.
24:21
[SPEAKER_00]: To the point that Google said, well, we're no longer going to recognize that code.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer relevant.
24:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, and I don't mean to throw anyone under the bus here because it was a wild time, and Google was not giving anyone any kind of indication about what truly was best practice and what wasn't.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But, ultimately, there is nothing special.
24:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to do for GEO.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The blog post I mentioned walks through everything that Google said and what that means, but basically, SEO and GEO, it all comes down to the same thing.
24:58
[SPEAKER_00]: putting stuff online that provides real value to people and Google actually said in their announcement that when you put content online for it to work for regular search engines or for AI search engines, it can't be content that can be easily produced by a generative AI tool.
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are only using
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: AI chat tools to create content for your website what you're doing is essentially just remixing other things that have existed before and exist in that tool's training memory will call it there's they can't actually create net new ideas might feel new to you because you haven't thought of it but in the scope of things that exist it is already existed so when
25:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not adding enough new information to the conversation, and it's not going to perform well long-term for search results.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It might, for a day or two, it might show up in search results simply because it's a new page, but it won't last there over time.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's really important is to create content yourself and then add your first person expertise to it.
26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So, sorry.
26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you're, so there's, there's an acronym.
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You can remember E-E-A-T-E-E-T.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It stands for expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
26:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you, I mean, you're like a licensed professional, you are licensed to sell houses, you are a realtor, you have this experience, you can communicate this, using examples of situations you helped your clients with.
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Things you've seen, mistakes, you yourself with your own eyes have seen sellers make and have to avoid them when you communicate that, especially if you can speak about it in the first person or if you're a team in the the we form that is going to be far more helpful for SEO and GEO than any particular like hack or trick that has been talked about that you might have heard about like on social over the past few years.
27:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, so brilliant, and so essentially what you're saying, like I'm looking down the road like original content, it's always been important, obviously.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seems like the easy way out now with AI, but it's actually even more important because, but the problem is, then you're actually
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: date out their information for the AI engines to actually spit up and send out to somebody else.
27:41
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a whole other topic for another time.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I know from your website, you write everything yourself.
27:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't use AI.
27:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the green room before we got on, you said you actually hate AI.
27:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So do.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Based on what you just said about original content,
28:02
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, good.
28:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Give us the loader.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I could probably talk for a whole other podcast episode on this, but I'll try to keep it brief.
28:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So you touched on a briefly there, like when you put things online, yes, it does get gobbled up by the AI and remixed.
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a whole other conversation, but that is one of the reasons why I hate AI in that it takes other people's work.
28:24
[SPEAKER_00]: without permission or compensation.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So for instance, meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, they have an AI tool and that they trained on pirated books that they scraped from a pirating website.
28:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you wanted to read,
28:42
[SPEAKER_00]: all of the books that meta use to train its AI, you would need over 5,000 basic Kindle paper white e-readers in order to store them and read them.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That is how much text went in there.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people look at AI and they say, oh, it's a time saver.
29:01
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're using it for yourself, you get to make the determination on how much you're going to use it.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: In team environments,
29:12
[SPEAKER_00]: being laid off and then the remaining employees being told to use AI to do those people's jobs and it cannot do it to that regard.
29:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And people are getting burned out.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What it's creating is this expectation of an unsustainable pace and it is just remixing and regurgitating content it didn't have permission to use.
29:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It will not push
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might have a conversation with it and it will not tell you no, it will not tell you you're wrong because that would cause you to leave the chat and the main goal here is to make money.
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The companies behind these tools want to make money.
29:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So their goal is to keep you in the chat.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is always going to tell you what you want to hear.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you start using it for marketing purposes,
30:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You might wind up creating something that's more for you than for your audience, and that in addition to, you know, not being original enough to perform well in search a long time, it's not even going to meet the needs of your audience specifically.
30:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have barely scraped the surface there, but there are a lot of problems with it.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I don't
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: from a professional perspective, it's not going to help you, unfortunately, like as much as it's talked up to be.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually raised it so at the beginning of the year, I ran a survey of over 100 professionals in the U.S. who have used AI to create content for their business, where their employer was in the preceding 60 days.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did this because I had noticed a lot of people I was talking to were saying that they were using AI,
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: hours or days to create content with AI and I thought there's a disconnect here because AI can spit out content quickly so you're clearly not getting what you feel is a usable result which doesn't surprise me because I've tried it and you can't it's hard to get of truly like usable results.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like you so I ran a survey and I asked people you know
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: how long is it taking you to create content with AI and what are some of the one over some of the things they were experiencing and their process and I found that only a little over a quarter of people actually feel it makes them work much faster.
31:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The majority of people they're working at the same pace with and without AI and some of them are actually working slower with AI than they were before because instead of just getting their thoughts down on a page
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: with the AI to go through these iterations of trying to get it to sound like what they want.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying everyone needs to be a professional writer, but ultimately for SEO, while you do want to make the best faith effort you can, producing content that is.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: well written and readable, ultimately going forward, it's going to be more important to have your voice communicated than it is going to be to have what seems like a perfectly polished draft.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to hire a writer, you still can.
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I would just, you know, you're going to want to hire a writer who
32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: takes the time to get to know you and your voice like I have clients who I write articles as myself for I've had clients that I've written articles as them like it's not a parent that I'm involved in the process.
32:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I learn their voice and we create a tone and a structure that feels like them and it's a lot more nuanced than using AI.
32:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So is there a smart way to use AI?
33:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to use AI for your own idea synthesis, that is one thing, I would say that you are still...
33:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm going to back up.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think no, I don't think there is really a, I don't think there's a safe way to use AI and when we're engaging with digital tools that I have safety issues, I don't think there's really a smart way to use it.
33:27
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, I would say, you know, if you're using something like copilot in Microsoft Word to like help you come up with an outline or help you synthesize your own notes, that's one thing.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: know a lot of people like to you to summarize calls that they've been on.
33:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a lawyer, but one caveat is depending on where you and the people you were talking to live, it can be illegal for you to be recording them without their consent and that can include to my understanding AI tools.
33:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would just be very cognizant of getting permission from anyone who you are going to
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: or their documents into AI for productivity purposes on your end.
34:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure that they're aware of this.
34:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They've had a chance to consent to that.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure that you know how the tools are being used.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The smartest way to use an AI tool is to pay for it.
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: The free tools, they are more likely to use your data to train the future versions.
34:32
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This is fascinating.
34:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I feel like we could talk for hours.
34:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're going to wrap up here.
34:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to ask you, if you are a real estate agent or a real estate professional and which is essentially a solo pruneur, right?
34:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You're doing everything in
35:00
[SPEAKER_01]: to improve their search engine optimization.
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So first thing, I would look at your website on your phone because what is accessible on your phone is going to tell, is going to indicate how well your site is structured for
35:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Accessibility by people.
35:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's hard for your site to load on your phone, then search and the search engine crawlers, some of which replicate the phone experience will consider your site to be harder to use and therefore less valuable to people.
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first thing.
35:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And if your site is not loading on your phone, that's where you want to do some in technical investigative work or get
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: the input of someone who does that work to find out what's going on and how can we speed up the site and make it more usable.
35:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing would be to get your thoughts in order about where you stand within your market.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what expertise do you have that you can share?
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: with other people, but maybe the other agents in your market don't have, because, you know, when we cook anecdote, when I moved, I had to move within four weeks when I moved from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, and sell my house and move within, find a new place to live within four weeks, and I was freaking out, and I happened to remember that someone I knew from college was a realer now, and I called her, and I was like, oh my god, help me.
36:37
[SPEAKER_00]: and she did and that was amazing and during that process I happened to learn that she had a whole bunch of additional expertise because she used to be a teacher and she took that like teaching ability into the home sales process and I learned so much and she does talk about that.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about Shoutout to Maria O'Neill in Pennsylvania because she's an amazing realtor.
36:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about how she
37:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So think about what expertise you can offer.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that my realtor that I used up here in Massachusetts, I know that she knows everybody.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: She knows she knows a professional for everything.
37:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Even years after selling my house, I know that if I'm really in a pickle, I could call her and say, hey, how do I find this person?
37:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's a good resource.
37:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So think about what you're angled.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we going to shout out?
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you say that?
37:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
37:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Kathy, Kathy Lamanzni at Erika.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we're good.
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: She's great.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what your angle is and how you can communicate that.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, look at how you can get connections back to your website from other places online.
37:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't talk with this whole lot, but those links between your site and another can help as well.
37:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there service providers that you work with that you recommend that can refer you, and they can refer to you, can they link to you on your site?
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there local directories, maybe through your town or the Chamber of Commerce, where you can get a link to your website?
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: All of those things can help as well.
38:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, amazing, like if you're listening to this, I want to know what your key takeaway is or because there are so many Emily, thank you so much for being here.
38:15
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been absolutely amazing.
38:17
[SPEAKER_01]: How can people find you?
38:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me online at egcreativecontent.com.
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also on LinkedIn, this Emily Grittonbach.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: If you visit my website, I have some resources on there that are linked.
38:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That will help you work through some of the things that we talked about today.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic.
38:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll have all of that in the show notes.
38:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll also have your most recent blog post on Google's change in algorithm relates to G. Love that.
38:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And wow, I am this has been amazing.
38:48
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like made sense.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It helped me to make sense of SEO.
38:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much.
38:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad.
38:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me on.
39:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for listening to the show.
39:02
[SPEAKER_01]: If you love this conversation, make sure to share it with your friends.
39:05
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to click that subscribe button so you never miss another episode.
39:10
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39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Christine George, and you're listening to No Like Trust for Real Estate.