I was recently asked to give a brief outline of my online strategy for home builders, and I thought it would make for a great series of blog posts. So here it is in an easy to remember form – the 7 E’s of a home builder’s online strategy.

1. EARN Google’s trust
2. ENTICE people to visit your site
3. ENGAGE those “just browsing”
4. EMPHASIZE your differences
5. ENSURE you’re part of the short list
6. ELICIT a response – generate a lead and convert it
7. EMPLOY your happy home owners to earn more trust

First up…

EARN Google’s trust

Building a meaningful relationship with Google can be harder than it was to find and marry your wife – but the benefits are nearly as great. Recent reports still show Google with a commanding lead of the search market with 65.6% share. The closest competitor, Yahoo! only has 16.1%. By climbing to the top or organic search results for the right search terms you’ll see very high ROI.

Here is a sample analytic report showing my builder's search engine breakout - guess who's #1?

Like any relationship though it takes time and you have to build trust. You do this through smart SEO work, and by creating original content that others will link to and find helpful (note – this may, and probably will, mean that the content does not do a hard sell of your product or service). Did I mention it takes time? The good news is that the time will pass anyway, and at least you started before all your competition to get a head start… right? (warning: don’t go cheap on this… remember, it’s your highest ROI)

Before employing a fantastic professional SEO team – organic search accounted for roughly 30% of our website traffic. It now accounts for 60.3% of total traffic. Remember, that’s traffic where my cost per click is now $0!

This screen shot shows you the percentage of web traffic currently coming to my builder's site via search engines (PPC = $0)

What’s your strategy for earning Google’s trust?

Tomorrow I’ll talk about online strategy #2 – ENTICE people to visit your site